Office of the Historian

257. Letter From the Ambassador in Cambodia (Strom) to the Director of the Office of Southeast Asian Affairs (Young)1

Phnom Penh, August 16, 1957.

Dear Ken: In reply to your undated letter received about July 3, dealing with the paper on “United States Policy Toward Cambodia”,2 I attach the comments of the Country Team.3

As to the covering memorandum dated May 21, 1957, from Mr. McClintock to Mr. Bowie, the Country Team has not attempted to give it a detailed analysis. The Team is, however, generally in accord with the sense of the memorandum with the following qualifications:

1)
With regard to the second full paragraph on page 2, the picture of Communist penetration of the Chinese community is much too extreme. Although the situation is still bad, there had been a noticeable improvement (See the re-write of the Chinese section of the underlying paper in the attached comments).
2)
The third paragraph on page 2 may be a little too strongly worded.
3)
With regard to the sentence beginning in the third line on page 3, General Hartshorn feels that the language is too strong. Although both Vietnam and Thailand might be tempted to try to “take over” Cambodia under the circumstances described, he feels that the United States has sufficient control over their armed forces to prevent [Page 567] it. Thus the problem should not be described as a “tendency”, but as a “desire”.
4)
As to the end of the penultimate paragraph, the Team does not feel there is necessarily an “advantage” in utilizing the “inert weight”. It is more of a “possibility” which exists in the absence of better expedients.

The Team does, of course, concur in the last summary paragraph of the memorandum.

Sincerely yours,

CWS
  1. Source: Department of State, Phnom Penh Embassy Files: Lot 62 F 30, 500 Country Team. Secret; Official–Informal.↩
  2. Young’s letter is not printed; it transmitted the study on U.S. policy toward Cambodia submitted to Bowie by McClintock under cover of Document 255. The study is not printed. (Ibid.)↩
  3. Attached but not printed.↩