THE CONGRESS: A Matter of Timing

“Every bullet, every item, has been planned because of a particular need for this somewhere. If you cut it, you will not achieve some vital purpose.” So Secretary of State Dean Acheson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week in his precise and impressive manner.

Lacking any current evidence of Russian marauding, the Administration was doing its considerable best to imbue its $1,450,000,000 military-aid progam with an air of urgency and inviolability. Said Acheson : “The Soviet Union today maintains the largest peacetime military force in the history of the world . . . The combination of … a huge aggressive force on one side and admittedly inadequate defense forces on the other has created a morbid and pervasive sense of insecurity in Western Europe. The fear is justified. The danger is real, however much some may try to argue it out of existence.”

Acheson insisted that the bill contained “the minimum amount required” to equip “the very modest forces” which Europe had on hand. The U.S. was not arming Europe to resist an all-out attack: “What is required is rather sufficient strength to make it impossible for an aggressor to achieve a quick and easy victory.”

Hard Core. To bolster Acheson, the U.S.’s highest brass marched up to Capitol Hill. Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley, flanked by the Navy’s Admiral Denfeld and the Air Force’s General Hoyt Vandenberg, spoke for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Said Missouri-born Omar Bradley, whose vivid prose is the match of Acheson’s: “We can surely anticipate that any aggressor will alternatively press and quell the crises, hoping to hold the [North Atlantic Treaty] powers in perpetual irresolution. But irresolution has no apology. It is born of fear and selfishness and of such meanness that all despise it.”

The Joint Chiefs, he told John Kee’s House Committee, had reviewed all European requests in the light of certain basic strategic assumptions. Among them: 1) “The U.S. will be charged with the strategic bombing . . . The first priority of the joint defense is our ability to deliver the atomic bomb.” 2) “England, France, and the closer countries will have the bulk of the short-range attack bombardment and air defense.” 3) “The hard core of the ground power in being will come from Europe.” The program, Bradley said, was “an opportunity to gain, at a minimum expense, additional measures for our own security.”

No Plan. Few legislators disputed the need for military aid; but many were critical of the manner, timing, and amount. Harry Truman had asked for virtually a free hand to allocate arms and money wherever and whenever he thought they were needed, on whatever terms he chose. Administration spokesmen admitted that they could not estimate accurately how long the program might run, or how much it would ultimately cost.

Above all, Congressmen had heard no convincing evidence that a unified, detailed plan for area defense existed anywhere—a suspicion bolstered by the departure of the three U.S. Chiefs of Staff last week to confer with Europe’s military heads. Such a plan presumably would not exist until the council authorized by the Atlantic pact began to function, and even those most intent on helping Europe to arm had no wish to do it piecemeal. Said New York’s new Senator John Foster Dulles: “If you don’t make the mold before pouring in the molten metal, you will be confronted with a dozen molds to pour it in when the stuff is ready.”

At week’s end, Dulles and Michigan’s Arthur Vandenberg, leaders of Republican foreign policy, conferred with Secretary Acheson. Recognizing that a flat refusal of military aid would be a serious blow to U.S. friends in Europe, the two Republicans suggested a sharply curtailed program totaling only $700 million. It would authorize shipment of $450 million worth of surplus arms (at a budgeted cost of only $77 million to put the equipment into usable shape), but cut the cash outlay for new arms to $300 million. Aid to Greece and Turkey ($300 million) would remain untouched. Most important, the program would run only until the Atlantic pact council developed a unified plan of aid.