Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- Act. A similar paragraph was incorporated in the Mutual Security Act of 1953 by the Committee on Foreign Affairs and passed by the House of Representatives. This language was left out of the act as finally passed, because the committee of conference regarded the existing paragraph of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act as giving adequate expression of congressional policy."19
The U.S. moved immediately to assemble the ad hoc group Dulles had discussed with Eden, inviting representatives of some 10 nations to meet in Washington on 20 April. Two days before the meeting was to take place, the British announced they would be unable to attend. They had not realized, they said, that the meeting would take place so soon, and they had not been given the opportunity to pass on the conferees.20 The meeting was held anyway, but became a general briefing of the twenty nations comprising the allied side at the Geneva Conference.
In the meantime, other coalition plans were in the making. An early concept, the first of many to be advanced, provided a choice of two courses of action:
- "The U.S. is prepared to join actively in two regional groupings. The first such grouping will include nations ready immediately to intervene in Indochina provided certain conditions are met. The second such grouping should be defined, with wider participation, to guarantee against communist aggression or subversion of all Southeast Asia with the exception of Indochina so long as active fighting continues."21
The first of these groupings was to contain the U.S., France, the Associated States of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. The second was to be composed of "all countries who wish to join" including the Colombo Plan countries (Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Pakistan), Korea, and "perhaps" the Chinese Nationalists. The U.S. wished to avoid a "white man's party"22 in the formation of any regional group, but the powers able to contribute substantial military support to the plans were not Asian. Neither coalition materialized before Geneva.
The dramatic fall of Dien Bien Phu served notice to the world of French military impotence in Indochina. When the participants of the Indochina fighting moved to the conference table in April, 1954, the U.S., fresh from the bitter experience of Panmunjom, looked on the upcoming discussions apprehensively, fearing that the French tactical defeat presaged strategic disaster. At one time or another during the Geneva Conference, the U.S. considered: (1) merely urging the French to a greater effort, (2) assisting the French with material support in varying degrees, (3) intervening in conjunction with the British, (4) taking military action with all those prepared to do so, and (5) working out a long range Southeast Asia alliance. None of these courses of action proved practicable. Nonetheless, the outcome of the Geneva Conference did catalyze SEATO. Within the councils of the U.S. Government, the concession of half of Vietnam to the communists was considered another retreat before communist expansion.
