Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
that could lead any of the Allies to expect a satisfactory outcome. Yet, the alternative which the U.S. had kept open no longer seemed viable either. As Dulles told Smith, any "final agreement" with the French would be "quite impossible," for Paris was moving farther than ever from a determination that united action was necessary. "They want, and in effect have, an option on our intervention," Dulles wrote, "but they do not want to exercise it and the date of expiry of our option is fast running out."30 From Paris, in fact, Ambassador Dillon urged the Secretary that "the time limit be now" on U.S. intervention."31 And Dulles was fast concluding that Dillon was correct.
- c. Dulles Withdraws Option
In view of France's feeling that, because of strong Assembly pressure for a settlement, no request could be made of the U.S. until every effort to reach agreement at Geneva had been exhausted,32 Dulles in effect decided on 15 June that united action was no longer tenable. In a conversation with Bonnet, in which the Ambassador read a message from Bidault which indicated that the French no longer considered the U.S. bound to intervention on satisfaction of the seven conditions, the Secretary again put forth the difficulty of the American position. He stated that the U.S. stood willing to respond to a French request under the conditions of 11 May, but that time and circumstance might make future U.S. intervention "impracticable or so burdensome as to be out of proportion to the results obtainable." While this standpoint would be unsatisfactory to Bidault, especially in his dealings with the communists at Geneva, Dulles "could not conceive that it would be expected that the U.S. would, give a third power the option to put it into war at times and under conditions wholly of the other's choosing."33 United action was, then, not removed from consideration at a later date; but it was shelved, and it never appeared again in the form and with the purpose originally proposed.
- d. U.S. Turns to Studies with U.K. on Intervention
During this period of a gradual "break" with France on united action, the alternative for the United States became a collective defense arrangement with British participation. Once again, U.S. hopes shifted to London, particularly when Eden, on 9 June, told Smith of his extreme pessimism over the course of the negotiations. Smith drew from the conversation the strong impression that Eden believed negotiations to have failed, and would now follow the U.S. lead on a coalition to guarantee Cambodia and Laos "under umbrella of some UN action" (Smith's words). Whether the U.S. and U.K. would act prior to or after a likely settlement at Geneva by the desperate French became the major area of inquiry.34
- e. United Action Option Has Come Full Cycle
The rebirth and demise of united action was a rare case of history repeated almost immediately after it had been made. The
