Word: seato
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Down the Line. Before Formosa his trip had been little short of historic. The first U.S. Secretary of State to travel in continental Asia, he began by flying from the SEATO conference in Bangkok (TIME, March 7) to neutral Burma (where Premier U Nu received him with considerably more coolness than he had shown to Red China's Chou En-lai eight months before). After a day in Burma, he traded his big Constellation for a lighter C-47, so he could land in the Indo-China kingdom of Laos. Cambodia came next day; there he listened attentively...
...this power should be segregated and chopped up, and allocated to various threatened countries, there would not be enough to go around. Kept mobile, it can be shifted to any spot when required. Dulles reiterated that the U.S. regards the SEATO treaty as a clear and definite promise to come to the aid of any member who suffers aggression...
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...