Realpolitik in the '60s

Civilian strategists have long urged a reduction in the 260,000-man U.S. military force in Western Europe. They point out that the threat of Soviet invasion has receded, that a phased with drawal of U.S. troops -- particularly if met by a parallel Soviet drawdown --might further unlimber the exchange of goods and ideas between East and West.

More immediately, a cutback in European troop levels would do much to ease the balance-of-payments problems that have plagued the U.S. Treasury and drained Bonn's Bundesbank for the past few years. Last week the U.S. routinely announced a reduction of its NATO force that will remove 35,000 men from West Germany, starting next January.

To some it was an auspicious beginning. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield welcomed the pullback as the first move toward paring America's overwhelming military dominance in a self-sufficient Europe. To others, however, it was an open invitation to renewed Soviet belligerence. U.S. Army General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sharply disagreed with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's decision, arguing that "there is no military justification for any reduction of military forces in Central Europe."

Belated Adjustment. The drawdown, resolved during seven months of talks among Britain, West Germany and the U.S., calls for redeployment to the U.S. of two infantry brigades and their support forces (28,000 men), plus four Air Force squadrons (7,000 men and some 100 fighter aircraft--mostly supersonic F-4 Phantoms); they will remain on instant alert for return to West Germany within two weeks in the event of a Soviet attack. Britain negotiated a 10% reduction of its 55,000-man Army of the Rhine, long a drain on Whitehall's sterling reserves. At the same time, the Bundesbank agreed to refrain from converting U.S. dollars into gold, and promised to honor its purchase of $500 million worth of 41% Treasury bonds -- in effect a capital import for Washington --through 1972.

The agreement, which could be altered a year hence if any of its partners has second thoughts, represents a sound and simultaneous tripartite decision in a NATO split by Charles de Gaulle. Most important, it may prompt Moscow to transfer some of its 26 divisions in Eastern Europe to a more sensitive perimeter, Russia's 4,100-mile frontier with China.

In asking for the withdrawal of forces as a check on the increasingly worrisome U.S. gold drain, Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler said that this was a necessary precaution against the possible economic erosion of the Western Alliance. For an America caught up in a war in Asia, and a vigorous Europe with no foreign entanglements, the first major withdrawal of "cold war" troops from the Continent also signaled a belated adjustment to Realpolitik in the '60s.

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