NATO's Big Chance

...Now that the implications of the thermonuclear stalemate are more fully understood, the Germans realize that NATO will never fulfil this role...

...Critics of the NATO position have always maintained that German unity could be achieved if the West would agree to the neutrality of a united Germany...

...There is still no sign that France will be able to restore the forces she withdrew from Europe for servico in Algeria...

...After Poland and Hungary, the West can press for a unified, neutral Germany in exchange for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from all Eastern Europe NATO'S BIG CHANCE By Denis Healey London The NATO Council meeting last month was one of the most important since the organization was set up in 1949...

...Nevertheless, it looks as if the NATO Council continued to evade the central military and political decisions which are needed to make sense of the alliance...

...The reason given is always the same: A united Germany must have the right to join NATO, but the Russians will not permit this...

...When Foreign Minister Heinrich von Bren-tano asked his colleagues in the NATO Council what action they would take if the East Germans copied the Hungarian example, he met only an extremely embarrassed silence...

...Though America has now agreed to distribute some of the necessary missiles, tliey will remain harmless until Congress agrees to give foreign governments the ability to start atomic war...

...America would have to agree with her European allies on the new positions for NATO troops...

...Yet it is known that each of the NATO governments in turn declared its unwillingness to provide the forces which SHAPE considers necessary for a forward strategy...

...If NATO provides no more than a "tripwire" for the SAC, there is no reason why the "tripwire" must run through the middle of Germany if the Red Army withdraws to the Soviet Union...

...There is, therefore, already the necessary basis for negotiations with Russia on a European settlement which might aim at a NATO withdrawal from West Germany paralleled by a Soviet withdrawal from East Germany and the satellites...

...Germany would have to agree with Poland on their common frontier— for the first time, West German politicians are talking sense about this...

...But the whole context of the German problem has changed in the last twelve months...

...The NATO position on German reunification has made no convincing progress since the Federal Republic joined the alliance eighteen months ago...

...Now is the time for the West to act...

...The West would lose nothing and gain much even if such an offer were refused...

...Though Germany now plans to produce only half the troops she promised, Britain and the U.S...

...Yet Hungary has shown that the Red Army cannot by itself produce a substitute for Stalinism...

...propose to reduce their NATO contingents as German divisions become available...

...A combination of air-reconnaissance and land control-posts with radar could give complete protection against a surprise attack in whatever neutral area was agreed on—and Moscow has offered to consider such a control system in its statement of November 17...

...The neutral states' armed forces would have to be limited in quantity and quality...

...After two months' military repression, Khrushchev is further than ever from solving the Hungarian problem...

...And there are political preconditions, which NATO should already be trying to meet...

...On the other hand, the political gains would be tremendous—the reunification of Germany, the liberation of Eastern Europe, and a giant stride toward general disarmament...

...Moreover, there is still doubt about the role and the availability of tactical atomic weapons...

...All the public statements made in Paris insisted that NATO remains committed to a forward strategy for defending West Germany on the ground against a mass attack by the Red Army...

...Inside the Federal Republic, the Social Democrats, who oppose membership in NATO, have gained on the Christian Democrats at every local election this year...

...The USSR has never in fact offered this, and the West has been most reluctant to propose it for fear that, once Germany had recovered her Eastern Zone, Russia might offer to return the provinces she lost to Poland on condition she abandoned her neutrality and joined the Soviet bloc...

...Can the West afford to withdraw some of its forces in return...

...In fact, SHAPE commander General Lauris Norstad will be lucky if he ever obtains half the divisions which General Alfred Gruenther considered a bare minimum to defend Western Europe, even with the fullscale use of atomic weapons...

...This possibility is increased by America's refusal to make atomic warheads available to her European allies in time of peace...

...The use of tanks and guns against working-class men and women has produced the first large-scale desertions from the Red Army since the Second World War...

...But I believe there is a real chance of its acceptance—provided it is made soon...

...So long as Poland was a helpless Russian satellite, this was indeed a forbidding danger...

...Soviet control of Eastern Europe now depends solely on the presence of the Red Army...

...Khrushchev's attack on Stalin last February knocked the ideological linchpin out of world Communism as an instrument of Soviet policy...

...If NATO does not collectively produce a diplomacy designed to achieve German unity, the West Germans may well exploit their growing military strength to make their own deal with the Russians...

...West Germany will soon be the strongest military lain...

...Yet West Germany has an overriding political interest which none of her allies fully shares: the recovery of national unity...

...And there are many leading Christian Democrats who see German membership in NATO only as a bargaining card for future negotiations with the Soviet Union...

...However much one may regret NATO's military shortcomings, they are a fact, and constitute the strategic basis from which NATO diplomacy must start...

...There is thus reason to believe that the Russians may be sincere in their hints of a European settlement which would permit the withdrawal of the Red Army from Eastern Europe...

...Fear that tactical atomic warfare in Europe might lead to a global thermonuclear holocaust may well prevent NATO from using atomic weapons in a crisis...

...And here lies the source of NATO's major failure as a political alliance...

...The changes in Eastern Europe have produced a situation in which, perhaps for the first time, NATO has the chance of serious negotiations with Russia on German unity—and on much more besides...

...None of the NATO governments has so far made any attempt to establish distinctions between the tactical and strategic use of atomic weapons...

...There are obvious military risks in such a settlement...

...The only essential condition is that American troops should not have to face the political and practical difficulty of a return across the Atlantic if the Red Army should advance by land from Russian territory...

...The Germans now know that there is no road to reunification except diplomacy...

...The offer in itself will strengthen those forces which in Russia as in Eastern Europe want to strengthen the trends developed since Stalin's death...

...But it is doubtful whether the risks and difficulties of such a settlement will be as great as those NATO —or the Russians—will face in any case once Western Germany is armed and trouble in Eastern Germany may lead to a third world war...

...This is the most important political challenge facing NATO...

...power in NATO, and second only to the Soviet Union in Europe as a whole...

...If promises mean anything, real progress appears to have been made in the agreements on political consultation, and a new strategic directive removed some of the confusion surrounding nuclear warfare...

...The Hungarian tragedy underlined the lesson...

...There is little doubt that when the Adenauer Government first decided to join NATO, many of its supporters believed that with German help NATO could be made strong enough to force the Russians out of Eastern Germany...

...The tripwire might even be pulled back to the Western frontier of Germany...

...The political coherence of an alliance depends on its ability to meet the political interests of its members...

...Yet in fact NATO's diplomacy is still based on the assumption that the Western alliance is, or will soon be, strong enough to hold the Red Army in Central Europe...

...The NATO armies are still essentially a "tripwire" to activate the SAC...

...The dismantling of Beria's police empire removed the physical means by which Russia controlled the Communist parties in the satellite states...

...In short, the effectiveness of NATO as a deterrent to Soviet aggression still depends wholly on America's ability to retaliate by atomic bombing of Russian cities...

...If we miss the chance of negotiations now, we may have to meet a new form of Stalinism or a rigid military dictatorship...

...And the guarantee that America's atomic striking power will be available to Europe in case of need rests not on the North Atlantic Treaty—the Strategic Air Command is not under NATO's orders—but on the fact that the Red Army cannot advance in Central Europe without killing American soldiers...

...They are not an effective land defense force, and they are unlikely to become one unless NATO takes some difficult strategic decisions and its member states make the sacrifices necessary to implement them...