Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- "2. ...a statement as to the readiness capability of U.S. armed forces, in the next few years, to conduct operations in implementation of Article IV, 1, of the Manila Pact."43
The U.S. forces would constitute a "mobile reserve" ready for commitment to the treaty area, but the U.S. would enter no fixed agreement as to what those forces might be, or under what circumstances they would be used. Despite this unilateral planning, however, instructions for the delegates to the Bangkok conference indicated that planning for or creation of combined commands were not to be considered within the scope of the SEATO Pact. Suppression of guerrillas was to be handled by "indigenous forces only" unless these proved incapable of coping with the problem.
At the 1955 Bangkok Conference the Australians and New Zealanders repeated their willingness to make troop commitments to a SEATO force, but the U.S. representatives, following instructions, evaded discussion of the subject.44 The pressures on the U.S. team were strong, and the members came away with the conviction that the major factor "to contend with" in future meetings was bound to be
- "...the obvious desire of the Asian nations to establish a NATO-type SEATO organization with everything that it implies in the nature of force commitments."45
Later in 1955, U.S. planners once more were approached by counterparts of several other countries with the proposal that, as a step toward some kind of SEATO standing group, a small secretariat be set up to study methods of creating a "possible future organizational structure." The report of the U.S. representatives stated, "The establishment of such an ad hoc arrangement should not prejudice the eventual creation or evolution of a standing group... should the need become necessary because of inadequacies revealed by experience."46 The JCS commented:
- "The Joint Chiefs of Staff have no objection to the establishment of a small permanent secretariat, which would be an instrument of the Military Advisers and subordinate planning committees. However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would not agree to the possible evolution of such a secretariat into an organization of a standing nature...."47
This was the same point of view expressed by CINCPAC, who noted with apparent relief that:
- "The recognition of the requirement for a small permanent secretariat has definitely forestalled for the foreseeable future any determined insistence for either a permanent staff planners organization, a standing group, or a combined staff."48
