0 - The Black Vault

jTHE BDM CORPORATION
B. PHASED ASSESSMENT OF US FOREIGN POLICY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
L.I Historical Antecedents
Ambivalence and uncertainty characterized US
foreign policy with
respect to Southeast Asia during World War II, On the one hand, the US
repeatedly assured France that its coIonial possessions would be returned
to it after the war, On the other hand, the US committed itself in the
Atlantic Charter to support national self-determination, and President
Roosevelt personally advocated independence for Indochina by expressing a
desire to place it under U.N. trusteeship after the war. Ultimately, US
policy was governed neither by the principles of the Atlantic Charter, nor
by FDR's anticolonialism, but by the dictates of military strategy which
focused US war effort in the Pacific on the defeat of the Japanese homeland.
Indochina was not perceived as "vital" to US interests in that part
of the world. Notwithstanding FOR's lip service on the subject, for all
practical purposes there was no US policy toward Southeast Asia when Harry
S. Truman became president following Roosevelt's death in 1945.
2. Phase 1: 1945 to 1961
After WWII, the US acquiesced to the reestablishment of French
colonial rule in Vietnam,
and in so doing, embarked on a passive policy of
noninvolvement, At the time, Indochina appeared to be one region in the
troubled postwar world in which the US might enjoy the luxury of abstention,
but events in Europe and China changed the context from mid-1947 on.
A worldwide US policy evolved--containment of spreading c-..mmunism. In
keeping with that policy, President Truman, after much hesitation, decided
that anticommunism was more important than anticolonialism in Indochina,
F As a result, direct US involvement in Southeast Asian affairs was formaily
launched when Secretary of State Acheson announced in May 1950 that the US
would provide military and economic assistance to the French and their
Indochinese allies for the purpose of combating communist expansion.
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