Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- c. China Sees Creation of a Neutral Buffer Zone
Beyond Vietnam, the Chinese apparently believed that the final agreements would preclude the three Indochinese states from involvement in the American security system. When Chou communicated to Eden his concern about Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian participation in a Southeast Asia treaty organization, the Foreign Secretary said he knew of no proposal for those States to join.2 The next day Eden told Molotov that a security pact in Southeast Asia was inevitable and completely in line with British policy; but he added that no consideration was being given to the inclusion of Cambodia and Laos (a comment which Smith regarded as a "mistake" inasmuch as the U.S. hoped to use the threat of their inclusion to get a better settlement).3 When the conference closed, the Chinese felt sufficiently assured about the matter, it would seem. On 23 July, a Chinese journalist confided: "We have won the first campaign for the neutralization of all Southeast Asia."4
- d. China's Domestic Economy is Protected
China, at this time, was greatly concerned with her own internal problems, and anxious to consolidate at home before moving further into Asia. The Korean War had exacerbated the pressing economic and political problems within China, as had the attempts by Peking to push an economic reconstruction beyond the limits of possibility. The Chinese were satisfied that the Indochina situation after Geneva allowed, at least, temporary assurance that a major effort could be turned inward, without fear of repercussions along China's southwestern border.
- e. U.S. Threat of Massive Intervention is Forestalled
The USSR and China had watched warily the sporadic attempts of the U.S.; first, to keep the Indochina problem out of Geneva, and second, to gather the Western nations into united action to prevent communist consolidation of Indochina. There was an element of unpredictability concerning U.S. action in Southeast Asia, fostered purposely to a great extent by the U.S. and UK (with calculated moves such as the bilateral military talks in Washington), but also emphasized by the inordinate number and wide variety of public statements on Indochina that were made by official and semi-official Washington during the months of June and July, while the Geneva Conference sat. Peking and Moscow, then, had some reason to believe that they had pre-empted U.S. military moves by diplomacy.
- f. Prospects of Short-Run Stability Please the Russians
The Soviet government was not dedicated to the furtherance of Chinese goals in Southeast Asia, nor did the USSR want to see an increase in U.S. influence in this area. For these reasons, it was greatly in the interest of the Soviets to press for the withdrawal of French power from Indochina — but in a way calculated to inhibit any major increase in U.S. or Chinese power to replace the French. The creation, therefore,
