Word: nato
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nuclear sharing with West Germany began in 1958, when the Atomic Energy Act was amended to allow the U.S. to provide nuclear armament and information to NATO allies. Officials told Congress that the purpose of the program was to enable our allies to equip planes and train crews; they promised that the warheads would be kept in separate stockpiles under American lock and key and would be turned over to the Allies only in case of attack. And yet, only a few months after the missles arrived, the Defense Department authorized Germany to load them on missiles and planes...
Although the President has been "kept informed of the general program," the New York Times reported recently, "he and other top policy makers have been largely unaware of the specific arrangments made by the Defense Department with the NATO allies." In fact, the President's Press Secretary told newsmen last week that the question of mounting was "a technical matter" which should be referred to the Pentagon...
Though the NATO Treaty is for perpetuity, beginning in 1969 any member may resign. De Gaulle presumably was threatening to do just that-but it will hardly mean the end of NATO. The headquarters of the Alliance will have to be moved from Paris, some NATO supply lines rerouted, and the status of U.S. air and logistic bases in France renegotiated. All this might not prove too damaging, for Paris has hinted that it is willing to consider bilateral defense arrangements with Washington. For NATO, France's departure could be awkward but hardly fatal; for De Gaulle, it would...
More difficult for the U.S. and NATO is the problem of West Germany, which far from wanting out, wants farther in. Though forbidden by treaty to manufacture its own atomic arms, West Germany, as the most powerful industrial and conventional military power in Europe, has of late come to feel keenly its second-class nuclear status in the Alliance-particularly beside Britain and France. Later this month Erhard will visit President Johnson, and a preview of what is on Erhard's mind came not long ago when he told the Bundestag that the U.S. allies "must be given...
...first sending a trusted friend over to make sure that the old pro promised to get himself a hearing aid. Here is Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan turning from a discussion of Red China as the real menace to the West to the question of a new NATO commander, and saying breezily to Kennedy: "I suppose it should be a Russian." Here, again, is Kennedy telling a friend how difficult it was, short of a showdown, to convince Russia's Nikita Khrushchev that the U.S. would not let anybody push it around. "That son-of-a-bitch...