NATO Stands Still
CAREY, ALIDA L.
NATO STANDS STILL Paris foreign ministers' meeting fails to expand role of Atlantic alliance By Alida L. Carey PARIS The 15 NATO foreign ministers met in Paris in May to decide the future role...
...The final outcome was a stalling maneuver: creation of a panel of "three wise men" (dubbed by Pearson "three blind mice") to grope their way anew through the old problem...
...employing so-called "forward strategic planning" to cut down or eliminate reserves, then beef up active troops with new weapons and special training...
...The Strategic Air Command may lose supremacy within two years...
...Within minutes, U.S...
...If NATO must continue along the old lines, can it expand...
...The Council might also help dispel neutralism in Western Europe, now encouraged by Soviet troop cuts...
...It is...
...Both defensive and voluntary, it reveals the good and bad sides of any democratic institution...
...Just as the Council has neglected to fill out its new strategy, so it has not arranged to pay for it...
...NATO, for its part, has decided that its response to any future aggression would be atomic...
...Soviet and satellite forces are almost four times as large, even after recent cuts...
...The principal financial achievement, though, has been paying for the military machine itself...
...Russia has reportedly pushed development of the intercontinental ballistic missile well ahead of the United States and is bidding to overtake U.S...
...When John Foster Dulles insisted that NATO was in a crucial state, Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak snapped back: "What's so crucial about it...
...NATO force goals, already reduced, have gone unfulfilled active divisions now total something less than 45...
...Its ready divisions are vastly outnumbered, with West German manpower not expected until 1959 at best...
...B-47 and B-52 bombers could retaliate from bases in the U.S., Greenland, England and North Africa...
...They left the question wide open worse, they didn't ask more basic questions about its past and present roles...
...So far, there has not even been formal discussion of the Middle East, Cyprus and North Africa...
...air superiority goes on forever, active ground troops are needed to back up the bombers...
...Atomic stalemate" implies a new kind of deterrent, requiring equality between East and West in both strength and instant readiness...
...Though a distinction was implied between greater Soviet power and less immediate threat, General Gruenther believes that the threat, too, "has never been greater...
...A month later, NATO reserves would join in...
...strategic air power by 1958...
...The core of the treaty was Article Five, providing that an attack on one or more member countries would be met by the combined resistance of all...
...If NATO continued preparing for this strategy, however, and the Soviets then struck with only tactical or conventional weapons, NATO would presumably leave the B-52s homo and rely on short-range arms...
...These theories might work if Russia launched a simultaneous atomic air attack on Europe and North America...
...Its workings are slow: Decisions by the NATO Council require unanimous agreement...
...In the early 1950s, NATO started building up its ground forces, hoping not to match Soviet forces, but only to throw up an initial bulwark...
...and Canada would need a head start, and could he spotted by Europe's early-warning system...
...The NATO Council might have persuaded French Premier Mollet to liberalize his views and hasten an Algerian settlement on the other hand, firm backing from the Council might have strengthened his hand in Moscow...
...Their governments feel little urgency and no more fear what General Alfred Gruenther calls the "one big advantage we do not have now...
...Viscount Montgomery says it is a "nice point" whether NATO could now execute its "forward strategy...
...Procedure, too, was directionless...
...NATO is probably incapable of going farther than its present policy of reacting to Soviet moves, but it should at least get that far...
...Attempts to change NATO's present voluntary methods also seem foredoomed...
...NATO STANDS STILL Paris foreign ministers' meeting fails to expand role of Atlantic alliance By Alida L. Carey PARIS The 15 NATO foreign ministers met in Paris in May to decide the future role of their alliance...
...Dulles's performance was symptomatic...
...The U.S...
...NATO has never adequately answered the popular contention that European ground forces are useless now that the Soviets, too, have hydrogen bombs...
...Dulles reportedly presented a scheme for making the Council a truly consultative body to handle all key Atlantic problems, but, said one observer, "he put it all in the form of a question which implied that the answer would be 'no.'" Back home again, he made a major speech which gave a clearer idea of what he had in mind...
...Neither occurred...
...With no definite Council plan, small nations are left with only a vague "system of priorities" to permit spending more on modern weapons by eliminating obsolescent ones...
...The ministers, assuming that it can, soon lost themselves in how to do it...
...The planes destined for the U.S...
...But is NATO's original function still realistic...
...Its supply of atomic arms and its reserve divisions are unknown quantities...
...nor Britain would allow decision-making or -enforcing to be put on a supranational basis...
...Only when the Council gets such national backing can it truly guide its member countries...
