NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
U. S. military aid already received In Indochina has increased the capability of the State forces and French Union forces considerably. If aid already furnished had not been supplied, those forces would not have been able to maintain their present positions. It is realized however, that American assistance is supplemental to, and does not replace the primary responsibility of the three States and of the French Republic.
Indochina Foreign Relations
The United States has continued to extend political support to the States of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Agrément has been granted for the first Cambodian Minister to the United States. The United Kingdom has sent a diplomatic representative to the three States. Vietnam. is planning to open a mission in Bangkok and has sent a minister to London. Cambodia has named a minister to Bangkok.
The three State Governments have been recognized by some 30 powers. They have been elected to membership in several UN organs such as FAO, WHO and ILO. The USSR and its satellites, including Communist China, have recognized the Ho Chi Minh movement as constituting the legal government of Vietnam, but not of Cambodia and Laos.
Although the Government of Thailand and the Republic of Korea have extended diplomatic recognition to the three Governments, the majority of the Asian states continue to be apathetic toward recognition. This attitude is based on an anti-colonial rather than a pro-Communist sentiment. The result, nevertheless, has been indirectly to encourage the Communist-directed Viet Minh forces through failure to support the legal governments. The French Government has done little in the past to publicize the progressive transfer of authority to the three States, which was completed by the end of 1950. In external affairs, the French Government has the right to be consulted on the selection of diplomatic posts, designation of Chiefs of Missions and negotiation of international agreements. The continuing presence in Indochina, however, of a French High Commissioner and some 70,000 French troops, as well as the fact that France continues to finance, to a large degree, the budget deficits of the three State Governments, may constitute in Asian eyes evidence of continued French control. A withdrawal of French financial and military support would result in rapid successes by the Viet Minh forces and the formation of Communist governments within the three States. Asian states are only slowly becoming aroused to this threat to their own independence as a result both of United States efforts to Identify it and of Chinese activities in Korea and Tibet, in addition to Indochina.
