Though Secretary of State John Foster Dulles considered SEATO an essential element in U.S. foreign policy in Asia, historians have considered the Manila Pact a failure, and the pact is rarely mentioned in history books.[1] In The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina, Sir James Cable, a diplomat and naval strategist,[31] described SEATO as "a fig leaf for the nakedness of American policy", citing the Manila Pact as a "zoo of paper tigers".[2] As early as the 1950s Aneurin Bevan unsuccessfully tried to block SEATO in the British Parliament, at one point interrupting a parliamentary debate between Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Leader of the Opposition Clement Attlee to excoriate them both for considering the idea.[32]