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{
    "localId": "225249554",
    "label": "Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Reports and Estimates Report, Number 17-49, The Strategic Importance of the Far East to the United States and the USSR",
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    "id": "225249554",
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    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Reports and Estimates Report, Number 17-49, The Strategic Importance of the Far East to the United States and the USSR",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/225249554",
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        "President's Secretary's Files (Truman Administration)",
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    "productionDates": [
        {
            "day": 4,
            "logicalDate": "1949-05-04",
            "month": 5,
            "year": 1949
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{
    "seq": 8,
    "pageIndex": 0,
    "type": "photo",
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    "ocrText": "TOR SECRES\nUS or the USSR. Burma, too, will be an area of deep-seated unrest and doubtful ex-\nploitability.\nJapan, because of its industrial potential, its large resources of trained military\nand industrial manpower and its strategic location, is the key to the development of\na self-sufficient war-making complex in the Far East. This fact was amply demon-\nstrated in World War II. Control of Japan's industrial machine would be more valu-\nable to the USSR than to the US, however, not only because the USSR has more im-\nmediate need of the products of Japan's industry but also because the USSR will be\nin effective control of the area (chiefly northern China, Manchuria and Korea) whose\nnatural resources Japanese industry can utilize most efficiently. For this reason, long-\nrange US security interests dictate the denial of Japan's capacity, both economic and\nmilitary, to USSR exploitation.\nThe present aggressive Soviet attitude in the Far East indicates that the USSR\nalready appreciates that realization of the long-term decisive potential of the region\nwill be enhanced by early elimination of the US from the region, especially if accom-\nplished without resort to war. Maintenance of the present US position in the Far East\ndenies Soviet hegemony over key areas of the region, particularly Japan. Loss of that\nposition, for any reason, will greatly facilitate Soviet exploitation of a potentially de-\ncisive war factor and will correspondingly reduce the means for subsequent US counter-\naction. US ability to derive full strategic advantage from the region and to deny its\nultimate exploitation by the USSR largely depends on measures to be taken in the\nperiod extending from the present. Expansion of Soviet influence in the Far East\ngreatly beyond present limits at the expense of the US Far Eastern position in the\nprewar period politically, economically and militarily, would tend to render the re-\nmaining US position militarily untenable from the outset of hostilities. Once having\nlost its present minimum position in the region, the US might well lack the resources\nneeded simultaneously to maintain a major war effort against the Soviet European\nwar-making centers and to deny Soviet realization of the war potential of the Far East.\nUS strategic interests in the Far East, therefore, are immediate and continuing,\neven if limited to denying consolidated Soviet control of the region. Key to this denial\nis integrated US control of the offshore island chain extending from the Philippines\nto Japan.\nday\nTOP SECRET\n6"
}