[Pencil Note: About Sept. 16, 1952 - Not to leave Secretary's Office.]
The Secretary, in considering the question of whether he should advocate strongly to the President that the Mexican proposal, or something like it, should be followed, pointed out the following considerations:
He said the first thing that troubled him was the similarity in the situation with the MacArthur proposals for pursuing the Korean war to the Manchurian border. In that case the preponderance of opinion in Washington in the Military Establishment and State Department had been against doing what MacArthur proposed but it had seemed that the opinion of the Commander in the field and his advisers should be given a very heavy weight in deciding the matter. When the Commander's views had prevailed and the venture turned out disastrously, the blame was placed on Washington. In the present case the preponderance of military opinion both in the Field and among the JCS in the Defense Department in Washington is against the political advice of the State Department that the further effort should be made to propose a new formula (although not in a way that would water-down the package proposal) which the Chinese negotiators might be able to accept. Admiral Libby is of the opinion that there is
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a very good chance that the Chinese negotiators would accept this proposal. Mr. Acheson's opinion is that it is about a one-in-a-thousand chance that they would.
The Military views as to the disastrous consequences which could result from an armistice based on the Mexican proposal or a similar one, have been set forth in other memoranda. They are mainly that an armistice would give the Chinese a chance to rebuild their airfields and other military strength; that if, as a result of this, fighting has to be resumed, the UN side may be weaker militarily and may be in the anomalous position of resuming fighting during a formal armistice. There would be a great chance that, if there were an armistice, there would be tremendous pressures to bring our boys home. The Secretary feels that any armistice would bring about the same possibilities.
The Secretary said this brings you to the heart of the substance of new proposals and it is here that he has doubts as to the State Department's position. His doubts are along the following lines:
The Chinese could not possibly accept the proposal that the prisoners who would not be exchanged but who would be held for the outcome of further talks would be sent to other countries. Our side could not, the
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Secretary feels, hold these prisoners in prisoner-of-war camps where they are now located for a long and protracted period. If we do that, the possibility is that many of these prisoners would decide that they would rather give up and return to their homeland than to stay in the prison camps. This would undermine and destroy the very great psychological advantage which we have in offering refuge to communist soldiers who give themselves up. If, on the other hand, we insist on proposing that these unreturned prisoners should be sent to other countries pending the negotiations, we are proposing something which the Chinese negotiators would not and could not accept.