National Affairs: Saving Face

• Share

The U.S. has made a basic change in its official policy toward China. The State Department, however, has decided to keep this change a secret, even from the Chinese. In effect, the U.S. do-nothing policy remains unchanged. This is diplomacy at such a high level that it is invisible from the earth.

The change was an official reversal of George Marshall's recommendation (made when he was a special envoy to China) that the Nationalists and the Communists should get together in a coalition government. The Marshall coalition policy has never been publicly revoked—though the U.S. has retreated from it in practice by authorizing military aid to help fight the Communists (which thus far has not been very effective).

A few weeks ago, it was finally and formally agreed that China's struggle was indeed part of the world struggle against Communism. The agreement came after repeated pleas from men like Defense Secretary James Forrestal, Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, the State Department's Policy Planner George F. Kennan. The only value of this belated acknowledgment would be in its public proclamation—to tell the world that Washington had at last waked up to the fact that "coalition" with the Communists always led to Communist control.

But State Department underlings, led by William Walton Butterworth Jr., director of Far Eastern Affairs, insisted that no such public announcement be made. They argued that a public reversal of policy would cause the U.S. to lose face. That left the nation's China policy right where it was before: saving face and losing China.