Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

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On 8 September 1954, the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan signed the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty in Manila. Sometimes referred to as the Manila Pact, this agreement created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The Eisenhower administration and especially Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had worked to establish this loose alliance after the Geneva Agreement on Indochina ended the French war in Southeast Asia in 1954. Under the prevailing strategy of containment, Dulles envisioned SEATO as a “no trespassing” sign warning Beijing and Moscow not to threaten Southeast Asia. Also, congressional leaders had opposed unilateral U.S. military assistance to France during the siege of Dienbienphu in Vietnam in the spring of 1954. With SEATO, Dulles believed, Congress would support the use of U.S. military forces in any future crisis in Southeast Asia.

Unlike NATO in Europe, SEATO did not create its own military structure, nor did it obligate its members to respond if one was attacked. In the event of aggression or subversion in the treaty area, the signatories were to consult and to meet the common danger in accordance with their own constitutional processes. South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia could not be members because of prohibitions in the Geneva Agreements, but those Indochinese states could request SEATO protection under a separate protocol to the treaty. India, Burma, and Indonesia preferred to maintain a neutral stance toward China and the USSR and declined to join SEATO.

Despite the purposefully vague wording of the SEATO charter, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed in 1965 that SEATO allowed and even required the build‐up of U.S. forces in South Vietnam. However, only Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand among the SEATO nations joined the United States in sending combat troops to the Vietnam War. Pakistan withdrew from the alliance in 1972. After the Democratic Republic of Vietnam prevailed in the Vietnam War, SEATO dissolved completely in 1977.

Bibliography

• David L. Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–1961, 1991

A treaty for the defense of Southeast Asia, formed by Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Pakistan, established by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, which was signed in Manila on September 8, 1954. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles initiated the organization to protect Southeast Asia against communist aggression after the Geneva Agreement on Indochina in 1954 ended the war there. It relied on the military forces if its member states to provide protection. It existed between 1955-77. A protocol later extended the treaty's protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Outcome of treaty signed in 1954 by Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States, with the aim of discouraging communist expansion in south-east Asia.

Disagreement among members over the conduct of the Vietnam War meant a limited role for SEATO, which failed to contain communist insurgency in Vietnam or Cambodia. SEATO was formally disbanded in 1977.

The signing of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty in Manila on 8 September 1954 by the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines led to the establishment of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in February 1955. The Republic of Vietnam as well as Cambodia and Laos were accorded observer status. But the governments of Burma, Ceylon, India, and Indonesia all rebuffed invitations to be signatories to the Manila Pact, as the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty was known. SEATO was established primarily at Washington's instigation in the aftermath of the French military defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnamin April 1954. It was part of an emerging global U.S. led containment strategy directed at the Soviet Union and "international communism" generally and, in the case of Southeast Asia, at the People's Republic of China and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) specifically. It was hoped that SEATO would strengthen the diplomatic and territorial arrangements in Vietnam that had resulted from the Geneva Conference in 1954.

The main significance of SEATO may have been that it formalized the U.S. commitment to Southeast Asia, at a time when the administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1960) had embarked on an increasingly costly attempt to help turn the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) into a stable noncommunist nation-state under Ngo Dinh Diem (1954–1963). U.S. foreign policy was increasingly constrained by the limits on its military effort to win the war in Vietnam, and SEATO reflected these limits, particularly Washington's inability to gain more widespread multilateral support. Although the United States and three other member governments of SEATO (Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand) sent troops to Vietnam (as did the nonmember government of South Korea), the organization itself played no real role in the conflict.

SEATO was seriously disabled from the outset by internal differences and the lack of an underlying strategic interest around which its member governments could coalesce. The governments of member countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan were as concerned about military threats from other powers in the region as they were about the Soviet Union and China. For example, Pakistan's commitment to SEATO faded in the 1960s because of the organization's unwillingness to support the government in Karachi in its conflict with the Indian government that led to war between the two countries in 1965. Pakistan announced that it was withdrawing from SEATO in November 1972, a year after the second war between Pakistan and India in December 1971 had led to military defeat for Pakistan and the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh.

The French government, meanwhile, boycotted a key 1965 SEATO meeting at which the U.S. wanted member governments to commit to increases in aid and support for the government of South Vietnam. From the beginning of the 1960s the British government was also reluctant to make a military commitment to the looming conflagration in Indochina. Following what was seen as tepid British military support for a U.S.-led effort to counter an apparent threat to northern Thailand by Laotian communist forces in 1962, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives expressed the view that, unless the British (and the French) governments were more forthcoming, the Manila Pact needed to be rewritten if not terminated. By 1967 Britain was attempting to disengage completely from military affairs east of Suez. SEATO was further undermined in early 1972 when the administration of Richard M. Nixon (1969–1974) embarked on its historic rapprochement with China. In February 1974 SEATO's military structures were abolished, and in June 1977 the organization was disbanded. The treaty on which SEATO was based was not discarded, however, because it represented the only formal security agreement between the government of Thailand and the United States of America.

Bibliography

Buszynski, Leszek. SEATO: The Failure of an Alliance Strategy. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983.

