Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, East Asian Security; Cambodia; Laos, Volume XXI

41. Letter From the Counselor of the Department of State (MacArthur) to the Ambassador in Thailand (Peurifoy)¹

Washington, April 6, 1955.

Dear Jack: For your own very private information, but not for any action by you at this time, I am enclosing copies of memoranda of conversation² which will familiarize you with a problem raised by the Australians during the recent visit of Prime Minister Menzies. At their request, we are letting only a very few people know about this problem, and we would appreciate it if you would limit knowledge of it to yourself and only your closest advisers who absolutely need to know about it.

This is a question to which there is no easy answer, and, as Livie Merchant said to Arthur Tange, it is similar to some which have turned up in NATO and which could easily be solved in time of emergency or war, but are very difficult to solve in peacetime. While we have not yet given the problem thorough study within the Department, and will need to consider it with Defense, we doubt at the moment the feasibility of any immediate political approach as a means to obtaining the assurance which the Australians are seeking. Obviously, the possibilities suggested by the Australians have serious drawbacks in that they could lay the Manila Pact countries open to further barrages of Communist propaganda to the effect that the Manila Pact is nothing more than a screen designed to allow Western white imperialists to take over Asian territory. But, much more serious in our view is the possibility that it would create the impression in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia that the Western Manila Pact members do not intend to defend more than the colonial area of Malaya.

We are inclined to think that while this problem is not one which is readily solvable, one possible approach lies in the area of military planning and military arrangements which, in the first instance, would be military rather than political. For example, the development of logistics requirements, line of communications requirements, or some similar military requirement which might enable continuing and free access by military forces from Malaya to Thailand and which would, in effect, provide a de facto situation allowing forces to move in the event of an impending Communist takeover in Thailand. But, even this approach could be politically dangerous if it were put forth in the very early stages of military planning, as it would tend to emphasize plans for the defense of Malaya at the expense of Thailand and the rest of the area. At some later stage in military planning, it might be quite logical. We had a somewhat similar planning problem in NATO regarding a defense of the Pyrenees on the assumption of a Soviet break-through. We dealt with this in a satisfactory manner as part of the necessary planning, but only after some months during the course of which we had first developed plans for a defense of the NATO territory itself to the north and east in terms of “forward strategy”.

It might also be possible that the very close arrangements now existing at the Police level between Thailand and Malaya could be developed in a manner to allow movement of military forces back and forth.

This is all in the realm of very preliminary thinking thus far, and we will not be able to determine the feasibility of any such approach until we have explored the problem thoroughly with the Department of Defense.³

Sincerely,

Doug

1. Source: Department of State, Bangkok Embassy Files: Lot 59 F 45, Defense of Malaya. Top Secret.
2. Document 36 and supra.
3. In his reply of April 21, Peurifoy stated in part: “It has been quite evident to me that the handicaps from which the British suffer in this area generally have been aggravated here by the lively suspicion of the Thais that British influence in Thailand centers largely on the role of Thailand as a buffer for Malaya. I am certain that the Thais would be extremely sensitive to any proposals which they might interpret as demonstrating a greater concern for Malaya than for Thailand itself. For this reason, the caution with which you have recommended approaching this problem is, in my opinion, extremely well founded.” (Department of State, Bangkok Embassy Files: Lot 59 F 45, Defense of Malaya)