The Indispensable Argument

After all the tumult of Asia, Dwight Eisenhower stepped out of his special train onto an enormous red carpet in Paris' Gare de Lyon to a reception correct in its pomp but cool in the reserve visible in the face of Charles de Gaulle. Despite their old acquaintance and friendship, the Presidents of France and the U.S. were cast willy-nilly as antagonists in the bitterest conflict in the history of the ten-year-old Atlantic alliance.

Four days before Ike's arrival, as Cabinet members and top military brass of 15 nations descended on Paris, the annual NATO Council meeting had opened. The setting was glossier and glassier than ever before. To replace the sagging "temporary" prefab it has occupied since 1952, NATO now inhabits a six-story, A-shaped (for "Atlantic") building containing $10 million worth of Danish and Belgian furniture, German and Dutch electronics devices, Italian marble, British kitchen equipment, U.S. airconditioning, and (alas) a French telephone system. But as if to prove Parkinson's law of "plans and plants,"* the first sessions in NATO's new headquarters involved a skittish probing of the basic military and political assumptions on which NATO rests.

France Alone. Fifteen months ago, France's De Gaulle opened his demands that NATO have responsibility for coordinating Western policy all around the world. Instead of confining itself to averting Soviet aggression in Europe, he argued, NATO should bind its members to support one another's interests everywhere--and specifically to support France in revolt-torn Algeria. To frame common NATO policy, De Gaulle suggested the formation of a three-power superdirectorate composed of the U.S., Britain and France.

With the outspoken support of the British (who did not want to share a favored position) and the smaller NATO powers (who did not want to be further left out), the U.S. ignored De Gaulle's proposals. Partly to put pressure on Washington, partly because he is convinced that "France must defend itself by itself and in its own fashion," De Gaulle retaliated by striking at the foundation stone of NATO strategic planning: the concept of an integrated, internationally commanded defense force.

De Gaulle began by withdrawing much of his Mediterranean fleet from NATO control. Then he refused NATO permission to stockpile U.S.-controlled atomic weapons in France. And for the past year he has obdurately blocked the plans for integrated air defense of Europe advocated by NATO's European commander, U.S. Air Force General Lauris Norstad.

Of NATO's Continental members, France is the only one that has refused Norstad authority to send its planes into immediate action in event of a Soviet attack, the only one that has refused to hook into the Europe-wide air-warning-and-command net that NATO hopes to finish building by 1961. (Given the small size of Western Europe--Paris lies only 350 miles from the Communist frontier of East Germany--this is roughly like refusing to agree to coordinated air defense of Chicago and Minneapolis.)

Starchy Substance. U.S. irritations first broke out into the open fortnight ago when General Nathan Twining, airman head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, bluntly told a "secret" session of NATO's military committee that French obduracy over air defense and atomic weapons was heavily responsible for NATO's inadequate state. When Twining's remarks were leaked to the Associated Press, France's touchy officialdom howled with injured pride. The touchiness increased with the U.S. abstention in the U.N. Assembly vote on Algeria, which France did not take as indifferently as the U.S. expected (TIME, Dec. 21) and with Eisenhower's joint declaration with Tunisian President Bourguiba that the continued fighting in Algeria was "a cause of grave concern." When Secretary of State Herter, arriving in Paris, opened a courtesy call on French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville with the remark that "I have come to speak to you about this week's events," Couve put on the chill act: "I prefer myself to talk about last week and those events that have rather deteriorated relations between France and the U.S."

But starchily as the French behaved, Herter and his colleagues were in no mood to give ground on what they thought mattered. When French Defense Minister Pierre Guillaumat protested the publication--not the validity--of Twining's charges, U.S. Defense Secretary Thomas Gates replied: "My government endorses the military substance of the speech made by General Twining ..." And in his major speech to the NATO Council proposing a ten-year program for the alliance, Herter came close to threats. Said he: NATO must "maintain the principle of an integrated defense system . . . The commitment of large U.S. forces to NATO and our military assistance to NATO is firmly based on this concept . . ."

Down with Egoism! To French dismay, every other NATO member lined up behind the U.S. in defense of integration. Even though De Gaulle has assiduously courted the West Germans, Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss pointedly condemned "special egoistic interests within NATO." And many of the French themselves made it plain that they were out of sympathy with De Gaulle's position.

Although De Gaulle may have been misbehaving more flagrantly than the others, few, if any, NATO partners are entitled to exhibit great moral outrage over lagging integration. Items: R.A.F. planes stationed in Europe are at NATO disposal, but R.A.F. defense units in Britain are not; the Scandinavians allow no NATO planes to be stationed on their soil; the atomic weapons that provide NATO with its Sunday punch are jealously kept under U.S. control by act of Congress.

Basic questions about NATO are kept from public eye by "security," but despite the professional optimism of press-agents, a grey area of ambiguity of authority exists as to what would happen should a real emergency occur. But NATO members seem fearful of examining these awkward truths too closely. Instead, covering their indecision with phrases, the Council members decided last week to abandon the term "integrated" air defense in favor of "unified" air defense and to turn the problem over to NATO's Permanent Council for later decision. In effect, this was to pass the buck to Eisenhower and De Gaulle.

Supporting Cast. And this in turn had the effect of reducing Britain's Harold Macmillan and West Germany's Konrad Adenauer to supporting members of the cast. They were in Paris, too, last week to agree on a unified Western stand at the summit (which Adenauer will not attend, since summits are legalistically the gathering of top World War II victors who have yet to write a common peace treaty on Germany). Plans for the first East-West meeting--the Western leaders contemplate at least four--were quickly arrived at. The time: around April 27, if Khrushchev agrees. The place: Paris, though Macmillan wanted Geneva. The topics: 1) disarmament; 2) the future of Germany "and Berlin"; 3) "EastWest relations," a catchall phrase designed not to reject outright another De Gaulle pet scheme--a joint East-West aid program to underdeveloped nations.

De Gaulle and Eisenhower met privately for only an hour. Ike was as insistent as Herter that integration is the only effective military policy open to NATO (although he could not promise integration of the U.S. atomic weapons supply). De Gaulle, though the NATO Council stood 14 to 1 against him, showed little readiness to moderate his demands for basic changes in NATO, but promised to come up with a French plan for "technical cooperation" in air defense.

The Parisian talks showed basic irresolution at the heart of NATO, and a reluctance to thresh the matter out. But, curiously enough, at a time when the urgency of the cold war has shifted to the Asian front and when there is so much talk of "relaxation of tension" and disarmament about, it was noteworthy that more than half the nations represented at the NATO Council meeting last week announced that they were thinking of increasing their defense spending--though not necessarily in the sector that comes under NATO.

* That "perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse."

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