ABSTRACT
On 8 September 1954, in Manila, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization pact was signed, focusing principally on American guarantees for the security of Thailand. SEATO had evolved during 1954 as a consensus of the views of the whole Western alliance, and as part of a tradition going back at least to Sir Josiah Crosby's pre-war thinking. The Thai military have seen itself as eventually a more natural ally of Washington and beneficiary of American largesse than Dr. Pridi, but this can only have made it the keener to support the efforts of the returned Phibun to secure Thailand against a repeat of its 1941 predicament. Regional security organizations were the fashion of the day, but the 1954 alliance was to be primarily a case of an American response to persistent Thai seduction, playing not only upon Washington's current neurosis about a communist world conspiracy, but equally its fears of losing any of the world-power prestige it had accrued in 1942-45.
