FOREIGN RELATIONS, 19 5 0, VOLUME I


Policy Planning Staff Files
   Draft Memorandum by the Coumselor (Kennan) to the Secretary
                               of State 1

 TOP SECRET                         [WASHINGTON,] February 17, 1950.
   MR. SECRETARY: In the light of the current demands in the Con-
gress and the press for some sort of a review of our foreign policy
in its entirety, I think that ,as your senior advisor on policy formula-
tion I should, before leaving for South America,2 let you have the
following resumn of my own views on this subject.
                                   I
   There is little justification for the impression that the "cold war",
by virtue of events outside of our control, has suddenly taken some
drastic turn to our disadvantage.
   Recent events in the Far East have been the culmination of processes
 which have long been apparent. The implications of these processes
 were correctly analyzed, and their results reasonably accurately pre-
 dicted, long ago by our advisors in this field. The likelihood of these
 recent developments was known at the time when our present policies
 toward the Soviet Union were evolved. This prospect was not con-
 sidered valid justification either for failing to do things in Europe
 which promised to be useful, or for doing certain things in the Far
 East which promised to be useless. Mao's 3 protracted stay in Moscow 4
 is good evidence that our own experts were right not only in their
 analysis of the weakness of the National Government but also in their
 conviction that the Russians would have difficulty establishing the
 same sort of relationship with a successful Chinese Communist move-

 'Circulated in the Policy Planning Staff by Harry H. Schwartz, Executive
 Secretary, under a memorandum of transmittal of February 17 which read as
 follows:
 "Attached is a copy of a draft memorandum addressed to the Secretary
pre-
 -pared by Mr. Kennan. This memorandum has not been sent nor is it Mr. Kennan's
intention to send it as he has already exposed the ideas contained therein
-orally
to the Secretary. It is being circulated for the information of the staff
and such
assistance as it may represent in the current policy review." (Policy
Planning
Staff Files)
  'Kennan departed for Mexico City and South America on February 18; for
information on his fact-finding mission, see vol. ii, pp. 589 ff.
  I Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party.
  'For text of the Sino-Soviet Treaty and two accompanying agreements, signed
at Moscow on February 14, 1950, see Margaret Carlyle, ed., Documents on Inter-
national Affairs, ,1949-1950 (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp.
541-547.
For additional documentation on Sino-Soviet relations, see vol vi, pp. 256
ff.


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