Bound Together

Almost as soon as the North Atlantic Treaty, in its blue goatskin binding, was safely tucked away in the State Department archives, eight of the signers went one step further. They asked Secretary of State Dean Acheson if they could now expect arms from the U.S. No facts or figures were mentioned, though rough estimates put the first-year cost somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion. Acheson promised to see what he could do.

It was a bold, even risky step for the Secretary of State to take. Before the Senate could vote on the Atlantic pact (which requires a two-thirds majority), Acheson would be forced to ask a handout from a Congress which still hoped to get through the session without saddling a deficit on the country. If pact and handout were wrapped too tightly together, Acheson apparently feared, Congress might reject both. So Dean Acheson set out to prove that arms and the pact logically belonged together--but were really separate. It took some twisting of the tongue, even for a practiced diplomat.

Arms for Europe, he explained, was a logical extension of ECA and the Atlantic pact, the final peg in a policy. But arms assistance was not directly "a product of the pact--an instrument which is not yet in effect." On the contrary, said Acheson, "even without the existence of the North Atlantic pact, the need for assistance and the recommended response of this Government would be the same." So, he concluded emphatically: "These requests and our replies therefore in no sense represent a price tag to be placed upon the pact."

Essential Sequel. But there was no doubt about the State Department's real feelings in the matter. To express them to the nation, Acheson had already called on Chief of Staff Omar Bradley. Speaking before the Jewish War Veterans in Manhattan, Infantryman Bradley made the point with soldierly precision: "Although the North Atlantic pact is an agreement on policy for our common defense, it is evident that policy without power is like law without enforcement ... A military assistance program is obviously an essential sequel to the pact.

"We cannot count on friends in Western Europe if our strategy in the event of war dictates that we shall first abandon them to the enemy with a promise of later liberation. Yet that is the only strategy that can prevail if the military balance of power in Europe is to be carried on the wings of our bombers and deposited in reserves on this side of the ocean."

To the Ramparts. To Bradley, both the pact and "some military assistance" were needed if Europe was to have both the means and the will to resist aggression. "The North Atlantic pact," said Bradley, "would enable free nations of the Old World and the New to funnel the great strength of our New World to the ramparts of the Old, and thus challenge an enemy where he would transgress . . . Not until we share our strength on a common defensive front can we hope [for] a real deterrent to war."

After his speech, Bradley journeyed to Florida to hash out the U.S.'s own military problems with his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Admiral Louis Denfeld, the Air Force's General Hoyt Vandenberg and Acting Chairman Ike Eisenhower (see cut). At week's end, support for Bradley's words came from a man who was qualified both as a soldier and as a diplomat. Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith spoke with the experience of three years as U.S. Ambassador to Moscow: "The same compelling reasons that prompted us to launch the Marshall Plan and to join the Atlantic pact have led us to develop this military assistance program. It all adds up to security . . . The sense of fear that still prevails has made these positive actions necessary . . . The antidote to fear is united strength, clearly stated and openly displayed."

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