Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
earned their confidence and respect. He was clearly viewed as a moderating element who could be counted on (as Chou put it) to influence the U.S. away from rash actions such as might subvert the Conference. Eden's conduct, therefore, served as a barometer to the Communists of the prospects for Western agreement to a settlement. When the British agreed to participate in five-power military staff talks in Washington (3–9 June), and when Eden and Churchill flew to Washington in late June for talks with Dulles and Eisenhower, the communists may have believed that the U.K. was undergoing some kind of reassessment of its attitude toward U.S. proposals for a Southeast Asia coalition. The implicit warning of U.K. participation in a "united action" approach which it had previously rebuffed, whether or not the actual intention of the British leaders, could not have been missed in Moscow and Peking.
- 2. U.S. Pushes for a Regional Pact
- a. Communists Appear Intransigent
By mid-June there seemed to be little reason to expect that the Geneva Conference, even if it reconvened in July, would see any significant breakthroughs from the communist side. Inasmuch as the French had decided, under a new government committed to a settlement by 20 July, to continue their "underground" military discussions with the Viet Minh, U.S. diplomatic efforts concentrated on pushing the British to agree to a treaty system for Southeast Asia that would, in effect, guarantee the security of those areas left in non-Communist hands following a settlement. On 14 June, Dulles observed that events at Geneva apparently had "been such as to satisfy the British insistence that they did not want to discuss collective action until either Geneva was over or at least the results of Geneva were known." Dulles assumed that the departure of Eden was "evidence that there was no adequate reason for further delaying collective talks on Southeast Asia defense."4
- b. French Increasingly Interested in Partition
While plans were being laid to press ahead with a regional coalition, important developments occurred at the Conference. Partition, which the communist side had introduced in late May as a compromise formula, was being given serious attention by the French. Informed of this by Smith, Dulles reiterated the view that the U.S. could not possibly associate itself with a sell-out of the Delta any more than we could be expected (as Jean Chauvel had urged) to "sell" partition to the non-Communist Vietnamese.5
- c. Two New Factors Enhance Partition
Two qualifications to the partition concept cropped up in the same period. A five-power military staff conference in Washington (U.S., U.K., France, Australia, and New Zealand) had ended 9 June with
