Word: seato
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Home from his trip to the SEATO Conference in Manila, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was feeling gloomy. In Manila he had been dismayed to see how successful the Russians were in getting their summit-meeting propaganda across to Asians. In Washington he found U.S. newspaper front pages giving solemn treatment to the old Russian proposals, which, in effect, were aimed at undermining the strong points of the free world. Dulles decided that it was high time to put on the record some reasons why the U.S. is dead set against going to a summit meeting on Russian terms...
...spread of Communism throughout the world, said Dulles in closed session, the U.S. has only a limited amount of money. This sometimes meant that funds which might have gone to friendly nations were better spent in helping uncommitted nations struggling to maintain their independence. He pointed out that the SEATO area received over $600 million in U.S. grants and loans last year...
Most acute concern was Indonesia. If the Communists capture Indonesia politically, Communism will have leapfrogged the SEATO line of defense on the Asian mainland. But Dulles was anxious to avoid any charge of SEATO interference in Indonesia's affairs. The final communique only stated pointedly that "there was particular danger arising from some non-Communist governments failing to distinguish between the aims and ideals of the free world and the purposes of international Communism...
Moscow had greeted the SEATO conferees with its standard warning to SEATO's Asian members that nuclear bases on their soil would expose them to "powerful retaliatory blows." It was a measure of SEATO's maturity, in its fourth year, that no member felt it necessary to reply...
...Britain, France, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. Cambodia, Laos and South Viet Nam are not members, but SEATO is pledged to protect them against aggression...