What Can We Do?

The statesmen arrived in a cloud of hopeful generalities. NATO must be transformed into "a more effective agency for consultation and cooperation," said Canada's "Mike" Pearson. John Foster Dulles talked of searching out ways of "advancing NATO from its initial place into the totality of its meaning."

But in the sweaty spring heat of the conference room in Paris' Palais de Chaillot, the 15 NATO foreign ministers seemed to have many ideas about what NATO should not do, very few about what it should. "We have no solid idea of what to pursue," admitted NATO's able Secretary General Lord Ismay. "Some people seem to think that we need work to do to keep us out of mischief."

The Negatives. Dulles had talked tentatively of NATO channeling aid to underdeveloped countries in the Middle East or North Africa. But even before the conference opened. Britain's Selwyn Lloyd rejected the idea of NATO aid in the Middle or Far East, pointing to the Baghdad Pact as a better instrument in the Middle East, the Colombo Plan in Asia. And the French stiffly declared that they were quite capable of supplying all the economic aid North Africa needs and wanted no help from their allies.

France's unpredictable Foreign Minister Christian Pineau startled his colleagues by producing an elaborate, though vague, plan for "a world economic development agency" under U.N. Designed to include the Russians and to prevent an economic cold war, it envisioned a central bank to make long-term loans and a worldwide system of price supports for raw materials produced by underdeveloped countries. Pineau and Premier Guy Mollet are scheduled to visit Moscow late this month. Most of Pineau's colleagues suspected his plan was chiefly intended to make a good impression in advance.

Dulles listened, chewing on the end of a pencil. Then he spoke, beginning by reiterating the need for maintaining the West's defenses. The most urgent new problem was how to keep the underdeveloped countries out of the Communists' hands. Then. he. too, launched into negatives. The U.S. did not think NATO should be converted into an economic body, either to channel aid or to plan it. If NATO tried to develop economic programs to help, it might be misrepresented as a revival of Western colonialism in economic form. Dulles favors expanding NATO's political instead of its economic role. He would set up a sort of super-Atlantic political standing committee, where "people of stature" second only to the foreign ministers would meet regularly to thresh out such divisive issues as Cyprus. North Africa and the Middle East. He proposed the appointment of "three wise men" to study the idea.

Embarrassing Pressures. Much of the new impulse to broaden NATO was compounded more of embarrassments than of urgency. With the Soviet talking peace, it was embarrassing to some to have the Atlantic community talking only of arms. Some of the smaller nations, wanting aid which would inevitably come from the U.S., hoped NATO could make such aid more anonymous--and therefore without strings or need of gratitude. The old Big Three (U.S., Britain, France) were a little sensitive about the demand from other NATO nations for more voice in the councils of the mighty. Last week Canada's Pearson, going all out, urged NATO development "to the point where no member would think of taking actions which affected the others in any substantial way, either politically or economically, without prior discussion."

Rather than grapple unpreparedly with the issues raised by Pearson, the NATO ministers quickly approved Dulles' suggestion of a committee, and named Canada's Pearson, Italy's Gaetano Martino, and Norway's Halvard Lange to see what they could think of by next fall.

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