Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- 5. U.S. Aid: SEATO
The role of the United States in the training and equipping of these forces mirrored the misapprehensions of other aspects of U.S. policy. In 1954 Secretary of State Dulles had drawn two principal lessons from the First Indochina War: (1) that it was impossible to support a belligerent in such a war unless he embodied the nationalistic aspirations of the people, and (2) collective action on behalf of that belligerent could not be drawn together amid the war.96 The first took the policy form of U.S. insistence upon a truly national army for South Vietnam, i.e., an army entirely free of French command. The second materialized as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. On 8 September 1954, the U.S., U.K. and France joined with Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand and agreed that:97
Article IV
"1. Each Party recognizes that aggression by means of armed attack in the treaty area against any of the parties or against any State or territory which the Parties by unanimous agreement may hereafter designate, would endanger its own peace and safety, and agrees that it will in that event act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes....
"2. If, in the opinion of any of the Parties, the inviolability or the integrity of the territory or the sovereignty or political independence of any Party in the treaty area or of any other State or territory to which the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article from time to time apply is threatened in any way other than armed attack or is affected or threatened by any fact or situation which might endanger the peace of the area, the Parties shall consult immediately in order to agree on the measures which should be taken for the common defense.
"3. It is understood that no action on the territory of any State designated by unanimous agreement under paragraph 1 of this Article or on any territory so designated shall be taken except at the invitation or with the consent of the government concerned...."
By a Protocol to the SEATO Treaty, executed the same day, the Parties:
"...unanimously designate for the purpose of Article IV of the Treaty the States of Cambodia and Laos and the free territory under the jurisdiction of the State of Vietnam...."
Shortly after SEATO was formed, the U.S. and France agreed on direct U.S. aid for the Diem government; a joint communique issued 29 September reflected the U.S. belief that the French would remain a military power in South Vietnam:98
