Word: seato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Despite Soviet temptations and threats, the representatives at Bonn voted decisively to put their trust in and join their forces (50 million people and eventually twelve divisions) with the and-Communist Western powers. At Bangkok the SEATO nations set up permanent headquarters for the defense of Southeast Asia, and U.S. policies were advanced with skill and success. For the affirmative decision at Bonn, the U.S. could congratulate itself on having a rocklike friend in Der Alte, Western Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. For the common consent achieved at Bangkok, the U.S. thanks the (literally) shirtsleeve diplomacy practiced by Secretary...
While Siamese sparrows cheeped in the louvers and winged overhead among the gilded arabesques, statesmen from eight nations sat down in Bangkok's Ananda Samakom palace last week and, in the words of John Foster Dulles, set about making SEATO "a going, living thing." The nervous little states that have already felt the fiery breath of the Chinese dragon listened intently. "SEATO must convince us that we will really be defended," said Laos' Premier Katay Sasorith. "Unless we are so convinced, we must succumb...
Intertwined Fates. Quickly Dulles made clear that the U.S. sees the defense of the SEATO area as only a part of the defense of the whole Pacific. Thailand's Premier Phibun Songgram, pointing out nervously that 20,000 "Free Thai" troops were mobilized across the Chinese border, wanted the U.S. to put troops right in Thailand where everybody could see them. The Communist threat, Dulles replied, is not a local problem but a coordinated assault on the free world by a unified power controlling 800 million people. No nation could keep enough power within its borders to combat that...
Thus, in Dulles' view, the safety of Southeast Asia depends not only on SEATO, but also on the intertwined fate of such non-SEATO countries as Japan, South Korea and Formosa. If Japan's industrial power were allied to Communist China, the free world's position in all Asia would become precarious. The chief deterrent to Chinese aggression in Southeast Asia, he went on, is the Communist fear that such an attack would bring counterattacks from South Korea on the north and Formosa in the center. When the U.S. helps maintain an army of 20 divisions...
...colorful capital was in an unaccustomed fever of activity. On every side, under a blazing tropical sun, builders, bricklayers, tile setters, linemen, street sweepers and landscape gardeners were laboring, at a cost of perhaps $2,000,000, to ready their city for the arrival of the great men of SEATO (see above). The government of soft-spoken Strongman Marshal Phi-bun Songram, warm advocate of the West, hoped that the new treaty organization might even choose Bangkok as its permanent home...