Strategy in Transition

Vague hints dropped by Defense Secretary Wilson during a press conference last week set off such headlines as U.S. WEIGHS CUTBACK IN TROOPS FOR NATO. Next day Secretary of State Dulles said in a press conference: "I am quite sure there is no plan to withdraw NATO forces."

Which Secretary's story was right? Both, reporters learned after some digging and piecing together. Wilson was talking about long-term prospects. Some of the Administration's military planners are trying to sell the President a new defense plan. Under this plan, the U.S. contribution to peacetime overseas forces, both in Europe and Asia, would consist mostly of forces armed with atomic weapons./- The planners believe that strategic and tactical atomic weapons--largely airborne--will eventually outmode conventional land warfare. Hence, ultimately the U.S. could cut down on its overseas divisions while still contributing heavily in planes and atomic bombs.

The reappraisal recognizes another fact about European defense: the value of the U.S. ground troops stationed in Europe has been as much political as military--a means of bucking up European morale. As Western Europe's military strength expands, it makes sense, in the eyes of some U.S. (and British) military planners, to bring U.S. troops back home gradually. As Wilson pointed out last week, such a program does not imply that the U.S. is backing away from its commitments. The important thing, he said, "is not whether we have three divisions or five divisions or any X number of divisions [on the spot], but the fact that we are committed ahead of time [to] the defense of the free world."

But in the short-term perspective, Dulles was right, too. Even when--and if --the new strategy is worked out, the U.S. will not be able to put it into effect until West German and Japanese divisions are armed and ready to replace the U.S. troops that would be withdrawn.

/-For news of a dramatic new U.S. plan for peaceful use of the atom, see SCIENCE.

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