U.S. SECURITY COMMITMENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03362A000700050001-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 16, 2002
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 1, 1954
• Content Type: SUMMARY

State Dept. declassification & release instructions on
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OFFICE OF TRAINING
DIRECTIVE
1 arch 1954
COURSE: BIC (I)
SUBJECT :
U. S. security Commitments
METHOD OF PRESENTATION: Lecture & discussion
HOURS :
INSTRUCTOR: Guest speaker
OBJECTIVES OF INSTRUCTION: To give students an appreciation of the nature
and extent of U. S. security commitments.
OMAN OF PRESEVITATIOi : The security commitments of the United States are
discussed under two headings: (1) those embodied in formal agreements, and
(2) those recognized by the United States, from time to time, as representing
the country's real security interests. Under the first, such formal commit-
ments as the United Nations Charter, the Rio Pact, and the North Atlantic
Treaty are analyzed. Under the second heading, the U. S. security interest
in the Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, the Far East and other areas is
explained and various contingencies affecting it discussed.
SUBJECTS WITH WHICH COORDINATI N. IS RE2
REFERENCES:
MARKS: Transcription of lecture by Mr. Richard Scaon, Department of
State.
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SEQTRITY COMMITMNTS OF U. S. AND ITS ALLIES
By - Richard M. Scammon
In discussing this general subject of the security commitments of the
United States I am going to try and put those commitments in two general
groupings. The first group will be the kind that we normally speak of, that we
normally write about and that we normally discuss under this general heading
Security Commitments of the U.S., and this first group will include the formal
and written and treatyized security commitments which this country has entered
into. These as you will find from my remarks this afternoon I regard as
rather less important than the second group of security commitments which are
essentially in my view the commitments we make to ourselves for our own pro-
tection and in our own self-interest. But this first group of security
commitments are those which normally would be discussed in any academic class
on international relations, they are those which you would list if you were
required by a congressional committee to place down your listing of security
commitments, they are the ones that are subjects of editorials in the New York
Times and they are in general that group of security commitments which we
include as the formalized, written treaty, televisioned type of security
commitments. These number five, six I think perhaps we better say, six in
all for this country at the present time . These six are as follows:
First, under the Charter of the United Nations this country, as are
all the signatories of the United Nations, is pledged "to maintain interna-
tional peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the
prevention and removal of the threats to the peace and to suppress active
aggression or other breaches of the peace." There is no enforciw_-, machinery
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established in the United Nations organization for the active implementation
of these particular ends save to work in the Security Council by unanimous
agreement there, unless one of the members happens to be absent happily at
the moment. There is no supra national institution to force from the various
united nations an especial observance of this particular clause. This clause,
in fact, ,,represents, as does much of the charter and the organization itself,
a rather strong hope that many of these things can be accomplished and a rather
strong suggestion to the members that they so conduct themselves as to carry
out these various proposals; but really I would suggest to you no specific
commitment of the United States was subject to any specific course of action.
The theory I suppose is that we are always concerned to maintain internatl oral
peace and security and to take effective collective measures for the prevention
and removal of threats to the peace. But this does not mean that in any given
circumstance our attitude, say with respect to the natives in North Africa or
the admission of the question of internal legislation of the Union of South
Africa or the Korean question or any other in any sense of the word can be
used as a specific commitment on our part to do any specific concrete, or
identifiable thing. As this general charter is a commitment of the United
States only insofar as it Is a general commitment to do good.
In terms of more specific and detailed regional agreements, sae deal
of three in the Far East, one in Latin America, and one in Europe. Let
inc take them, if I may, in reverse order from that which I have listed them.
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First, and perhaps most important, in terms of its general under-
standing, is that which we call the North Atlantic Treaty. And in that
North Atlantic Treaty the signatories to that document undertake to agree
that an armed attack against arW one or more of them, that means the
signatories, in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack
against them all. And they agree they shall take such action as they deem
necessary including the use of armed force to restore and maintain the
security of the North Atlantic Area. Now what action is deemed necessary,
is not established in the treaty; this is left up to the individual
decision of the individual powers concerned. I would emphasize to you
that from the North Atlantic Treaty this country has no security commitment
whatsoever, to any other state which signed that treaty except that the
United States is committed to take such action as the United States deems
necessary in the fullfillment of this general treaty. Now that the United
States might feel it necessary to take some very specific and very strong
action in the event of an attack against one of the signatories of the
North Atlantic Treaty might or might not be the case depending upon the
allocation of our own national resources and the contemporary political
picture of the moment.
