IV MANILA AND THE END OF FRENCH INDOCHINA

IV

MANILA AND THE END OF FRENCH INDOCHINA

Lucien Colin, Consul General in Tianjin before WWII and former Ambassador to Panama, succeeded Willoquet in April 194980 as French Plenipotentiary to Manila. Due to the victory of the Communist Party in China in the latter part of the year, and the extension of Viet Minh activism far beyond Vietnam borders, Peninsular Southeast Asia now became directly under communist threat. The Hukbalahaps (or Huks, a Communist guerrilla movement formed by the peasant farmers of Central Luzon), managed to still be active beyond the liberation of the Philippines from the Japanese, but were constrained to stay in the hilly parts of Luzon because of the American military bases and special forces.

However, communist pressure in the region increased in June 1950 when troops of North Korea and the People’s Republic of China invaded South Korea, marking the first bipolar military confrontation of the Cold War. The Philippines sent 7,420 men to Korea (the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea or PEFTOK), losing 116 soldiers while 299 were wounded between the years 1950 to 1953.81 France sent 3,421 men, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Monclar aka WWII 4-star General Monclar.82 Though the Philippines and France shared a common agenda in the Korean War—as reported for the Philippines in 1950 by the talented 18-year- old journalist Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino83 — the Philippines persisted in refusing any diplomatic recognition of the Associated States of Indochina.

On the other hand, the Philippines remained attached to the Western block, especially as on 30 August 1951, it signed a mutual defense treaty with the United States. To sum up, Lucien Colin’s posting in Manila was a happy but difficult one, aggravated by the multiple claims over the Spratly Islands that had started to surface which included a potential claimant still under the tutelage of France, Vietnam.

By the time Jean Brionval presented his credentials to President Magsaysay in September 1953, French Indochina was already falling apart. Negotiations had started in Geneva in April 1954

officially to discuss the issue of the Korean peninsula which had been divided into two parts since the Panmunjom armistice of July 1953. During the same time, in the same building, the negotiations on the future of Indochina were likewise conducted. The fall of Ðiện Biên Phu a month after the beginning of the negotiations marked a turning point in Southeast Asian affairs. Following the French defeat and the Geneva Agreement on Indochina on July 21, Vietnam was divided into two parts, North and South. As the Philippines partly faced North Vietnam, it was from then on potentially under communist threat.

Due to the significant increase in communist pressure in the region, the United States stipulated that the mutual defense treaty with the Philippines should be covered by a broader agreement including other powers such as the United Kingdom and France, which, even after suffering humiliating defeat in Indochina, remained permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Philippines’ young diplomacy—whose professional Foreign Service had only been created in 1946—84 was in favor of a collective security system in the West Pacific,85 as were the two Pacific British dominions, New Zealand and Australia. The Philippines’ Secretary of Foreign Affairs, General Carlos P. Romulo—former president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949—had raised the possibility of a Pacific version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) immediately after the election of the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in December 1952.

On 18 April 1954, President Ramon Magsaysay announced his agreement in principle with the proposal of an anti-aggression regional alliance, provided that it has all the guarantees of NATO, adding two conditions: 1) the right of Asian nations to self-determination; and 2) full guarantee of US assistance in case of aggression.86 To avoid being the sole Asian and Third World nation member of a security pact once again dominated by the West, it was necessary for the Philippines to invite other Asian countries to join the alliance. On the other hand, following the USSR, the Geneva Agreement prevented Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam from joining the alliance directly. The United States, however, was not inclined to approve it; it did not want to build a security system as heavy a burden as NATO.

The result was a compromise : the Manila Pact or Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, signed on 8 September 1954 by three of the former colonial powers of Southeast Asia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; the two most powerful states of the South-Pacific region: Australia and New Zealand; Pakistan, the

eastern part of which (today Bangladesh) was next door to Southeast Asia; and—in spite of the very name of the treaty—two Southeast Asian countries only, the Philippines and Thailand. The pact created what will be known as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), although it did not properly imply a structure similar to NATO.

On the Philippines’ request, another document, the Pacific Charter, was signed on the same day by the same States, upholding the principle of “equal rights and self-determination of peoples” and promoting “the independence of all countries whose peoples desire it and are able to undertake its responsibilities”. As none of its numerous and tiny Pacific territories asked for independence at the time, France signed the Pacific Charter without any hesitation.

In October, the Philippines and Thailand joined the Colombo Plan, the main objective of which was to coordinate aid programs. The Plan had been initiated by the British through the Commonwealth in 1950. With American support, it was expanded beyond its original scope. Exhausted by the Indochina War, France chose not to participate in it.

The Philippines opened full diplomatic relations with Laos in January 1955 and South Vietnam in July 1955. At the end of 1955, the French Legation in Manila was upgraded to an embassy, in recognition of the Philippines’ role in SEATO and the Pacific region. On 19 January 1956, Jean Brionval presented anew his credentials to President Magsaysay. However, six months later, he was appointed Ambassador to Indonesia. Brionval’s successor was Georges Cattand, former consul in Shanghai in 1928 and Tianjin from 1929 to 1946, and later, from 1953 to 1956, as chargé d’affaires in China and Taiwan. The visit of former Prime Minister Antoine Pinay in Manila in October 1956 confirmed the importance of the country for the French authorities. In July 1957, the Philippines normalized relations with Cambodia, effectively closing the issue of the decolonization of the Associated States of Indochina.