The Hard Way

In an atmosphere of urgency, the Council of Foreign Ministers (the Big Three) and the twelve-nation North Atlantic Treaty Council met last week in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria. The ministers were in essential agreement before they met and they were in essential agreement when the sessions ended. But in the course of their discussions the urgency fizzled out. What might have been a landmark in the West's progress toward self-defense degenerated into a frustrating argument about details and timing.

Two Courses. The initial sense of urgency rose out of the realization that at any time the Communists might attack Western Europe, as they had attacked Korea. Washington, newly awakened to the immediacy of the danger, wants to hurry with the rearming of Europe. France and Britain are dragging their feet.

Western Europe has not the shadow of a ghost of a chance to defend itself without U.S. help. And the U.S. has no reason to consider as an asset a Europe which stays at or near its present defenseless state. These two facts, considered coolly, mean that the U.S. has only two practical courses: 1) demand a maximum effort toward rearmament by European nations, or 2) pull out of Europe militarily and economically rather than waste men and materials on a hopeless proposition.

The U.S. has never put the choice in those clear terms to the European governments. At the Waldorf meeting it failed signally to do so. In fact, four days before the Big Three conference at the Waldorf, President Truman announced that more U.S. divisions would be sent to Europe. Truman attached no strings. By this action he deprived Secretary of State Acheson of his chief bargaining weapon in dealing with his fellow ministers.

Acheson presented to the conference of the North Atlantic Treaty powers a U.S. plan for European defense. Its main points:

1) An integrated Western European defense force (including U.S. units) under a supreme commander (tacitly understood to be an American). 2) Employment of all the available manpower which can be mustered, including troops from Western Germany. 3) Special U.S. help to any nation which makes a maximum effort with its own resources.

Inevitable Answer. Most of the argument at the CFM and the NAC turned on point 2, the rearmament of Germany. Instead of telling the European nations what the conditions of defense had to be, the U.S. requested agreement on rearming Germany and on other actions unwelcome to some of the Europeans. From France's Robert Schuman and some others, the U.S. got the inevitable answer: let's wait a while.

Secretary Acheson, who is at his best in this kind of negotiation, wrestled diplomatically with one European nation after another. Doing it the hard way, he achieved conference communiques which stated an agreement in principle.

The spirit surrounding this agreement, however, was anything but the sense of unity and hurry that the situation demanded. It was noted that ailing Ernest Bevin had a hard time keeping awake at some meetings. Unless somebody or something prodded the West out of its present mood, the defense of Europe would snooze along through another fateful year--and it might be Free Europe's last.

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