The commitment that is involved in the sense of the promise, in the
sense of the blank check with respect to the North Atlantic Treaty is ox
if we or if any of our allies are attacked shall take such action as we
deem necessary to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic
Area.
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The Rio Pact operates in the Latin American Area and is the third
of these six pacts of which I will speak. The Rio Pact agrees amongst
the signatories, who are the Latin American States, of course, that an
armed attack by any state against an American state should be considered
an attack against all the American states, and consequently each one of
the contracting parties undertakes to assist in meeting the attack in
the exercise of the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense
recognized by the charter of the United Nations.
This would appear on the surface of it to be rather more specific
than the North Atlantic Treaty language and certainly not to include within
it that small escape clause "as it deems necessary," but I would call your
attention to the exact language that is used in the Rio Fact; "an armed
attack by arty state against an American state should be considered as an
attack against all the American states and the contracting parties undertake
to assist in meeting the attack." As you may know of sane of the military
thinking of this country, it does not envisage the defense of the further
reaches of Alaska if they shaald be attacked. This, of course, is United
States territory. It's cpa ite posd ible that equally the military thinking
would feel that the further reaches of Latin America, particularly South
America, would not be defensible in terms of this pact. I do not know, but
I would suggest that the phrase "assist" in the language of this pact indicates
that this country is committed to assistance. Now whether this assistance
means the kind of assistance the South Korean Republic recieved in warding
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off the North Korean attack or whether it means the ambulance the Swedes
gave the U.N. command, I don't know. But the extent of the assistance
which was included under the terms of the Rio Pact, I suggest, mirght vary
in that immensity between the single ambulance and the rather colorful
crew that goes with it and the more material and specific assistance
involved in what would amount to a state of co-belligerency with the
South Koreans in resisting Worth Korean and Communist aggression.
There is no instrumentality in the Rio Pact for formally bringing
this assistance about. There is, of course, the Organization of American
States, but there is no supra national authority, there is no international
body which could compel any state to give any specified or particular kind
of assistance to any state which was attacked by any other state under the
terms of the Rio Pact.
We also have made in this written category, the first group of which
I speak, we also have made three general agreements in the Far East.
One with our colleagues in Australia and in New Zealand which has led
to the setting up of what is called Anzus-Australia, New Zealand, United
States; one with the Philippines, and one with Japan. Now the first two
of these deal rather more specifically and equally with the relationships
between sovereign states. In the Philippines, and again in the case of
Australia and New Zealand, we pledged that if there are hostilities, if
attacks are made on them, we shall do whatever is needed, whatever is
required within our constitutional processes, to provide assistance to the
attacked party. What this means I do not know. In terms of Japan we have,
of course, made a rather generalized treaty with the Japanese, primarily
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because of our particular security position in Japan, and because of the
necessity which we feel of maintaining armed forces in that country.
Therefore, the terms of that treaty and the commitments that that treaty
involves are not a very comparable one in terms of those negotiated with
sovereign powers. That treaty and the security arrangements connected with
it give us the right to dispose United States troops in and about Japan to
maintain international peace and security in the Far Fast. They also contain
about the only really specific promise that we make in any of these treaties,
which is that if the Japanese Government makes a request upon us for the supply-
ing of troops to put down insurrection and riot within the islands, we shall
supply those troops.
Now these are six security commitments, the kind that would usually* be
listed in any official formalized list of such commitments.
