Talk:Southeast Asia Treaty Organization/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ian Rose (talk) 09:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Stake my claim on this now, will aim to read and leave comments over the coming weekend... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Guoguo12--Talk--  21:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Because of limited time at any one session, I'll take a couple of passes at this review....

Toolbox check

• No dab links
• No external link problems

Structure

• Looks appropriate.

Supporting materials

• All images appear appropriately licensed and captioned except the black-and-white conference one, which seems to use a deprecated licence tag -- this should be sorted out.
  •  Done Guoguo12--Talk--  19:24, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
• The infobox images have alt text, but not the other images. While not strictly a requirement, be good to have consistency and put alt text on all images.
  •  Done Guoguo12--Talk--  19:24, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Referencing

• Last sentence of Origins and structure should be cited.
  •  Done. I've replaced what was there before with something more clear and something I could reference. Guoguo12--Talk--  00:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
• Ditto last sentence of first para, and entire second para, of Membership.
  •  Done. To be precise, I removed the second paragraph as per WP:OR, since I couldn't find any sources backing it up. Pakistan (and Britain, too, for that matter) was a part of CENTO, but CENTO was created after SEATO. The text was added in this edit about four years ago. Guoguo12--Talk--  03:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

That's it for the first pass; checks on prose and coverage/accuracy to come later. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for your updates, satisfied all the above points are addressed. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Referencing (cont'd)

• Can't see where Dreisbach is cited. In such a case the book could appear in a Further reading section but not where it is now.
  •  Moved. It was there before I started working on the article, but now that all (or most) of the text can be attributed to other sources, it's probably not needed anymore. Guoguo12--Talk--  14:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Content and accuracy

• I don't think there's any harm in writing the members nations as a sentence list in the Membership section, even though they can be found in the infobox. That way you could move the citation in the infobox to the main body of the aticle.
• While we have an entire section on cultural effects (which is fine) there's no similiar military aspects section, even though it was a defence pact. Granted it appears to have been a bit of a toothless tiger, but Royal Australian Air Force fighters were based at Ubon under the terms of the treaty, to protect Thailand and intervene in Laos if necessary. Seato plans in 1960 also called for deployment of four squadrons of RAAF fighters and bombers to Thailand and South Vietnam to support the Australian Army in a 'worst case' scenario. In 1964, the US, Thailand and Australia set up a joint air defence system for Thailand through Seato. There were also contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Chinese forces intervening in SE Asia. Finally, the Australian government used Seato as part of its rationale for joining the Vietnam War. I can provide citations for all this but your other sources might yield a bit more on military deployments and plans under the treaty as well. If you can include a Military aspects section, I'd do so immediately before the Cultural effects section.

Prose

• Seems quite satisfactory -- well done.

Summary

• That's it for my review, aside from any discussion you'd like to have. Overall, seems a nice brief summation of the treaty, just a bit light military-wise. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Okay, thanks. Any chance you could provide me with your sources? I hadn't found anything about the RAAF before in my other sources. Guoguo12--Talk--  13:42, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Sure, all the RAAF references above may be found in the official history covering the period 1946–71, Going Solo, which the Air Power Development Centre has kindly made available online recently -- it's PDF and you can just search for "Seato" to catch everything I've mentioned. The last bit about using the treaty as a rationale for committing troops to Vietnam comes from "South-East Asia Treaty Organization" in The Oxford Companion Australian Military History. Edited by Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior and Jean Bou. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online at National Library of Australia (subscription required). Now, just remember my biases: I'm Australian and I write RAAF-related articles, so I don't want to overbalance the article in that direction, they're just a few examples of military aspects, some of might be used in conjunction with anything you have relating to other treaty members. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:08, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
      • Well, I think I've included the more important bits—namely, the fact that SEATO was used as a gateway to greater involvement (U.S. and Australian) during Vietnam. Guoguo12--Talk--  21:20, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
        • I made a couple of tweaks for presentation and content but essentially I think you've done a good job -- I just feel it's a bit better balanced now with the military section in there. One question, can I just confirm that American membership in SEATO provided the United States with a rationale for a large-scale U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia that other countries, such as Great Britain and key nations in Asia, would find acceptable is correct, and the last part shouldn't be "would not find acceptable"? It works fine if what they're finding acceptable is the US rationale, rather than the military intervention itself. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
          •  Done Ambiguous text fixed. What I meant was that the U.S. rationale was found acceptable, not the intervention. Guoguo12--Talk--  18:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
            • Thanks mate, passing as GA -- well done. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:44, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
              • Thanks for your advice and review! Guoguo12--Talk--  18:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)