The Trouble with Coalitions

With what enthusiasm it could muster up, the U.S. last week announced that eight nations had agreed to get together in the Philippine summer capital of Baguio on Sept. 6. Subject: a Southeast Asia alliance.

The call for volunteers had met with little success: only Pakistan and Thailand, of all the non-Communist nations on the Asian continent, agreed to come, and Pakistan had made it clear that it would merely be looking, not necessarily buying. (The other six participants: the U.S., Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.)

Enmities & Dislikes. In the beginning, SEATO was billed as a bold plan to do for Asia what NATO did for Europe. But the sense of shared urgency is not the same; and non-Communist Asia is divided by ancient enmities and current dislikes. Before Asia's non-Communist powers can be rallied together, they must first be persuaded to sit down together. The neutralists are by definition unwilling to join a bloc. Nehru does not want to become a partner with Chiang Kai-shek or Syngman Rhee, and the feeling is mutual. Rhee is not keen to sup with the Japanese; neither are the Australians. The U.S. is not anxious to bind itself to defend precarious and far-off regimes on Asia's southern shores. France wants to include Indo-China in the area protected by the alliance; Britain says it is already too late. Out of such a conglomeration is apt to come a maximum of rhetoric and a mini mum of commitment.

SEATO reflects America's dreamy postwar passion for grand coalitions, which actually have less to recommend them than the old-fashioned diplomacy--which consisted of particular arrangements for precise ends. It is State Department doctrine to talk of SEATO as an assemblage of like-minded nations, which will be broadened (it is always hoped) to include other nations later on. But a grand flotilla of allies must travel at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. The old-fashioned solution would be to make hard-and-fast arrangements--separately or in small groupings--with Syngman Rhee, with Chiang Kaishek, with Ramon Magsaysay, with Mohammed Ali.

Needless Resentments. But what of the other non-Communist powers in Asia --the neutralists, the hesitant? It is another principle of old-fashioned diplomacy to win as many friends as you can to your side, and to deny as many as you can to the enemy. Asians like Burma's Premier U Nu want to be friendly with the West, but refuse to join a military pact. Rather than abandon them, or berate them, or wheedle them, the U.S. should seek a separate relationship that involves neither slight to them nor undue soliciting of their favor.

In this respect, the U.S. could learn from the artful Chou Enlai. who has a talent for making minimal requests of countries he cannot order around. The only request the Communists make of the French, for instance, is not to rearm Germany; they ask the Indians only to be in favor of "Asia for the Asians." Implicit in these small and easy commitments is all that the Communists presently want of France and India: to stand aside. Too often U.S. requests to young and sensitive nations, or to old and proud nations, have been crowded with demands and pledges that have significance only in domestic American politics--and thereby cause needless refusals and resentments.

A new, but actually old-style U.S. diplomacy, would avoid trying to bunch dissimilar allies. Of some, it would ask little and expect little; with others, it would go as far as necessity, opportunity and prudence suggest.

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