Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
fighting under a cover of U.S. sea and air power. In addition, the U.S. defined the communist threat as the only real danger in the area; the U.S. did not want to be drawn into an alliance directed against any other sort of enemy, particularly desiring to avoid colonial conflicts. Hence, the U.S. sought to restrict the applicability of any U.S. commitment to a few specified nations especially vulnerable to communist aggression. Each of these two major U.S. qualifications — the proscriptions against land forces, and emphasis on anti-communism — created its own dilemmas, solutions to which proved to be elusive.
- (1) Force Commitment
The resource — political as well as military — the U.S. was prepared to commit to SEATO was bound to constitute its principal strength. But the U.S., with its NATO commitments already a sizeable burden, was not prepared to pay the price of a strong coalition. In no sense was the U.S. prepared to commit itself to SEATO as it had to NATO, (it is interesting that Dulles was so concerned with avoiding a public identification of SEATO with NATO that he tried to have the new treaty called "MANPAC," for "Manila Pact."25) Rather, the U.S. searched for ways in which other nations would provide troops. But few nations in 1954 possessed the capability to field an army of significance within the SEATO region.
Vice Admiral Davis noted that:
- "The United States was faced in this issue, I believe, with the dilemma of attempting to attain two objectives that were not completely compatible; on the one hand there was a desire to place the communists on notice as clearly as possible that further aggression on the area would meet with effective collective counteraction. Such unequivocal notification would tend to enhance the psychological effect of the Treaty on the Free World and the deterrent effect on the communists. Yet on the other hand, in spite of the greater psychological effect that a strongly worded Treaty might have, the attainment of this objective was necessarily limited by the extent to which the United States, in its own interest, could undertake advance military commitments under the Treaty in restriction of its freedom of action."26
While the U.S. continued to call the prospective pact "regional," a region existed only in the sense that a certain geographical area was considered to be threatened by the expansion of communism. The membership solicited for the SEATO conference was worldwide; potential force contributors were overbalanced on the European side; and even within the region itself, several countries did not desire to become participants, and others were not invited. Determined not to become enmeshed in Southeast Asia without help from Europe, the U.S. settled for a SEATO based on unspecified forces from eight nations, five of which were ethnically European — a position which apparently dismissed from consideration the disadvantages which would accrue to armies drawn from former metropole nations.
