172. Letter From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Wallner) to the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Cleveland)1

Dear Harlan:

In the interstices of Adlai Stevenson’s reporting to the authorities, the Congress and the press on his South American tour, we got a certain amount of IO business done with him. I am enclosing for your information [Page 355] (Tab A) a copy of his notes on his meeting with the President June 26.2 We are following up on these various aspects, and I shall confine the rest of this letter to Chinese Representation.

After we received your report from Ottawa removing hopes of the Canadians’ carrying the ball for us on the successor state business, we wrote a memorandum to the Secretary (Tab B) urging him to ask the President to initiate congressional consultations and to authorize us to start our diplomatic campaign. Alex Johnson threw some cold water on this but passed it along with the suggestion that perhaps the Australians, after all, might be a good stalking horse. Three days later on the basis of some other reports from the field, we reiterated the urgency of getting a decision on our recommendations (Tab C).

As far as I know, the Secretary didn’t act on these memoranda. He did, however, answer questions on the general subject in executive session before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Tab D). (This testimony, I am told too emphatically to believe, will not be published and is being held very close.) He also discussed the alternatives in rather frank terms with the Japanese Foreign Minister. Freddie Kuh got wind of this from a member of Ikeda’s Delegation and wrote a story in the Sun Times implying that we had decided in favor of the successor state approach. Three days later, on June 24, Bill Jorden re-wrote Kuh’s story from Mt. Olympus, and it appeared in the same issue of the Times that announced his (Jorden’s) appointment as a member of the Policy Planning Staff. I enclose the clipping as Tab E. To this Linc White merely stated that our policy remained in favor of keeping Taipei in the UN and Peiping out of the UN and that no decision had been made as to our parliamentary tactics at the GA. We have stuck to this story pretty much and it is now our official line, although the Secretary did embroider a bit on it in Chicago this week (Tab F).

Adlai Stevenson’s return on June 22 marked renewal of our activities here to get things off dead center. He talked to both the Secretary and the President and thought he had general agreement to proceed. Just before he left for New York, the Secretary summoned Chet Bowles, Alex Johnson, Walter McConaughy and me, and laid down the rule that it was too dangerous for us, at least, until after the aid bill was passed, to proclaim that our policy was to keep Peiping out of the UN and at the same time peddle, like a Parisian postcard dealer, a resolution which in fact invited them to become members as the successor state approach does. He rejected our arguments against the dangers of waiting until September. In fact he has given me quite a hard time in discussions of this subject both in staff meetings and in private meetings. Tab G contains Pete Thacher’s uncleared and unofficial summary of the June 27 meeting.

[Page 356]

I informed Adlai Stevenson of this decision just before he left for New York, and Chet Bowles also talked to him about it, and AES was quite disturbed. IO and USUN are rather like field generals who ask for four divisions and ammunition for a forty-eight-hour barrage prior to the assault, and are told by Headquarters that they can have two divisions and a twenty-four-hour barrage, but are damned-well expected to achieve their objectives anyway. Headquarters in this case is moved by other considerations, i.e. the administration is faced with two parliamentary situations. One, right here and now on Capitol Hill relating to the aid bill, and another, in New York in September. The immediate one is now dominant, and there is well-justified fear that if we talk too much the joint resolution on China may well be strengthened and tacked on as an amendment to the aid bill.

I need not review for you all the counter-arguments that AES and we have made. I just do not believe that we can maintain the freeze on public debate of the question until September. On the other hand, we certainly must be careful not to provoke such a debate by our own actions, and we shall be sending you a telegram to this effect as guidance in your discussions at the Quai and before the NATO Council. The purpose of what may seem an unusually dull letter with a great many enclosures is to give you as full background as possible on developments here and to urge you to play Chi Rep in very low key in your NAC meeting. I think they have borne out the very wise conclusion which you and Doc Matthews came to in Vienna and which you mentioned to me on the telephone.

If I may burden you with one more angle, I enclose as Tab H, Harry Luce’s reply to the President. This provoked the latter to ask AES to see Cabot Lodge in New York. The conversation has taken place, and we understand informally that Lodge remained unimpressed, although we have not yet seen a record of the conversation. We hear that Lodge recommended that the moratorium be pursued, and that he believes it can be won if the US is willing to make a public statement that we will be in favor of admission of Red China at such time as it changes its attitude and policy. In this connection please see paragraph two of New York’s 3456,3 which I am pouching to Paris for your attention.

Sincerely yours,

Woodie
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P.S. As if you didn’t have enough to read, I enclose the text of AES’s remarks on his South American trip before the National Press Club.4

  1. Source: Kennedy Library, Cleveland Papers, China, Box 16. Secret. Cleveland was in Paris.
  2. None of the tabs is printed here. The portion of Stevenson’s memorandum on the question of Chinese representation is printed in Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. XXII, Document 34.
  3. In the second item of this telegram, Stevenson noted that the United States would seek continuance of the moratorium for another year. “If this failed, then we might have consider pressing for delaying res which recommended Chicoms adherence principles UN Charter as prerequisite for admission.” The telegram reported that French Permanent Representative Armand Berard said that a formula had to be devised that would allow the Brazzaville Group of francophone African counties to vote positively. He believed that this would be possible if “three Western powers” could adopt a joint policy on Chinese representation. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1960–63, 303/6–2961)
  4. For text of Stevenson’s address to the National Press Club on June 26, see Department of State Bulletin, July 24, 1961, pp. 139–144.