Word: nato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Eight years after its birth, NATO has become a sensitive and nervous problem child. Its raison d'etre has changed radically, along with transformations in military and diplomatic tactics. Yet, the fears and objectives of its Continental members have failed to keep pace with other developments, forcing the U.S. to tread a shaky line between political and military realities...
...original notion behind NATO's inception was the establishment of a deterrent military force which, in the event of war with the USSR, would give the U.S. Strategic Air Command time to strike one deadly, retaliative blow which would presumably bring the Kremlin to its knees. Vital to this concept was America's monopoly of nuclear weapons. When this monopoly was broken, nuclear warfare became the vital element in military thinking, and America revamped its strategy along the lines of "massive retaliation." The advent of nuclear weapons called for a reduction of ground forces, and in 1955 NATO's goal...
...Life is returning to normalcy. We must exert all efforts to ease international tensions." Thus, fortnight ago, Nikita Khrushchev called for a change of pace in Russian diplomacy, which for weeks past has consisted largely of sending threatening notes all over Europe, warning NATO allies not to allow atomic bases within their borders. Last week, obedient to Khrushchev's signal, Russia began spraying the air with a new set of spitballs...
...Russians probably had not foreseen. The day after the note was made public, West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer called in Soviet Ambassador Andrei Smirnov and spent two hours discussing it with him. What was all that talk of a demilitarized Germany and a German withdrawal from NATO? How, demanded Adenauer, did this square with suggestions to West Germany that, even without sacrificing her ties with the West, she might hope to enjoy "the spirit of Rapallo" (the Russo-Germany treaty...
Clearly angered by the questions, Moscow abandoned its sweet reassurances and got off a truculent note to Bonn. Unless West Germany is reconciled to winding up as "one big cemetery," warned the Russians, she, too, had better refuse to accept any NATO atomic bases. What was more, there could be no serious talk of German reunification unless Adenauer abandoned his idea of acquiring tactical atomic weapons for his new army...