As you may imagine from the remarks I have made in introducing this
subject, my own view would be that the actual commitment involved in any
of these, with the possible exception of suppressing a riot in Tokyo, is
very limited. That the treaties and agreements which I have alluded to
here may represent a reflection of the other group of commitments of which
I will speak in the second part is, of course, quite possible. That, in
fact, the-written word in the North Atlantic Treaty, while it doesn't promise
anything, is but a recognition of larger commitments which we have, in fact,
undertaken because of our national self-interest may be true. But that these
security commitments of ours to other powers had any force, any validity or
any reality simply because they are promises to other people to do rometbing
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gratuitously for them and on their behalf I think is simply incorrect
and.I think for an intelligence officer especially it must be put out of
your mind.
These commitments so called, are not commitments in any sense of
the word in which you or I would understand it in a contractual relation-
ship. They are not a commitment, for example, for me to sell you my car for
a thousand dollars. They are not a commitment for you to rent my house
for a year. They are not a commitment for you even to look after my dog
while I take a two-week vacation. All of these things involve a specific
promise, a specific obligation, if only moral, to do something. None of
the obligations involved in these security commitments has any particular
weight upon us and are primarily commitments to examine the situation; and
presumptively, if war and attacks should break out, we would be examining it
anyway, both in this Agency and in the Department of State, and I think we
would find that any commitment to examine the situation would simply be a
needless one in terms of what we actually were doing at the time.
Now let me move from what I obviously consider the less important
commitments, if indeed they are commitments at all, to what I think are.
the more important commitments - what I called the second group of
commitments. And let me emphasize that I think these are important
commitments because they are commitments to ourselves. Some of you may
not remember Mr. Roosevelt's famous statement about the national cebt,
that it really wasn't important because we owed it to ourselves and we
could collect it from ourselves at anytime we wished. Now whether this
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is good or bad economics, or good or bad politics, I don't know, but
certainly in international affairs the only commitments on a security
stand that have any meaning are those commitments that you make to
yourself, because in the making of those commitments you are convinced
that you are advancing your national interest and protecting your national
state.
Now the first of these commitments has really nothing to do with
international relations as such. It is a simple commitment to defend the
area, the. territory which you inhabit as a state, to defend if you will
your own country. Now there may be many arguments about justiow you
do this. As you know there are many arguments today as to how far we
go in defending America, whether you defend it in the Air or on the
water or on the ground, whether you defend it with X billion or 21 billion
or Y billions of dollars, or whether you defend it with alliances, with
foreign aid, with assistance programs, with GCA, with TCA with OSB, whatever
the outfit at the moment may be; but the basic commitment that you make,
indeed the whole meaning of the word security commitment, is the commitment
to defend the state. If you do not make that commitment, then really you
have put yourself outside the scope of what I am talking about here -
Security Commitments of the United States. If you do not make the basic
commitment to defend the state, then the concept of commitment has no
meaning because you are relating other commitments not to the state but
to something outside or above or below or alongside the concept of the
national state. So that I would suggest to you that the first commitment
that we make in international relations is the general commitment to
defned the state.
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The second general commitment I would suggest that we make is a
general observation, perhaps, a general motif of foreign policy in which
we seek some kind of system of international relations in which the appeal
to violence becomes less a characteristic of society than it has been in
the past.
It is a commitment in which our general foreign policy in tht furtherance
of commitment number one, for the security and for the defense of the state,
seeks as a general commitment, agreement among states to sort of live the
good life internationally. Specifically, for example, with respect to the
Soviet Union, I think that our present commitment on the Soviet Union,
even despite the change of political administration, the present commitment
with respect to the Soviet Union, is not to overthrow the Soviet State but
to try to get the Soviet State, if we can, to live a normal and tolerable
political life, in which the exchange of individuals and the exchange of
ideas and the opening up of frontiers and the limitation of armament, etc.,
form a pattern of what you might call tolerant and. tolerable international
life. Now whether this is correct or not, I don't know, but I would
certainly suggest to you that the whole history of the Republic has been
one involving these two basic security commitments. The first to defend
the Republic and the second to try to, as much as we feel wise and prudent at
the time, to try to build an international system in Which there is a measure
of toleration and tolerability-between the member states so that they are
not at one anotherts throats every generation or every half generation or
quarter generation.
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Now, while these two security commitments are obviously and equally
the general basis of foreign policy, what then are the specific security
commitments in the terms in which you would be normally asked to list them
from an area basis.
