Word: nato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...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...