751G.00/1–1951: Circular airgram
The Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic Offices 1
Subject: Discussion of Indochina political situation with neighboring Asian governments
The Department wishes to draw your attention again to the continuing need that you bring your influence to bear on the governments to which you are accredited concerning their policy toward the Associated States in Indochina.
Assistant Secretary Rusk’s press release of November 27th2 and other recent public declarations, including most recently the Tillman Durdin article published in the New York Times on January 15 [14], 1951,3 have served to publicize in the United States the facts concerning the autonomy recently acquired by the Associated States from France as a result of the decisions reached at Pau. Yet there has been little if any notice of the fact outside France, particularly in the Asian nations where it is most essential that the facts be known. We cannot allow the Asians to overlook the significance of recent developments because of a failure of their own and French information services to publicize them. It is our hope that, in encouraging the other Asian Governments to restudy the matter, they may even be inclined to take a realistic view and arrive at the inescapable conclusion that the Associated States are in fact autonomous even while retaining membership in a commonwealth of nations, not an unprecedented action.
If the hesitation of Asian nations, excepting Thailand, to grant recognition to the Governments of the Associated States is actually based, as has been stated, on doubts concerning the extent of sovereignty they enjoy, recent developments have entirely changed these considerations and the matter should be reviewed. As you know, for all practical purposes the last functions being administered by the French in Indochina were turned over to the local governments on January 1, 1951.
Any consideration of Indochina policy on the part of neighboring Asian States cannot be disassociated from the circumstance of the present threat of Chinese intervention and Communist domination of the Indochinese peninsula. The Department considers that recognition by other and similarly concerned, if for the moment less seriously [Page 350] threatened Asian nations, of the established governments of the Associated States would be a considerable stimulus to the anti-Communist forces there and a serious blow to the Viet Minh. The time is particularly propitious now coinciding as it would with other lesser encouragements including an increase in overall military potential, the January 1 political developments, progress in the enlargement of National Armies and the energetic, effective and benevolent administration of General de Lattre, Commander in Chief of the Franco-Vietnamese Union forces.
You are therefore instructed to seek an early opportunity to discuss this matter again with the governments to which you are accredited along lines to be developed at your discretion. You should attempt to assist the government in acknowledging the facts in the matter without giving an impression that this is a subject the United States is pursuing solely for its own interests or that we are attempting to over-influence other friendly governments in their acknowledged right to decide this and other questions on their own initiative and in their own interests which, incidentally, we believe the decision we hope will emerge from their considerations would be.
- Sent to Karachi, New Delhi, Djakarta, Rangoon, Colombo, and Manila for action; repeated to Paris and Saigon for information.↩
- See circular telegram 187, November 27, 1950, which contains the text of the press conference statement by Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, printed in Foreign Relations, 1950, vol. vi, p. 938 ff.↩
- The New York Times, January 14, 1951, p. 11, col. 1.↩