First, of course, and most important is the security commitment to
Canada. Now it's not a commitment to Canada. It's a commitment to the
United States in re Canada, and I think this is a most important one for
us to bear in mind. It's true we have with our `Canadian friends a number
of interlocking organizations, boards, committees., commissions, defense
apparatae, etc.; we have also particularly in the far northern regions
entered upon defense arrangements, radar screens, training arrangements,
and so on which are, I am sure, very useful. But basically the security
commitment we make to ourselves in re Canada, is simply that the occupation
of Canada by a foreign state, or an attack upon Canada by a foreign state,
would be so contrary to national self-interest that we are committed to
ourselves to defend Canada.
Now to a somewhat lesser extent, but still to a very substantial
one, this applies to Latin America. Whether it would apply to the extreme
southern tip of Chile or Argentina I do not know. Whether it would apply
to claimed Argentinian positions in the Antarctic, I am sure I do know it
would not. Whether it would apply to the Falkland Islands if the Argentinians
succeeded in maintaining a claim to the Falkland Islands, I just don't know.
But basically, Latin America and Canada together form the security commitment
that America makes to itself with respect to the New World - a commitment
which the Monroe Doctrine recognized more completely than any later document
can underline for you, the basic character pf the New World as a part of
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The American security sphere. What we would do in any given circumstance
if the Communists should attack any part of this area we cannot now say.
What we would do if the Co unists succeeded in achieving power in any
part of this area we cannot now say. What we can, I think, establish pretty
firmly, however, is that any external attack upon any part of this area,
from Alaska down to the further reaches of South America, would very-
probably involve virtually immediate mobilization and war on the part
of this country. And it would so involve that mobilization and that war
because the basic security commitment that we have made to ourselves is
that it is intolerable, and I use the word literally, it is intolerable
to our national security and our national self -interest that any part
of this New World territory -h ould come under Soviet rule.
This is probably more intolerable today that that this should happen
than it was at the time of the original issuance of the Monroe Doctrine,
if there be any degrees of comparability in such a way. But certainly
today, the prospect of the Red Array establishing bases, to use a specific
case, in any part of this territory would, I suggest, well we can't say
one hundred per cent for sure, would almost certainly lead us, if I nay
use the language of the NIE, would almost certainly lead us into a
situation of mobilization and war with the Soviet Union.
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Whether this would operate in the same way if a Communist Govern-
ment, as in Guatemala, should achieve a measure of domestic power by
other than actual armed force, in the sense of external armed fore, I
don't know. I think you would find a measure of confusion on this
issue which it would be difficult to relate to the Immediate problem
which would have to be solved. But if there were external attacks as
used in the security commitments I have outlined to you in part one,
there is no question but that that attack, I think, would be met by
mobilization and war on the part of this country.
As you go around the rest of the hemisphere - the rest of the
globe - to complete this picture of security commitments, however, your
picture, I think, gets less and less clear until, if you go completely
around to a country like Afghanistan or Iran, you get into a picture in
which you can say the probability is that we would not, as a matter of
national self-interest and national security, view the invasion and
seizure of these countries as one which would involve mobilization and
war. Certainly this is true of Afghanistan as it was of Tibet, and
partially I suppose itts true of Iran, though whether the immediate
needs of the moment in Irani would lead to this particular decision or not
I don't know.
In Western Europe you have got a pretty good picture, 1 think,
today of the line which we have prepared to defend as essential to our
national self-interest. That line certainly includes the NATO states,
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and it certainly includes Austria and Germany, and it certainly includes
those states outside NATO, but states lying to the west of its easterly
boundaries, specifically Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Ireland. It,
would probably exclude Finland. Whether it would include Sweden I am
rather doubtful, but I would presume that if an attack were made on
Sweden it would be likely, if again I may use the scale of words of an
NIE, it would be likely to lead to mobilization and war on the part of
this country.
In the southern area of Europe outside the NATO boundary, by this,
of course, we mean specifically Yugoslavia, I think we can say that a
satellite and/or Soviet attacks on Yugoslavia would similarly beet by
extensive United States assistance, including manpower, Mich might or
might not actually involve a declaration of war against the Soviet
Union.