...Before wondering how NATO should expand (via the Atlantic Pact's Article Two) to more positive political, economic or cultural activities, the ministers might have tried to define just what NATO's function has been, whether it is still necessary, and whether it can or should expand...
...Goals for each nation's contribution are fixed by the "Annual Review," which compromises military claims of need and national claims of capacity to pay...
...What of NATO's weaknesses...
...Unprepared on arrival, the ministers tried to cram a full agenda into two days and varied their generalities only by hesitation, then disagreement...
...It must unscramble the new military strategy and arrange to pay the bill...
...The alliance being defensive, that is, negative, it can hardly be made affirmative and remain the same...
...A NATO military policy, though, presupposes overall NATO foreign policies, and this requires better coordination of members' views...
...The citizens of NATO lands are again indifferent to things military...
...When NATO is unsure of Soviet policy, it simply wails...
...The SHAPE command, already troubled by deficient contributions, now thinks its costs may double...
...After a few days or weeks, NATO ground troops, with tactical atomic arms, would be supporting the bombers...
...Moscow still aims, for example, to prevent West German rearmament, and its path to this goal is still France...
...Soviet military power continues to increase," said the May communique, "and the Atlantic powers must continue to give priority to the maintenance of their unity and strength...
...First, the Russians used diplomatic detente, then economic defi now, the Soviet 20th Party Congress hints at an easing of the internal regime...
...Instead, they skipped the beginning of their self-analysis, started in the middle, and showed few signs of reaching an end...
...NATO has also been effective, to some extent, in non-military matters...
...Now they hope Algeria will drain France's strength at the same time, they are telling France that the military threat has ended and with it the need for German rearmament...
...Vagueness led to confusion and procrastination...
...Major innovations in social or cultural activity would bring new problems of financing and organization, which would tend to distract NATO members from their primary duties...
...And NATO troops are necessary to forestall a possible conventional war until true disarmament is achieved...
...So long as Soviet atomic power keeps increasing, it is hard to see how NATO can decrease its own efforts and still keep the balance...
...Dulles originally said he would "consider anything" the others proposed, but later an American diplomat admitted that the main points in the final communique had been drafted in Washington prior to the meetings...
...Economically, the giant infrastructure program (for such installations as airfields and pipelines) has involved a vast problem of cost-sharing, with expenses topping $1.9 billion...
...Its policies vis-avis the USSR have been mere reactions or, worse, lack of reaction...
...Yet, if the ministers' only concrete conclusion was to continue maintaining unity and strength above all, then there is no apparent need to alter NATO's basic nature...
...The ministers in Paris concluded that its military role must go unchanged, despite a decrease in world tension...
...Later, another minister said he had listened to one speaker with no pleasure, to a second with some, and to Spaak's criticism of Dulles with an immense amount...
...Canada's Lester Pearson, long an expansion enthusiast, repeated vague pleas for more and better political consultation...
...contributed little to better coordination at Paris...
...For a long time, the Communists continued the war in Indo-China, thereby keeping France weak and her fear of Germany strong...
...Europe's coordinated early-warning system, approved last December, is still remote...
...When faced with new Soviet policies, NATO becomes a mirror...
...Neither the U.S...
...Result...
...It might have replied that, even if U.S...
...So far, however, these are only theories...
...Here NATO has been most effective, as a deterrent: The Soviets did not attack Western Europe the West gained psychological assurance and, after Korea, became a fighting force...
...Specifically, it needs longer, more frequent and better-prepared meetings with the foreign ministers bigger staffs for the national delegations and more information from their governments and authority to discuss more subjects more deeply before a crisis breaks...
...Italian ideas, too, were vague and repetitions the Germans made no formal proposals and the French, who alone distributed a written paper, were largely ignored...
...It would, in fact, be caught short, having cut reserve manpower and discarded its "outmoded" firepower...
...New economic ventures, for example, would overlap and compete with existing agencies, such as the Organization for European Economic Cooperation...
...Seven years ago, after the Czech coup and the Berlin Blockade, 12 nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty to organize a common defense against the Soviet military threat...
...Politically, the original decision to unite was followed by unparalleled peacetime cooperation...
...Some recent examples: In April 1955, the United States offered atomic information to fellow members before the second Geneva conference, the Big Three foreign ministers met with all their NATO allies last February, the Standing Group, the top-level, usually lop-secret military-planning board, journeyed from Washington to Paris to instruct member countries in the ways of modern warfare new planes, communications, missiles...
...The Council needs, and lacks, support by all national leaderships...
Vol. 39 • June 1956 • No. 24
