Word: nato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Because of its military potential, ICBM will rewrite all the rules of foreign relations. With ICBM firepower, huge armies will become obsolete. The nature of alliances will be changed; even now, the idea of expanding NATO from a purely military shield into a working community of political and economic interests is being discussed. Barring some new kind of economic or political magnetism, neutralism will become an even greater factor because of the risk of military involvement with either of the ICBM-armed powers. Certainly, statesmen will be able to approach the labyrinthine problems of disarmament from a new basis, once...
...forces have no arms, no combat equipment, no tactical function. From their balconies they sometimes see the visiting warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet at their moorings in the broad, blue Bay of Naples. But Naples is not the Sixth Fleet's base. It is the home of NATO South, a paper command manned by a relative handful of officers and enlisted men whose presence has spawned a fabulous aggregation of 6,000 men, women and children, their dogs, cats, cars and TV sets-perhaps the world's most striking example of the peacetime American Way overseas...
...Land. It all began in 1951, when a few Navy ships dropped anchor in the lovely Bay of Naples. Object: to form the American headquarters for NATO South, which in wartime would command the allied fighting forces of southern Europe but in peacetime would have virtually nothing to do (since each NATO country exercises direct command of its own forces). Soon Navy wives and children also dropped anchor in Naples, began appearing on shipboard at mealtime. NATO South's skipper, Admiral Robert Bostwick Carney, decided that the families were rocking the boat, shifted his headquarters to dry land...
...last week NATO South command listed 692 U.S. officers and men, who were provided "logistic support" (carbon paper, groceries, Kleenex, cigarettes, household appliances, etc., etc.) by 2,103 military and 534 civilian aides in town, supporting a resounding total of 3,166 wives and children. What do they all do? Explained one Navyman: "All those people take in each other's washing...
...this, the British believe, should take about 200,000 men out of the armed forces, and perhaps end the need for conscription. As for NATO, the British would like to pull two of their four divisions out of West Germany and leave the line to a "tripwire force" adequate to flash invasion warnings to the deterrent H-bombers in Britain and the U.S. As the Manchester Guardian put it this week: "General Gruenther's screen across Europe is too weak to stop an assault by Soviet forces in East Germany, but stronger than it need be merely...