But, what I most of all would like to leave with you is the thought
about this area and the area of the New World. It's not the precise
frontier on which this line is to be drawn, but rather the concept that
the commitment which is ii evolved, the security commitment which is
involved in this whole system of thinking, is not something that you
negotiate and sign and publish and collect at the end of the year in a volume
of documents relating to foreign affairs. The commitment which is involved
is an unwritten guess as to where, your immediate national security and
your immediate national self-interest may lie with respect to this
particular situation. That the Yugoslavian situation, picture, region,
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whatever you wish to call it might at one time be and at the other time
be outside this particular kind of delimitation is perfectly possible.
You cannot sit down with parchment and pen and write out in detail what
the security commitments of the United States are, because those c-
mitments are a mirror of the wealth of our resources and the international
situation. And at one time they may be one thing and a minute later they
may be something entirely different.
Now, elsewhere, in the Middle East for example, we've spoken of
Iran, we've spoken of Afghanistan, whether we would be prepared in the
case of a Chinese Comnunist invasion of India, to move to the assistance
and aid of India, in the extent involved in mobilization and war, I'm
rather doubtful; we might - we might not, certainly we would move to
the extent of a very substantial aid program. Whether we would do more
than that I am rather doubtful. What we would do in :Malaya, or Iriio-
china if either of those areas became completely overrun by Conan unist
troops, again I am not sure in terms of our political policy, because,
of course as you know, most of these questions are outside the juris-
diction of my department and lie in the hands of higher and wiser men
in the political policy side of this government.
What we would do in the matter of Indochina and in Malaya would
be a problem in which they would be unhappily confronted if this
situation should come to pass.
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As far as the Far East generally is concerned, I think we can
assume that only in Japan and in those parts of the cff-sea area, par-
ticularly Okinawa and the Philippines where we have a special strategic
interest, perhaps Formosa we should include in this, would we make any
firm commitment to ourselves as of the present writing, as of 2:30 on
this afternoon, to make a mobilization cum war stand with respect :o a
given area. And even that might change, from this might be subtracted,
to this might be added, new areas as the nature of our security situation
and the nature of our self-interest developed over a period of tune.
Certainly, I think, we would not be likely to subtract Japan from
that particular area. The basic reason, of course, is that really only
in Japan do you have today the combination of resources and manpoier and
skill necessary to make a first-rate military power. In China yogi may
very well have the beginnings of it, but only in Japan do you have it
right now - a power able to maintain itself and able to help very
substantially any external force which has possession of the Japanese
Islands.
So that going around the globe, I think that you can see that we
can have areas which we will regard ourselves as territorial security
commitments. But we will regard them as territorial security commit-
menus not because of these treaties, not because of the United Nations,
only and simply because at the moment at rich decision is made these
areas lie within the broader area in which we make a generalized security
commitment-to ourselves, because it is in that broader area that we
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have decided that we cannot, that it becomes intolerable to us to
permit an enenw to seize control. Because if he seizes that control
our position becomes then so difficult it's not so impossible that we
feel that the balance of power is substantially changed to our
disadvantage. So that basically this whole concept of security com-
mitments I would sum to you as being as I suggest, commitments to
ourselves in the protection of our national security and our national
self-interest.
And I would suggest that as intelligence officers, it is important
for all of you to remember that the formalized sort of commitment, the
thing that we have put in little charts like this which appear very
prettily in the New York Times on Sunday, you know, and are very fell
drawn with numbers, but these are really not important. These may very
well represent a sort of psychological cream on the top of the pis,
but they are not the reason the pie is put in the oven in the first
place, and they are not the reason the pie is eaten. They may represent
a sort of acknowledgement of a fact situation which exists, and they
may very well represent in their various terminologies, and in th:3
ceremonies surrounding their signing, etc., they may represent an
acknowledgement of our own national security. But the basic commitment
that we make is not to arW foreign state, itts to ourselves and the
basic commitment is that of our own security and our own national
self-interest.
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