Brainier Board

When the Truman-appointed Joint Chiefs of Staff step down during the next three months, new chiefs will be ready to take over their chairs.

Two weeks ago, Dwight Eisenhower named General Nathan Twining Air Force chief of staff (TIME, May 18), and last week he filled out the J.C.S. roster (see box).

The quality of the new team reflected the care that Old Soldier Eisenhower had taken in choosing it. For chief of naval operations, the President's choice was Admiral Robert Carney, one of the Navy's heavyweight thinkers, who will displace Admiral William Fechteler, a weather-beaten sea dog who seems more at home on a deck than at a desk. As Army chief of staff, one battle-proven general, Matthew Ridgway, replaces another, J. Lawton Collins. For the chairman's job, Ike tabbed Admiral Arthur W. Radford, often rated the best brain in the armed forces, to succeed General Omar Bradley, an able wartime commander who as chairman let himself get entwined in Truman Administration politics.

Some newspaper pundits saw dark implications in Radford's appointment. His nomination was widely interpreted as 1) a victory for the "Asia First" view, 2) a defeat for the Air Force.

Billed as a Pacific Firster because he has outspokenly advocated a blockade of Red China, Radford is actually a global strategist who puts neither Europe nor Asia first. When President Eisenhower was asked at his press conference last week whether the selection of the new Joint Chiefs meant "a shift in emphasis from Europe to Asia," the President impatiently replied that he saw nothing in the Europe v. Asia argument; the world, said the President, happens to be round.

In news reports that Air Force leaders "gulped, gagged and swallowed" at the news of Radford's nomination, there was some substance. Smarting from a $5 billion cut in their 1954 budget, many Air Force generals recalled that during 1949's great 6-36 debate, Admiral-in-revolt Radford went before the House Armed Services Committee and cannonaded against "bomber generals righting to preserve the obsolete heavy bomber."

What Radford attacked in 1949, however, was not strategic bombing as such, but "the theory of atomic blitz warfare." The U.S., he said, should give up the "fallacious concept [of] a short cut to victory"; only a combination of ground, sea and air forces, defensive and offensive, tactical and strategic, could "deter aggression [or], if war is forced upon us . . . win it in a manner which will permit ultimate establishment of a livable, stable peace."

Men who know Radford well do not believe he will carry the bitterness and partisanship of his 1949 war with the Air Force into his new job.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.