327. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Thailand1
63401. 1. Following is report of main points of bilateral discussion October 10 between Secretary and Minister Pote Sarasin held prior to Secretaryʼs luncheon for Pote. They are uncleared, FYI only, Noforn, subject to revision upon review.
2. Pote said Fulbright was such a well-known name in Thailand because of the Fulbright Scholarships and his Chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee that his statements about Thailand took on special importance. He felt strongly that the President or the Secretary should during their visit to Bangkok make a statement explicitly divorcing the US Government from the Fulbright position on Thailand. Secretary said he thought Manila conference and Presidentʼs visit to Thailand would be facts which would make this completely clear. Pote agreed but said they badly need something on the record directly addressed to the point. Secretary cautioned that such a statement might simply build up the importance of original Fulbright statements and could result in his making new ones. Pote said he hoped some formula could be worked out which made it clear that, while the Senator was of course entitled to hold dissenting views, the US Government did not share them. The Secretary said we would think about possible ways to deal with this one.
3. Pote asked why Fulbright had singled Thailand out. The Secretary said that Fulbright was a born dissenter, and that his remarks on Thailand should be viewed as part of his general objection to our Vietnam policy.
4. Pote then turned to question of some restatement of our commitment. Such restatement should a) note that Thailand would continue to provide facilities and support to meet aggression, and that while this entailed some additional risks for Thailand of a Chinese Communist attack, the US would in that case come to Thailandʼs support, and b) make it clear that the commitment would apply even in the unlikely event of a change some years hence to an administration which wanted to pull out of Southeast Asia. He said no treaty or formal agreement was needed, but some written reassurance was.
5. The Secretary said he wished to be very frank on two points. First, he said he simply could not understand how anyone could question the American commitment when we had not failed to fill any commitment [Page 716] since 1945 and when we are suffering 100 casualties per week in Southeast Asia and had suffered 180 thousand casualties keeping commitments since the end of World War II. Secondly, he said that the Thai should not try to use an international instrument to solve a US domestic problem. They should leave that to us.
6. The Secretary then said that the SEATO Treaty and the joint resolution of August 1964 said more than any document which we could possibly add to the record at this time. He emphasized that the Treaty commitment was a national commitment, entered into by the Eisenhower administration and observed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. With reference to the SEATO Treaty, Pote mentioned the difference between the commitment it contained and that in the NATO Treaty. The Secretary said that as Secretary Dulles had explained at the time the SEATO Treaty was ratified, the practical difference between these formulas was not substantial. Pote said that the SEATO Treaty did not require an automatic US reaction. The Secretary observed that the Thai, because of positions taken by the French and others, had sometimes shown a tendency to downgrade SEATO. He said this was a serious mistake since SEATO provides the Constitutional basis for what we are doing in Southeast Asia today. He said the undermining of SEATOʼs standing had been done by the Thai, not the US.
7. On the question of committing a successor government, the Secretary said that it was not possible to deal with this problem with a piece of paper, that if a successor government either in Thailand or in the United States took a different view of the situation, the paper would have no effect. Pote did not dispute this but continued to argue that if a future administration were to leave Thailand in the lurch the leadership of Thailand wanted to be sure that it could show it had done everything possible to commit the US to its defense. He said that unless this unlikely event transpired, the reiteration of the commitment need not ever be made public.
8. The Secretary said he was not saying “no” to Pote, but he did want to be sure that Pote understood all the implications of such a statement which could be regarded as certifying lack of confidence. Pote said there was absolutely no question about Thai confidence in the present administration. He felt that since the increased risks entailed by permitting US planes to use Thai bases had led to concern in Thailand that the US should be prepared to reiterate the commitment. He emphasized that no addition to the commitment was needed—merely a reiteration.
9. The Secretary asked whether the concern in Thailand would decrease if we reduced the level of our forces there. Pote said “no”, that on the contrary the more we have there the more secure they felt.
10. The Secretary concluded by saying that he understood Poteʼs point of view, that we would think about it further, but he wanted to be [Page 717] completely certain that we did not take an action showing lack of confidence. Pote said he understood and that he would regard the conversation as completely confidential between himself and the Secretary.
11. Conversation, while somewhat intense, was friendly and cordial throughout, as was luncheon which followed.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 7 THAI. Secret; Immediate; Exdis. Drafted by Pickering and approved by Bundy. Bundy prepared a briefing memorandum for Rusk for this meeting with Pote Sarasin, October 10. (Ibid., POL THAI–US)↩