Britain and the Neutralisation of Laos

Chapter Two. The Return of the Control Commission

Return of the Control Commission 43 CHAPTER TWO The Return of the Control Commission ‘The Americans have yet to see that their present policy in Laos cannot establish a position acceptable to themselves.’ – John Addis Anglo-American differences What was British policy? Essentially the British had accepted American policy, but only with deep reservations. In September 1959 the US Embassy in London referred to an ‘essentially undimmed British desire to get back to some kind of modus vivendi in Laos such as Geneva agreements provided for and which in Foreign Office view is only really practical protection for Laos’.1 In December the Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, told Dulles’ successor, Christian Herter, that Britain’s objective was to obtain ‘a neutral Laos looking towards the West’.2 ‘There is no dispute between us about the need to stop Laos going Communist,’ SEAD had declared early in 1960. ‘This is the important thing and it is the central assumption of our Laos policy. The question is how best to maintain a stable, non-Communist Laos. We think that it should be as neutral as possible in foreign policy and quietly anti-Communist at home. We do not think it should, as Cambodia has done, be “neutralist” or try to play off the East against the West. In this it would fail owing to its weakness.’ But North Vietnam would not allow Laos to adopt a wholeheartedly pro-Western line: it was mainly to prevent this that Hanoi had ‘started the emergency’. That the Laotian government would not be able to defeat by military means. It might appeal to SEATO. If SEATO failed to respond, morale would suffer and the position deteriorate further. If it responded, the North Vietnamese might send in ‘volunteers’, and it would be impossible to expel them without ‘a major war’. Even to maintain a stalemate would probably involve ‘a disproportionate deployment of Western resources’, 43 44 Britain and the Neutralisation of Laos and it might not last long. To avoid the widening of hostilities, it would be necessary to negotiate a settlement on less satisfactory terms than might now be secured. The State Department argued that any attempt to secure a political solution would demoralise the government and open the way to a Communist take-over by subversion. That was not necessarily the case. If some at least of the PL’s aims were met — ‘the full observance of the Geneva settlement, an end to what they call the “Americanisation” of Laos and permission for the Neo Lao Hak Sat to operate freely as a legal political party’ — they would have to hide their weapons and ‘give the appearance of behaving legally’, and the government would have a greater chance of ‘gradually asserting their authority throughout the country’. It would also be able to adopt a more conciliatory policy towards the minorities, now often the target of repressive Army action, and to wean away supporters of the PL, now likely to be alienated by the Army.3 The Western powers, the FO recognised, might have to take a strong line with the government of Laos. ‘The C.D.I.N. tend to think that the West is bound to support them whatever they do.’ It would be necessary ‘to drive home to the Laotians that their survival depends upon the support of the West and that it will be SEATO, and not they themselves, which takes the decision as to whether the Organisation will intervene to support them’.4 The Ku Abhay government proceeded with a rigged election, such as the British had counselled against.5 After the Konglae coup and the subsequent restoration of Suvanna, John Addis, the British ambassador, argued that the policy of encouraging an anti-Communist Laos had been ‘tried and found wanting’. The events of the past two years had shown that the pro-Western neutrality Phuy Sananikon pursued was ‘not a position with which the Communist neighbours of Laos are content to live’. Pursuing that policy, Addis noted, had led to ‘constant insecurity and a serious danger of circumstances necessitating S.E.A.T.O. intervention and resulting in war. The policy has not been a success from our own point of view and should be abandoned. An actively pro-Western Laos is not the best defence for Western interests in South-East Asia.’ Since the Konglae coup it was even less likely that it could be made acceptable to the Laotian people, and a government that tried to impose it...