FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1950, VOLUME I


ago the possibility of avoiding general hostilities. They are wise
enough to recognize the cumulative tendencies in international com-
plications and the great role of the unforeseen and the unintended in
situations of extreme delicacy and instability. For this reason, they
are no doubt preparing with intensified vigor and in every way for
the contingency that general war might develop. This will be widely
reflected in the evidences of their attitudes and operation, in the
coming period. But they almost certainly wish at least to delay an
outbreak of general hostilities, if the latter cannot be avoided; and
they have not written off the possibility that general war may be
avoided entirely.
  This being the case, they will continue to conduct against us in the
coming period the most intensive and savage type of political war-
fare, interspersing political, psychological, covert-subversive, and
limited military means as may seem to them suitable and advisable.
They will do this in the hope that if this attack is sufficiently success-
ful it will obviate any necessity of a general war from their stand-
point; but that if war cannot be avoided, it will put them in a better
position both to conduct it militarily and to carry it to a political
conclusion which they would regard as favorable.
  The main accent of this political warfare will be laid on the ex-
ploitation of the major point of disunity evident in the non-
communist world, namely the relationship of the non-communist
powers to Communist China and to Asiatic problems in general. The
Kremlin sees that the U.S. is encumbered (a) by strategic interests
in Japan which the other non-communist powers share only in minor
and varying degrees, and (b) by internal political inhibitions of the
heaviest sort which make it impossible for it to compete on 'favorable
terms 'for the exploitation of nationalist feeling in Asia or even to
come to any real meeting of the minds with other important countries,
notably the British and the Indians, on Asiatic matters. They will
continue to drive at this weak point in the hope that we can be thus
discredited with the peoples of Asia and isolated from the other non-
communist powers; that our position in Japan and the Philippines,
in particular, can thus be psychologically undermined; and that we
can finally be placed before the choice of continuing to try to police
Japan in the face of a violently hostile and aroused popular resistance
or agreeing to a treaty of peace which will throw open the field for
the pursuit of Soviet political purposes and the eventual integration
of Japan, with its war potential, into the Soviet satellite area.
  The Soviet leaders no doubt feel that they have good grounds to
hope not only that this result can be achieved, but that our position


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