McMahon, Robert J. The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia Since World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was an alliance organized pursuant to the Southeast Asia Defense Treaty to oppose the growing communist influence in Southeast Asia. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan signed the treaty and accompanying Pacific Charter in Manila on September 8, 1954. The treaty became operative in February 1955 and bound the signatories to mutual aid to resist armed attack or subversion; an armed attack on one signatory was interpreted as a danger to all.

Headquartered in Bangkok, SEATO relied on the military forces of member nations rather than commanding its own standing forces, as did the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In its first few years of operation, SEATO's effectiveness was not tested, but at the beginning of the 1960s, conflicts in South Vietnam and Laos challenged the strength of the alliance and ultimately found it lacking. France withdrew from military cooperation in SEATO in 1967, and Great Britain refused active military cooperation in the Vietnam conflict. Moreover, a 1960s dispute between Pakistan and India further undermined the efficacy of the alliance: Pakistan drew closer to communist China, while the United States provided aid to India.

In 1972 Pakistan completely withdrew from the alliance; in 1974 France suspended its membership payments. In September 1975 the signatories decided to phase out the operations, and SEATO was formally dissolved on June 30, 1977. The collective defense treaty remains in effect, however.

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Southeast Asia Treaty Organization International organization 1954–1977 Flag SEATO founding members are highlighted in purple Capital Bangkok, Thailand¹ Political structure International organization Historical era Cold War  - Treaty 8 September 1954  - Dissolved 30 June 1977 ¹ Headquarters were in Bangkok, Thailand

The leaders of some of the SEATO nations in front of the Congress Building in Manila, hosted by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos on October 24, 1966.

SEATO Conference in Manila.

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was an international organization for collective defense which was signed on September 8, 1954. The formal institution of SEATO was established at a meeting of treaty partners in Bangkok in February 1955.^[1] It was primarily created to block further communist gains in Southeast Asia. The organization's headquarters were located in Bangkok, Thailand. SEATO was dissolved on June 30, 1977.

Contents 1 Members 2 Dialogue Partners 3 History 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Members

•  Australia
•  Bangladesh
•  France
•  New Zealand
•  Pakistan
•  Philippines
•  Thailand
•  United Kingdom
•  United States

Dialogue Partners

•  South Korea
•  South Vietnam

History

SEATO was planned to be a Southeast Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in which the military forces of each member would be coordinated to provide for the collective defense of the members. SEATO did use portions of the military forces of its members in annual joint training maneuvers.

The membership of SEATO reflected a mid-1950s' combination of "out of area" powers and "in area" pro-Western nations. France, the United Kingdom, and the United States represented the strongest Western powers. Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Zealand represented Europeanized or pro-Western nations in the Southeast Asian area.

Pakistan was included not only because East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was geographically close to Southeast Asia, but possibly because Pakistan was a member of the pro-Western Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) alliance. Thus the pro-Western, anti-communist military alliances of the Mid-east and Southeast Asia were linked by the membership of Pakistan in both.

Despite being intended to provide a collective, anti-communist shield to Southeast Asia, SEATO was unable to intervene in the conflicts in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam because an intervention required a decision of unanimity, which was never reached; France and the Philippines objected. Intervention in the Vietnam conflict was sought again later, but France and Pakistan withheld support.

Unlike the NATO alliance, SEATO had no joint commands with standing forces. Also unlike NATO, an attack on one member was not automatically considered an attack on all. Consequently, each member could effectively block any or all collective SEATO action. Given the declining interest of France (after 1954) and the United Kingdom (after the end of the Indonesian-Malaysian conflict, in 1966) in Southeast Asia, SEATO failed to be effective as a collective security organization.

Because of the 1954 Accords settling the First Indochina War, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were not SEATO members. The United States sought, but failed, to make the Vietnam War into a SEATO collective defense problem.

Consequently, questions of dissolving the organization arose as early as 1973. Pakistan withdrew on November 7, 1973. and France withdrew on June 30, 1974. The organization formally ended in 1977.

Organizationally, SEATO was headed by the Secretary-General, with a council of representatives from member nations and an international staff. In addition to joint military training, the organization did some work on mutual social and economic issues.

SEATO was created as part of the Truman Doctrine of creating anti-communist bilateral and collective defense treaties. These treaties and agreements were intended to create alliances that would contain communist power. This policy was considered to have been largely developed by American diplomat and Soviet expert George F. Kennan. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1953-1959) was the primary force behind the creation of SEATO, which expanded the concept of anti-communist collective defense to Southeast Asia.

See also

A U.S. Postage Stamp for SEATO.

• ANZUS
• ASEAN
• Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)
• NATO
• North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
• Organization of American States (OAS)

References

1. ^ Wah Kin Chin, Suryadinata Leo. Michael, Leifer Selected Works on Southeast Asia.

• Kai Dreisbach : USA und ASEAN. Amerikanische Aussenpolitik und regionale Kooperation in Südostasien vom Vietnamkrieg bis zur Asienkrise, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-88476-656-2 (German)

External links

• Copy of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (Manila Pact); September 8, 1954, from Yale Law School

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