Word: seato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Enmities & Dislikes. In the beginning, SEATO was billed as a bold plan to do for Asia what NATO did for Europe. But the sense of shared urgency is not the same; and non-Communist Asia is divided by ancient enmities and current dislikes. Before Asia's non-Communist powers can be rallied together, they must first be persuaded to sit down together. The neutralists are by definition unwilling to join a bloc. Nehru does not want to become a partner with Chiang Kai-shek or Syngman Rhee, and the feeling is mutual. Rhee is not keen to sup with...
...SEATO reflects America's dreamy postwar passion for grand coalitions, which actually have less to recommend them than the old-fashioned diplomacy-which consisted of particular arrangements for precise ends. It is State Department doctrine to talk of SEATO as an assemblage of like-minded nations, which will be broadened (it is always hoped) to include other nations later on. But a grand flotilla of allies must travel at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. The old-fashioned solution would be to make hard-and-fast arrangements-separately or in small groupings-with Syngman Rhee, with...
...result of the Geneva settlement, the Communist frontier "might soon be on the southern shores of Indo-China," said Menzies. His answer: Australia will back a Southeast Asian treaty (SEATO) "with arms, with men, with ships and instruments of war, with supplies." And he would be willing to send Aussie troops up closer to the frontier, probably to Malaya. "With all the good will in the world," he said, "and with the most heartfelt desire to make an end of war, we must be ready to meet it if it comes...
Responses last week to an Anglo-American invitation to attend a preliminary SEATO conference (probably at Baguio, the Philippine summer capital) some time early next month...
Obviously glum about the defeat in Indo-China, John Foster Dulles looked into the future and thought that he saw a silver lining in SEATO. Said he: "If the free nations which have a stake in this area will now work together to avail of present opportunities in the light of past experience, then the loss of the present may lead to the gain of the future...