Word: slessor
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...Slessor and his colleagues sat in seclusion for several weeks, and without bene fit of advisers, produced the first blue print of what is now called the New Look strategy. Churchill was delighted: Slessor was sent to Washington to sell the new idea to the Americans. He found that U.S. airmen had already reached the same conclusion. But the Pentagon's soldiers and sailors were still too firmly wedded to the theory of "balanced forces." They gruffly turned Slessor down. Only when air-minded Admiral Arthur Radford became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did the U.S. adopt...
...Control. In U.S. and British stra tegic atomic-bomber fleets, Slessor sees the world's best hope of keeping the cold war cold. The question is how - and as usual, Slessor has a notion. He calls it Air Control...
...Control began in the '203, when Slessor and the R.A.F.'s Air Marshal Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris used it to subdue rebellious Arab tribes in Mesopotamia. The rebels got fair warning: cease raiding and lay down your arms, or your villages will be destroyed. Those who took no notice were bombed...
Ruthless as it was, Air Control was effective (and probably saved lives), at least in Mesopotamia. Now Slessor wants to use it against aggressive Communists. The Berlin Conference, he argues, proves that "there is not the smallest chance of agreement by the normal civilized methods . . . with the Communists." Last week, in a major BBC broadcast which presumably had the blessing, if not the backing, of the British government, Slessor offered this alternative...
...envisage the bomber fleets taking off at the drop of a hat to slaughter millions of defenseless people," said Slessor. "In a situation like, say, the Czech crisis of 1938, the first step would be a clear warning in secret that any attempt at a solution by force would bring the guarantee into operation. If that did not work . . . the people concerned should be told clearly-by radio and pamphlets dropped from the air-what will happen if their government uses force, and warned to evacuate a specified list of cities . . . At the same time, we should move the bomber...