Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Sputniks, Allied Differences Make Coming NATO Conference Crucial Regardless of who represents the United States, the impending NATO conference is...
...This would make it clear, better than any verbal declaration, that Europe will not run out on the United States and the United States will not run out on Europe if Khrushchev or any other Soviet ruler launches some mad attack...
...Fortunately, the picture of Western unity is not all dark...
...National, class and party antagonisms have abated in a Europe that has recovered from war devastation with amazing speed and is now enjoying widespread well-being...
...The entire situation in the eastern Mediterranean has deteriorated since Yugoslavia under Tito concluded an alliance with Greece and Turkey a few years ago—an alliance that could make sense only against the Soviet Union...
...For Europeans, long and unnecessarily nervous about a "trigger-happy" America, now show some signs of worry that America might quit in the face of a nibbling Soviet offensive...
...The fact that it survived is the best proof of its indispensability...
...It would be visionary to imagine that all differences of national policy can be removed by a conference, that Britain or Germany can be induced to feel as strongly about Formosa as the United States does, that France can win 100-per-cent support for its Algerian policy from the United States and Britain...
...It would also be an excellent idea if the chief American representative were to go to West Berlin and make it clear in an official address that the United States will not abandon this exposed outpost, any more than any other part of free Europe...
...The feeling in Washington and London was that, if Tunisia could not get arms from the West, there would be a turn to Moscow...
...But differences can be reduced by frank and friendly discussion, and the machinery for political consultation among NATO members can be improved...
...The Korean War showed, for instance, that Britain and France did not attach as much importance as the United States to defeating Red Chinese imperialism...
...WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Sputniks, Allied Differences Make Coming NATO Conference Crucial Regardless of who represents the United States, the impending NATO conference is an event of high and urgent importance—perhaps a "make or break" conference for the Western alliance...
...Three NATO members, Britain, Turkey and Greece, are at loggerheads over the status of Cyprus...
...The last German national election was an emphatic popular endorsement of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's policy of giving solidarity with NATO top priority in German foreign policy...
...The French had offered Tunisia arms, but on terms which Prime Minister Bourguiba considered unduly restrictive of Tunisian sovereignty...
...Britain did not even break off diplomatic relations with Peking during the fighting...
...However, the necessity for thrashing out existing misunderstandings and tightening the alliance in every feasible way has been enhanced by the Soviet launching of earth satellites and boast of possessing the intercontinental missile...
...The shoe was on the other foot at the time of the Suez crisis in November 1956...
...This was the most serious strain placed on the existence of NATO...
...Franco-German relations are better than they have been at any time in modern history, with the return of the Saar to Germany removing the last apple of discord between these two nations...
...Still another example of discord within NATO is the recent French indignation over small shipments of American and British arms to Tunisia...
...Now that pact, for all practical purposes, has ceased to exist, with Tito veering toward Moscow and Greece and Turkey in bitter disagreement about Cyprus...
...For there are issues on which NATO members are at odds among themselves and others on which their degree of concern markedly varies...
...The opposition to the arming of the German Federal Republic is now virtually dead...
...On a recent visit to Turkey, however, I found Greek and Turkish officers working together amicably under the command of an American general in a NATO base at the port of Izmir...
...At the very least, one must expect an intensification of the Soviet war of nerves, to which the most effective Western answers will be clear demonstrations that the front is unbroken...
...Then the United States strenuously opposed the measures which its oldest European allies, Great Britain and France, took to safeguard their interests against President Nasser of Egypt...
...Two such demonstrations would be the delivery of tactical atomic weapons to the Continental NATO powers and the granting by these powers of missile sites for the use of the United States...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 50
