NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
We discussed plans for military operations in Indochina. These are being developed by the French General Navarre who has recently gone there. Our Government sent General O'Daniel to confer with him. We beleive that the new French plans are vigorous and deserve to be implemented in that spirit. The United States has a large interest in the matters because our position in the Western Pacific could be put in jeopardy if Communists were allowed to overrun the Southeast Asian peninsula of which Indochina forms a major part. We are already helping there with material aid. This involves the second largest cost item of our Mutual Security Program, participation in the NATO Army being first. I believe we should help effective resistance to Communist aggressors everywhere, and in Indochina it may save us from having to spend much more money to protect our vital interests in the Pacific.
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We also agreed that an armistice in Korea must not result in jeopardizing the restoration of peace in other parts of Asia. In this connection we thought particularly of Indochina.
As President Eisenhower said in his April 16 address, an armistice in Korea that merely released aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be a fraud. We are on our guard against that.
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2, Our program for Europe and Asia is a program for peace and for the liberty and justice which are necessary if peace is to be durable. Repression can give the illusion of peace, but it is only illusion. For sooner or later the repression becomes unbearable and human emotions explode with violance.…That is why we seek peace in Indochina on the basis of freedom and independence which the French Government now promises the peoples.
