Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
Secretary of State Dulles publicly drew two lessons from Geneva: (1) that popular support was essential to combat communist subversion, and (2) collective defense against aggression could not be devised after the aggression was in progress.23 He went on to assert that a collective security system in Southeast Asia could in the future check both outright aggression and subversion. The U.S. moved promptly to convene an international conference at Manila in late summer, 1954, to devise such a security system.
- h. Manila Conference, 1954
The outlook at Manila, however, tended to be more retrospective than futuristic. Vice Admiral A. C. Davis, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (ISA) and chief DOD representative in the U.S. delegation observed in his report that:
- "...the Manila Conference convened, following communist military achievements in Indochina and political and psychological successes at Geneva. Against this background the effort of the Manila Conference to construct a collective defense arrangement for Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific was directed in large measure to recovering from the psychological blow thus administered to the Free World. Much of what was said at the Conference bore witness to the preeminence of psychological objectives in the thinking of the participating States. In a real sense, the Treaty that emerged at Manila is a response to the Geneva Agreements."24
The task facing the conferees was formidable compared with that Atlantic planners had faced six years earlier. The Geneva reverse provided a small basis for common action. NATO had been created in a relatively uncomplicated political situation, in an atmosphere of understanding and common need, to meet an unambiguous threat. Moreover, the North Atlantic nations could build collective defense on an infrastructure of shared culture, political ideals, and interdependent economies. Commitments of the member nations could be clarified to stipulate standing forces, command structures, and roles in planning. The nations at Manila, on the other hand, confronted a complex of dilemmas. Anti-communism was no unifying force. Throughout the region, potential communist aggressors were likely to adopt causes of anti-colonialism, anti-traditionalism, racism, religion, or irredentism. Moreover, the conferees represented disparate cultures in countries scattered across the world. Of the eight nations present, only two were Asian; several nations whose location made them logical candidates for an Asian coalition chose not to attend.
The U.S. representatives at the Manila Conference in September, 1954, arrived with instructions to insist on a number of preconditions for U.S. military action in Southeast Asia. First, with its commitments in Europe, the U.S. would refuse to act unilaterally in Asia; further, any such action would have to involve not only Asian nations, but also major European partners. Moreover, the U.S. would not be prepared to commit ground troops into combat in Asia; other nations would do the ground
