Where the News Ends

...What made this exchange even less promising was that our attitude of siding with the Soviet Union in demanding unconditional withdrawal from Suez was calculated to shock and alienate just those groups in Britain which would be most inclined to go along with us in a strong anti-Communist international policy...

...Many although not all the British voices which approved the Eisenhower-Dulles pro-Nasser attitude were voices which had been raised for recognition of Red China and against the rearmament of Germany...

...However great the psychological provocation, in view of the unfriendly American attitude during the Suez crisis, the British decision is a grave and perilous gamble with the security of Britain itself and of the whole Atlantic alliance...

...The suggestion that increased firepower will compensate for manpower cuts, that there will be "more bang for a buck," "more punch for a pound," might seem valid if the Soviet Union did not possess atomic weapons...

...Militarily, the proposed cutback reduces Britain from a major to a medium power, and the effects of the slash are not restricted to Britain...

...What Britain has done has been to put almost all its eggs in the atomic-weapons basket...

...In pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of the favor of these unfriendly neutrals, the United States helped lo vote down reasonable compromise resolutions proposed by such countries as Belgium and Canada...

...If American and British units in West Germany, thanks to tactical atomic weapons, will be able to inflict more destruction, this is equally true for the Soviet units east of the Elbe...

...There is danger that the NATO ground forces, once hopefully designed as a shield against Soviet invasion, will become little more than a tripwire, which may or may not be a deterrent...

...This is a psychologically natural and understandable, if not altogether logical, sequel to the sorry spectacle in the UN Assembly last November, when the United States delegation was consistently voting against our allies...

...Both are appropriate to the situation created for the United States by the drastic slash in defense preparations recently announced by the British Government...

...It is mere self-deception to pretend that the 375.000 men projected for the British armed forces in 1962 will furnish as strong a defense as the 690,000 now under arms or that a cut in arms expenditure of almost 20 per cent next year can be achieved without reducing military power and efficiency...

...Those Britons who favored using force when all efforts at reaching a reasonable negotiated settlement with Nasser over Suez had failed were, as a general rule, those who would be responsive to the idea of a strong Western anti-Communist front...

...Great Britain and France, against the like-minded free countries of Western Europe, and in unison with our mortal enemy, the Soviet Union, and with the unfriendly neutrals of the Afro-Arab-Asian bloc...

...It was an Englishman who would ha\c favored backing up America on almost any anti-Communist issue who said to me, with a distinct suggestion of gloating: "Of course, if you will not allow us to use militun force in defense of what is, to us, a vital economic lifeline, there is no reason why we should go to the effort and expense of keeping up this force...

...Of course, other considerations were pushing Britain to take the plunge of unilateral drastic arms reduction...

...Cuts are already being foreshadowed in Germany, and it will be surprising if other NATO powers do not follow...

...Unfortunately, this is not the ease...

...Military and welfare-state expenses created an intolerable tax burden...

...Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and Yemen, oven if this were attainable, would be a poor trade, in political and military terms, for losing the good will of Britain and France...

...But without the Suez debacle there is every probability that the British arms cuts would have been less sweeping and better coordinated with the defense plans of the other Western powers...

...At the time, it seemed to nie that gaining the good will of Egypt, Syria...

...British forces in Germany and in a far-flung network of bases around the world will be sharply reduced...

...In short, by taking a one-sided stand against Britain, France and Israel, instead of throwing our influence behind a package settlement of the grievances which caused the explosion—a settlement that would have tied up Anglo-French-Israeli withdrawal with a fair solution for Suez and an end of Egyptian blockade and guerrilla activities—we made a bad choice not only between nations, but between groups within nations...

...This is almost an invitation to the Soviet Union to employ a "nibbling" strategy of small acts of aggression, no one of which will seem serious enough to warrant the awesome decision to resort to nuclear warfare...