Paris: NATO's Last Chance

...The failure to standardize even non-secret equipment is costing the alliance billions of dollars in peacetime, as it might cost millions of lives in war...

...At present, America and Britain, the only atomic powers in NATO, are asking the Continent to accept a strategy which would spare them any major risk, and are simultaneously insisting that the Continent leave them with the sole right to initiate the use of both tactical and strategic atomic weapons...

...But the fact is that nothing can halt this process so long as the world is divided into two power blocs across the middle of Europe...

...It is obviously now essential for NATO to develop the capacity for limited atomic war as a possible option between the present extremes of conventional forces which are inadequate to deal with anything but a frontier incident and strategic air power whose use is suicidal...

...Europe no longer has confidence in America's readiness to invoke this supreme sanction on behalf of her allies...

...The smaller European states, which will be unable to afford their own H-bombs for some time, are appalled at this development...

...If their "declaration of common purpose" means anything, President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Macmil-lan now want to stop this process of disintegration...

...But they themselves share the responsibility for NATO's failure to realize its early promise...

...An alliance pledged to collective security is crumbling into an anarchy of independent thermonuclear powers...

...Moreover, since Russia is now arming her troops for limited atomic war, the West cannot assume that she will not herself initiate it...

...The countries of the free world are interdependent," they said in Washington last month, "and only in genuine partnership, by combining their resources and sharing tasks in many fields, can progress and safety be found...

...National productive capacity is much less important to security now that a long world war is ruled out and the issue is decided by the arms which are operationally available on the first day...

...In the first place, it will be only a few years before France, and perhaps other Continental countries, are able to slart producing their own atomic weapons...

...Nevertheless, if NATO moves in the direction of genuine equality in defense, there will be tremendous new factors of instability to trouble world politics...

...A positive policy for peace settlement is as essential to the survival of the alliance as policy for defense...

...Moreover, the only sort of "limited" atomic war which America has so far envisaged is one which, like Exercises "Carte Blanche" and "Sage Brush," means the annihilation of the country which happens to be the battlefield...

...Because America's conversion to the idea of limited atomic warfare has coincided with her panic over the sputnik, Europeans inevitably see it as a means of sparing the U.S...

...Spaak recently declared: "For the prestige of the European countries, it is not indispensable to reinvent what the United States has already discovered, and the security of the United States will not be imperiled if it makes known to its friends what its enemies already know...

...Thus a European country in the front line of a possible atomic war is bound to insist that it possess for itself a Continental nations suspicious of Anglo-American atomic monopoly LAST CHANCE capacity for massive retaliation at least sufficient to force both sides to keep the war within limits it can tolerate...

...Britain has already acquired the capacity to strike at Russia with H-bombs of her own, and France has given notice of her intention to follow suit...

...But, however attractive a conventional shield might seem in theory, there is no sign that either Europe or America will make the necessary sacrifices to produce it in practice...

...and Russia...

...There is no national argument against specialization in production, providing that the results of specialization are equally available to all...

...So long as the Anglo-Saxon powers shirk this decision, it will be impossible to preserve NATO from final collapse...

...But a country can hope to keep atomic warfare within acceptable limits only if it has the power and the will to meet an unacceptable extension of those limits by massive retaliation...

...For example, it is perfectly reasonable to concentrate all missile production in one or two countries so long as the missiles themselves are generally distributed...

...Changes which have been slowly maturing for several years have suddenly come to a head...

...therefore, Europe can no longer take massive retaliation by America for granted...

...There is a sudden surge of European enthusiasm for large conventional forces as an alternative to limited atomic war...

...In the second place, America may soon be unable to maintain her own deterrent unless she has Continental bases for her intermediate-range missiles: there might well be a period of years in which anti-aircraft missiles have rendered the bomber obsolete while America has not caught up with Russia in intercontinental missiles...

...It has brought home to America the fact that she cannot drop H-bombs on Russia without having her own cities laid waste in return...

...When he returned to London, Macmillan went further still...

...There is a third way out—but it depends upon cooperation with the Soviet Union in a new European settlement and general disarmament...

...In other words, the Continental countries are most unlikely to accept a strategy of limited atomic war unless they have some strategic as well as tactical atomic weapons for themselves...

...In 1949, the European countries had no alternative but to base their security on America's atomic air power— and they felt safe enough in relying on it...

...Europe will reply that it is no less inconceivable that America should be in a position to veto a European decision to use these weapons...

...But the Continent now has a bargaining power incomparably greater than before...

...The choice for NATO at the moment is between atomic interdependence and atomic anarchy...

...The biggest obstacle to agreement inside NATO, as Walter Lippmann has pointed out, is a sudden breakdown of mutual confidence which only drastic action by America and Britain can repair...

...I feel that in the near future the nations of the free world must make an even more significant contribution of their national sovereignty to the common cause than hitherto," he told the House of Commons, to the dismay of the right-wing press...

...And since the Prime Ministers are attending, there is a danger that the Council will content itself with the ritual bromides or, worse still, commit itself verbally to new forms of cooperation without first resolving the conflicts of interest and attitude which are driving its members still further apart...

...Dulles has already said thai it is inconceivable that Europe should be given a veto against an American decision lo use atomic weapons in self-defense...

...Today, some of them feel neither the same need nor the same confidence...

...At present, America and Britain are hoping to fob the Continent off with renewed declarations of readiness to uso massive retaliation and with formulas for "NATO control" of atomic stockpiles...

...The sputnik has altered the balance of power inside NATO even more than the balance between the U.S...

...America and Britain can use altruistic as well as selfish arguments to justify their demand for atomic trusteeship...

...There will be some Continental countries which would rather forego atomic weapons themselves than see them extended to West Germany...

...And there is no doubt that the Soviet Union will have grounds for fear as well as frustration if all the countries of Western Europe acquire the capacity for initiating atomic war...

...Such phrases have aroused great expectations for the coming meeting in Paris...

...And they add insult to injury by describing this new policy as "interdependence...

...from horrors which America is quite content to see inflicted on her allies...

...Denmark and Belgium have been no more ready than Britain and the United States to provide the manpower and equipment which might have given NATO alternatives to massive thermonuclear retaliation...

...It will he a great pity if the NATO Council fail;-, to put forward this alternative...

...Though NATO's General Lauris Norstad is now sponsoring the concept of local atomic defense which Secretary of State John Foster Dulles launched in October, his civilian counterpart, NATO Secretary-General Paul-Henri Spaak, is bitterly resisting it on behalf of most of Continental Europe...

...But they were heard just as loud and confident in 1949...

...Once the NATO powers agree genuinely to share their atomic weapons, the way will be clear to interdependence in the whole field of arms production...

...But, so long as NATO is an alliance of sovereign stales, the decision lo use atomic weapons must lie ultimately with one or more of its sovereign governments...

...Here again, Continental pressure is likely to be effective...

...Petty nationalism throughout the alliance has frustrated its initial aim of building balanced collective forces—even the command structure remains hopelessly unwieldy...

...Too late they are clamoring to make the alliance a reality...

...The one great problem on whose solution all else depends is to find a new strategic concept for NATO which makes sense for both America and Europe...

...In my view, given the present crisis of confidence, the only way out is for America and Britain to give atomic weapons outright to those of their NATO allies which wish to possess them...