Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and President Harry S. Truman
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OCR Page 1 of 7file
for SCORET
c
November 17,1949
298
Conversation with the President
Item 1 - China and the Far East
a
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The President referred very warmly to our meeting this
morning with the consultants on China. He said that this had been
tremendously helpful to him. He had gotten a new insight into the
reasons for the Communist success in China, a better understanding
of the whole situation, and found himself thinking about it in a quite
new way. He said that when Ambassador Jessup returns from his
trip to the Far East he would like to meet with all of us again. For
this meeting he would like to set aside several hours for a discussion
and go into all phases of the Far Eastern questions and policies.
I said to the President that if we had had a little more time this
morning I should have liked to have had the discussion center on what
seemed to me to be a pretty basic issue of policy on which I thought
the Consultants minds were very clear. Brondly speaking, there were
two objectives of policy: One might be to oppose the Communists
regime, harass it, needle it, and if an opportunity appeared to
attempt to overthrow it. Another objective of policy would be to attempt to
detach it from subservience to Moscow and over a period of time
encourage those vigorous influences which might modify it. I
pointed out that this second alternative did not mean a policy of
appeasement any more than it had in the case of Tito. If the
Communists took action detrimental to the United States it should
be opposed with vigor, but the decision of many concrete questions
would be much clarified by a decision as to whether we believed that
we should and could overthrow the regime, or whether we believed that
the second course outlined above was the wiser. I said that the Con-
sultants were unanimous in their judgment that the second course was
the preferable one.
The President thought that in the broad sense in which I was
speaking that this was the correct analysis and that he wished to have
a thorough understanding of all of the facts in deciding the question.
He believed that todays meeting had greatly helped him.
E. U. 11652, Sec. 3(E) and 5(D) or en
D. A.
Dept. of State letter,
S:DA:dhm
By NLT. HC : NARS Date 4.25.16
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