A Critical Appraisal of Seato

• Author: M. Ladd Thomas
• Published date: 01 December 1957
• Date: 01 December 1957
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591295701000413
• Subject Matter: Articles

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF SEATO
M. LADD THOMAS
University of Connecticut
HE
APOLOGETICS of American foreign policy have long been
moralistic; and in recent years official and public preoccupation
1 with moral formulations has become so pronounced as to alarm
some political scientists, who insist that policy should be guided by national
interest rather than by moral aphorisms.’- There well may be a danger, as
these political scientists assert, that American policy will lose all touch with
reality through its involvement in emotional phrases and attitudes. Cer-
tainly American diplomacy has already lost much of its flexibility and
capacity for adjustment by this means.
This has understandably alarmed our allies throughout the world, and
has caused unfriendly critics to suspect the United States of a Messiah
complex. He who said, &dquo;I have not come to bring peace, but a sword&dquo; also
said, &dquo;He who is not with me is against me&dquo;; and the neutralist nations of
the world - such as India, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon - fear that these
scriptural passages exhaustively describe American foreign policy.
The American preoccupation with moral polarities makes it impossible
for Americans to understand the conduct of foreign states which stubbornly
persist in shaping their own policies in terms of their own values. Nations
which refuse to stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord must have
evil motivations; they should be coerced into righteousness or driven into
exile - into the Sino-Soviet bloc, that is. Of course the effect of such a
policy, which has been more than once advocated by influential American
1
Typical of this school of thought is Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National
Interest (New York: Knopf, 1951), p. 3. "The intoxication with moral abstractions,
which as a mass phenomenon started with the Spanish-American War and which in
our time has become the prevailing substitute for political thought, is indeed one of
the great sources of weakness and failure in American foreign policy." As opposed
to this see F. S. C. Northrup, The Taming of
the Nations (New York: Macmillan,
1952), p. 304. "The time has come, therefore, for the people of this country and
their leaders to think at least as well of themselves as the majority of leaders and
people of the rest of the world do. There is but one way to do this. It is to make
the ideals for society and the world community for which the majority of people of
the United States stand the sole factor determining her foreign policy and to make
everything else secondary to this." A middle position is taken by Henry A. Kissinger,
Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 263-64. "By
word and deed we must demonstrate that the inexorable element of international
relations resides in the necessity to combine principle with power, that an exclusive
reliance on moral pronouncements may be as irresponsible as the attempt to conduct
policy on the basis of power alone. To be sure we should, wherever possible, seek
to identify ourselves with the aspirations of the newly independent states. But we
must also be prepared to protect the framework in which these aspirations can be
accomplished. We should never give up our principles nor ask other nations to
surrender theirs. But we must also realize that neither we nor our allies nor the
uncommitted can realize any principles unless they survive."
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statesmen,2 would be to alter the national interest of the neutralist states;
but there is no certainty that the &dquo;agonizing reappraisal&dquo; of national interest
which they would perforce undertake would be favorable to American
policy.
Much more intelligent, surely, would be a calm recognition that some
states are unwilling to join in a great crusade of liberation; that they are
determined to pursue their own national interest rather than the moral
goals of the United States. The next step would be to examine that
national interest and determine how far it coincides with feasible American
objectives. And, in the end, it might prove to be the course of wisdom,
when the national interest of a neutralist state fails to coincide with one
or another concrete American objective, to accept a certain friction as the
price of a greater goad.3
3
Whether or not American policy is motivated by moral considerations,
great care should be exercised in pursuing it in such a way as not to affect
adversely the national interest of neutralist states. And, finally, American
policy-makers must at all costs avoid giving the impression that they com-
pletely disregard the national interest of the states in the area affected by
American policy. Unfortunately our policy with respect to SEATO has
violated all of these rules of common sense.
From the very beginning, when the negotiations leading to the Japanese
security treaty and to the series of separate security pacts with Australia,
New Zealand, and the Philippines were initiated in 1950, American policy
aimed at eventually creating a more comprehensive system of regional
security in the Pacific area.4 But the United States wished to stay in the
2
Secretary Dulles has stated that neutrality is "an immoral and shortsighted conception."
New York Times, June 10, 1956, p. 1; and according to Senator Styles Bridges, rank-
ing minority member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, American aid to
countries such as India not wholeheartedly on our side in the cold war should be
denied or restricted. New York Times, September 14, 1955, p. 16. Such condem-
nation and action as the Senator recommended could force neutralist states with
underdeveloped economies into the communist orbit. In contrast note the more
astute public statements by Russian leaders, even though Russia undoubtedly would
prefer these countries as allies, rather than neutrals. For example, Premier Bulganin
has praised Afghanistan for "unswervingly adhering to a policy of neutrality." New
York Times, December 16, 1955, p. 2.
3
Robert A. Scalapino, "Neutralism in Asia," American Political Science Review, XLVIII
(1954), 61. See Collective Defense in Southeast Asia, Report by a Chatham House
Study Group (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1956), p. 11. "But to
say that the West could not possibly accept the domination of the area [Southeast
Asia] by the Communist Powers is not to say that the allegiance of the area must
be given to the West. The real Western interest is that the countries of this area
should be prosperous and self-reliant. It would of course be highly satisfactory if the
countries of the area decided of their own free will to support the West, but it is
not essential, and any attempt to gain such support would be positively dangerous if
it weakened the ability of these countries in any way to resist the blandishments
of Communism."
4
See U.S. Congress, The Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, Report of the Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., on Executive K,
January 25, 1955 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 2.

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928
background and allow the regional security arrangement to appear as truly
Asian-inspired and -led, and the few statesmen in the area who corn-
manded respect were unwilling to take the initiative. At this point the
idea might well have been abandoned except for the sudden worsening of
the situation in Indochina, which further stimulated the American desire
for a united front in Southeast Asia. That theme was reiterated by Secre-
tary Dulles in his address of March 29, 1954.5
In March and April of 1954, as communist military pressure built up
to the climax at Dienbienphu, the State Department urged upon states in
Southeast Asia a measure of unity in order to strengthen the negotiating
position of the free nations during the Indochina phase of the...