611.961/8–951
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Rusk)1
Subject: Tripartite Security Treaty and a United States–Philippines Security Agreement
| Participants: | The Australian Ambassador, Mr. Spender |
| Mr. David McNicol, First Secretary Australian Embassy | |
| FE—Mr. Rusk | |
| BNA—Mr. Shullaw |
The Australian Ambassador, Mr. Spender, in the course of a conversation with me today asked about our plans with respect to a Philippines-United States bilateral security treaty. I told Mr. Spender that we are beginning negotiations with the Philippines, and we had come to the conclusion that it might be necessary to register our commitments to the Philippines in this manner.2 I said that such an agreement would not cut across the treaty with Australia and New Zealand.
The Ambassador said that if the agreement with the Philippines turned out to be more explicit in its commitments than the treaty with Australia and New Zealand, the reaction in Australia would be very bad. I told Mr. Spender that we were not thinking of a treaty with the Philippines going beyond the terms of the tripartite agreement. The Ambassador’s comment was that he hoped the Philippines’ agreement would not go as far. He added that already opponents in Australia of the Japanese treaty were alleging that the commitments in the tripartite treaty were not sufficiently explicit. Conclusion of a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Philippines which placed the Philippines in a firmer position with respect to commitments than Australia and New Zealand, would be very disturbing to his Government and would have unfortunate domestic-political repercussions.
- Memorandum drafted on August 10 by J. Harold Shullaw, assigned to Australian affairs in the Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs.↩
- In the source text, the second sentence as originally typed began: “I told Mr. Spender that we had not yet begun negotiations with the Philippines, but”. The revision is by Mr. Rusk.↩