Page:Foreign Relations of the United States 1948 Volume 1 Part 2.djvu/29

Rh in foreign countries. This poses an extremely difficult problem as to the measures which our Government can take to prevent the communists from achieving success in the countries where resistance is lowest.

The Planning Staff has given more attention to this than to any single problem which has come under its examination. Its conclusions may be summed up as follows:

(1) The use of U S. regular armed force to oppose the efforts of indigenous communist elements within foreign countries must generally be considered as a risky and profitless undertaking, apt to do more harm than good.

(2) If, however, it can be shown that the continuation of communist activities has a tendency to attract U.S. armed power to the vicinity of the affected areas, and if these areas are ones from which the Kremlin would definitely wish U.S. power excluded, there is a possibility that this may bring into play the defensive security interests of the Soviet Union and cause the Russians to exert a restraining influence on local communist forces.

The Staff has therefore felt that the wisest policy for us to follow would be to make it evident to the Russians by our actions that the further the communists go in Greece and Italy the more surely will this Government be forced to extend the deployment of its peacetime military establishment in the Mediterranean area.

There is no doubt in our minds but thnt if the Russians knew that the establishment of a communist government in Greece would mean the establishment of U.S. air bases in Libya and Crete, or that a communist uprising in northern Italy would lead to the renewed occupation by this country of the Foggia field, a conflict would be produced in the Kremlin councils between the interests of the Third Internationale, on the one hand, and those of the sheer military security of the Soviet Union, on the other. In conflicts of this sort, the interests of narrow Soviet nationalism usually win. If they were to win in this instance, a restraining hand would certainly be placed on the Greek and Italian communists.

This has already been, to some extent, the case. I think there is little doubt that the activity of our naval forces in the Mediterranean (including the stationing of further Marines with those forces), plus the talk of the possibility of our sending U.S. forces to Greece, has had something to do with the failure of the satellites, up to this time, to recognize the Markos Government, and possibly also with the Kremlin's reprimand to Dimitrov. Similarly, I think the statement we made at the time of the final departure of our troops from Italy was probably the decisive factor in bringing about the abandonment of the plans which evidently existed for a communist uprising in Italy prior to the spring elections.