FOREIGN RELATIONS: New Policy, New Statesman

General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, the new U.S. special envoy to China, will be armed for the job as few U.S. diplomats have been armed in years. President Truman had given notice: the General will have a new policy in black & white. It is expected to be a forthright and historic statement of U.S. policy toward China to guide him and all with whom he would deal.

The policy is expected to be unequivocal: open, forthright cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek’s National Government, serving notice on the Chinese Communists that the U S. will not be deterred from carrying out its promise to assist the Chungking Government in taking over North China and Manchuria from the Japanese.

The U.S. objective: an end to China’s 18-year civil war, speedy disarming and return to Japan of Jap troops in China.

The policy presumably will reflect in part the views of General Marshall. It will be based on these premises: 1) that a disorganized, divided China is an undermining influence to world peace, now and in the future; 2) that a strong, unified and effective China is of the utmost importance to the success of the United Nations’ efforts to establish world peace.

Essential to this policy would be:

¶ An immediate end of hostilities between the National Government and the Communists.

¶ An effort by China’s major political elements to work together toward unity.

¶ A broadening of Generalissimo Chiang’s one-party Kuomintang Government to provide representation to all political groups; establishment of one National Government army for all of China.

Price of Peace. The U.S. would also be serving notice that it will continue to support Chiang as long as his Government seeks peace and unity. That course would bring China actual help—the U S. would be prepared to send it military and economic advisers, to look with favor on China’s requests for loans.

Was this armed intervention, as many a critic of Chiang, as the Chinese Communists and many a U.S. leftist would surely label it? The policymakers’ answer on this point is a strong no; the U.S. does not intend to intervene in China’s internal affairs. But the U.S. cannot permit China’s civil strife to interfere with the discharge of solemn U.S. obligations to the Chinese Government—chief among them the removal of the Japanese from China.

The dangers in such a policy are recognized: U.S. troops may have to engage in activities hostile to dissident elements in China. But the President’s statement is expected to say flatly: there is no U.S. intention of participating in China’s civil war.

The U.S. is prepared to pay a price for peace in China: maintenance for the time being of its Army and Navy forces there. That means delaying the return of those forces—probably more than 100,000 men. The justification: to win the peace for which 13,000,000 Americans fought a bitter war and in which 1,000,000 Americans were killed or wounded.

The policy would be that recommended by General Marshall’s protégé—young (49), able Lieut. General Albert Coady Wedemeyer, U.S. commander in the China Theater.