New Challenge to NATO

...It was noted that "any such ultimatum, to be effective, must be clearly received and understood, and that subsequent negotiations would largely depend on the adequacy of communications...

...In the first case, 1.5 million people would be exposed to lethal doses of radiation and another 5 million to the hazard of considerable although nonlethal doses...

...A political observer as dispassionate as French commentator Raymond Aron wrote in Le Figaro: "After all, it took the episode of the ballistic missiles in Cuba to persuade the Kremlin that West Berlin had to be acknowledged as one of the 'vital interests' of the United States...

...The feeling was that no country should be forced by its own partners to turn itself into a nuclear battlefield...

...b) the persistent disunity between France and its George W. Herald is a foreign correspondent now based in Paris...

...They feel the Alliance's first endeavor should be to gain more time before the nuclear threshold is reached by raising its conventional defenses again to a level of 25-30 divisions...

...Before our atomic weaponry could come into play," said one spokesman, "the Red Army might well be in Amsterdam...

...The moment Moscow noticed an ever so slight slackening of purpose among the Allies, it began flexing its muscles again...

...Unless the nato powers quickly change their stance, Aron and many of his colleagues expect the Russians to put Allied nerves to a much more severe test in the months to come—in Berlin or at some other point along the West German border...

...Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau promptly declared that Canada would not feel automatically bound to react to a Russian military foray into West Germany...

...Since the nato treaty does not answer these questions, the Western European Union (weu) has raised them in an up-to-date report on European security submitted to its annual Assembly in Strasbourg last October 14...

...These experts point out that as a result of recent nato defense cuts, a conventional Soviet offensive in Central Europe could be contained by conventional forces for only a few days at most...

...It took considerable prodding from Bonn before President Johnson said that Soviet intervention in West Germany would be met by American counteraction, without spelling out what he had in mind...

...In the second case, at least half of the people in the area would be fatally or seriously injured...

...Since they respect solid power more than anything, a strong and alert nato remains indispensable to preserve peace and pave the road to a genuine detente...

...allies...

...Would the Council's approval have to be unanimous, or would a majority vote suffice...

...MEETING THE SOVIET THREAT New Challenge to NATO By George W. Herald Paris Ever since the end of the Berlin blockade in May 1949, peace in Europe has rested on a tacit agreement that an invisible line exists which neither the East nor the West can cross without triggering World War III...

...They simply refused to "think the unthinkable" in the climate of a budding detente...

...The weu Assembly in Strasbourg drew the lesson of that experience when it declared: "As long as the Soviets conduct their general strategy in the atomic age as if they were still living in the 19th century, the West cannot afford to lead them into temptation...

...Last month, the agreement was placed under a dark cloud, when the Soviet Union claimed Article 107 of the U.N...

...Moscow's surprise reference to Article 107 of the U.N...

...The weu also took up the matter of addressing an ultimatum to Moscow in the event of a Soviet attack, before escalating to tactical nuclear weapons...

...The Strasbourg forum warned that the use of tactical atomic weapons would lead to "an unimaginable disaster for both camps...

...But could American troops launch any atomic missiles without prior assent of the North Atlantic Council...

...The reluctance of Western leaders to openly and frankly examine the options facing them is not hard to understand...

...If the weapons were air-burst, 3.5 million persons would have their homes destroyed...

...Charter gave it the right to intervene unilaterally in West Germany to crush a rise of neo-Nazism...

...The ensuing chaos might bring all operations to a halt...

...Military planners have no past experience to guide them on the question of how military operations could proceed in such circumstances...

...And the Allies reacted about as weakly as they did following Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland, in March 1936...

...They also think it important to finally clarify exactly whose permission would be needed in an emergency before a field commander could make use of atomic arms...

...The report showed the inadequacies of Robert McNamara's strategy of "gradual response," which has become official shape doctrine, and offered a number of suggestions to improve its effectiveness...

...By suddenly invoking a legal right to dispatch troops into West Germany under certain circumstances, the Soviets were making it clear that they no longer rated the Allied defense system there a convincing deterrent...

...in a joint communique, they agreed that they saw no alternative to working for a detente...

...Charter, therefore, apparently was a trial balloon designed to test the West's resolve...

...In a recent ed-itoral Izvestia, the Soviet government organ, cited three main reasons for the skepticism: a) the American overcommitment in Southeast Asia...

...c) the unilateral cuts in national force levels by several nato members...

...President de Gaulle and Chancellor Kiesinger?both still under the impact of the Czech tragedy—were even more cautious...

...In fact, a recent study by prominent European physicists offered the weu Assembly these considerations: ?In a typcial land battle ranging over a front 150 miles long and 60 miles deep in densely populated Central Europe, the firing of 500 to 1,000 tactical atomic weapons would devastate more than one-third of the area and leave the rest severely damaged...

...The concept of escalation from tactical to strategic nuclear warfare could have no possible meaning on the field of battle...

...If John Foster Dulles were still alive, he would no doubt have immediately branded the statement an open challenge to the whole security system he and his predecessor, Dean Acheson, had patiently set up 20 years ago...

...On the other hand, the weu was fearful that the Allies might lose vital time while discussing what to do...

...Concerning West Germany, the report recommended that it should have a veto power, even though the Russians might interpret this as a sign of weakness...

...One does not have to be a cold warrior to fear that this Allied softness will encourage Moscow to push its advantage...

...Another team in the Kremlin may well assume the right to redefine its own and America's vital interests...

...After that, the sole means of stopping the Russian steamroller would be the use of tactical atomic weapons...

...Given these circumstances, it was argued in Strasbourg that the role of the tactical weapons should be kept political rather than military...

...Toward this end, its report proposed the early installation of a "hot line" between the North Atlantic Council and the headquarters of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow...

...Since these weapons would basically rely on fission material, there would still be a radioactive fallout, added to even greater blast effects...

...They failed to realize that it was above all the presence of a strong Allied defense establishment in Western Europe that kept the Russians interested in a detente...

...Instead of being employed in quest of some unattainable military victory, they should be used as a last resort to save peace...

...if they were ground-burst, 5 million...

...As things stand now, nothing can of course be done without the U.S., which keeps the 7,000 nuclear weapons in Europe under lock and key...

...Would West Germany have to be consulted before nuclear weapons were fired from its territory, or before nuclear weapons were fired that would explode on German soil, including the Soviet zone...

...Thus the report urged that "the most rapid and secure communications be forthwith established between saceur (Supreme Allied Commander Europe), the North Atlantic Council, member governments of the Alliance and the President of the United States...

...At any rate, the widespread instantaneous disruption caused by tactical nuclear weapons would hardly differ from the effects of strategic nuclear arms...

...In urging all these precautions, the weu was not motivated by any bellicose spirit...

...In other words, if a verbal ultimatum is rejected, just one or a few tactical atomic weapons should be fired in the hope that the aggressor will come to his senses and call off the attack for fear of an escalation to strategic nuclear warfare...

...On the contrary, its aim was to prevent miscalculations and keep the Russians from engaging in irreversible actions—for no one in the weu has any illusions as to what will happen once the nuclear threshold is crossed...

...The use of so-called clean weapons, which would release a high proportion of their energy in blast and nuclear radiation, would not substantially alter the picture...

...Many of them—including de Gaulle—felt the threat of Soviet aggression had shrunk to almost nothing and nato forces should be radically reduced, if not entirely withdrawn...