Document PPS23, 24th February 1948
Written
by
George Kennan
Former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff
This is the complete text of the section of PPS/23
from which the quote is taken. The complete paper was published in 1976 in Foreign
Relations of the United States 1948, Vol. 1, No. 2.
VII. FAR EAST
My main impression with regard to the position of this Government
with regard to the Far East is that we are greatly over-extended
in our whole thinking about what we can accomplish, and should try
to accomplish, in that area. This applies, unfortunately, to the
people in our country as well as to the Government.
It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as
a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples.
Our political philosophy and our patterns for living have very
little applicability to masses of people in Asia. They may be all
right for us, with our highly developed political traditions
running back into the centuries and with our peculiarly favorable
geographic position; but they are simply not practical or helpful,
today, for most of the people in Asia.
This being the case, we must be very careful when we speak of
exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving
ourselves and
others when we pretend to have the answers to the problems which
agitate many of these Asiatic peoples.
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3%
of its population. This disparity is particularly great as
between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we
cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real
task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships
which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity
without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we
will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming;
and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our
immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that
we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude
toward the Far Eastern areas. The peoples of Asia and of the
Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the
development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships
in their own way. This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful
one. The greatest of the Asiatic peoples--the Chinese and the
Indians--have not yet even made a beginning at the solution of the
basic demographic problem involved in the relationship between
their food supply and their birth rate. Until they find some
solution to this problem, further hunger, distress, and violence
are inevitable. All of the Asiatic peoples are faced with the
necessity for evolving new forms of life to conform to the impact
of modern technology. This process of adaptation will also be
long and violent. It is not only possible, but probable, that in
the course of this process many peoples will fall, for varying
periods, under the influence of Moscow, whose ideology has a
greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than
anything we could oppose to it. All this, too, is probably
unavoidable; and we could not hope to combat it without the
diversion of a far greater portion of our national effort than our
people would ever willingly concede to such a purpose.
In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense
now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our
thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the
htmliration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository
of a
high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting
ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and
refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should
cease to talk about vague and--for the Far East--unreal objectives
such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have
to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered
by idealistic slogans, the better.
We should recognize that our influence in the Far Eastern area in
the coming period is going to be primarily military and economic.
We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific
and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we
should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas
remain in hands which we can control or rely on. It is my own
guess, on the basis of such study as we have given the problem so
far, that Japan and the Philippines will be found to be the
corner-stones of such a Pacific security system and if we can
contrive to retain effective control over these areas there can be
no serious threat to our security from the East within our time.
Only when we have assured this first objective, can we allow
ourselves the luxury of going farther afield in our thinking and
our planning.
If these basic concepts are accepted, then our objectives for the
immediate coming period should be:
(a) to liquidate as rapidly as possible our unsound commitments in
China and to recover, vis-a-vis that country, a position of
detachment and freedom of action;
(b) to devise policies with respect to Japan which assure the
security of those islands from communist penetration and
domination as well as from Soviet military attack, and which will
permit the economic potential of that country to become again an
important force in the Far East, responsive to the interests of
peace and stability in the Pacific area; and
(c) to shape our relationship to the Philippines in such a way as
to permit the Philippine Government a continued independence in
all internal affairs but to preserve the archipelago as a bulwark
of U.S. security in that area.
Of these three objectives, the one relating to Japan is the one
where there is the greatest need for immediate attention on the
part of our Government and the greatest possibility for immediate
action. It should therefore be made the focal point of our policy
for the Far East in the coming period.
Many thanks to researcher Russil Wvong who wrote to me supplying this information