NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY 363

the Far Eastern Red Army Air Force to an extent which they would
consider undesirable and dangerous. Our reconnaissance flights and
naval patrols in the neighborhood of the Northern borders of Korea
will seem to them to involve the danger of revealing to us intelligence
concerning the Port Arthur and Vladivostok areas to a highly un-
desirable degree. Finally, it must be to them an intensely humiliating
and irritating experience to be obliged either to keep their naval forces
out of areas which seem to them almost part of their territorial waters
or, alternatively, to risk their being molested and destroyed by US.
and other naval units. |
7. In the light of this situation, it is quite probable that they are:

(2) About to bring in the Korean units, formerly, operating with
the Chinese Communist forces in South China, to participate in actual
combat in South Korea;

(6) Introducing into North Korea their own puppet Chinese forces
from Manchuria, to act.as a first reserve defense buffer ; and

(c) Preparing to re-occupy North Korea with their own Red Army
forces, if necessary, to forestall any U.S. advance beyond the 38th
Parallel. (Any further direct detriment to their Far Eastern military
establishment which may result from hostilities in South Korea may
be expected to hasten such re-entry. )

It is doubtful whether Mao wishes to commit any of his own forces
to Korea, and there is no evidence that Moscow has reached any agree-
ment with him envisaging such entry. This situation is of course
subject to change at any moment. |

8. As Bohlen emphasized when he was here, when the tide of battle
begins to change, the Kremlin will not wait for us to reach the 38th
Parallel before taking action. When we begin to have military suc-
cesses, that will be the time to watch out. Anything may then happen—
entry of Soviet forces, entry of Chinese Communist forces, new strike
for U.N. settlement, or all three together.

9. The reported absence of the Japanese Communist leaders from
Japan, taken in conjunction with depletion of our strength in Japan,
with the inadequate state of the Japanese police, and with our paucity
of information about internal developments in Japan, is disturbing.
We should reckon with the possibility of the establishment at any
time of a rival Japanese government in North Korea, and attempts at
infiltration and subversion on a serious scale in Japan. (The number of
Japanese prisoners-of-war remaining in Soviet hands is presumably
great enough to provide personnel for. such efforts. )

10. Evidence of Chinese Communist plans with respect to Formosa
is inconclusive. Had we not reacted as we did on June 27, the com-
munist forces would probably already have seized the island. In the
circumstances, the Peiping leaders have plainly been vacillating.