World: PREPARING FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE

NO enemy is ever entirely reliable. But since the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. and its Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have largely operated on the assumption that, in any major clash of wills, the Soviet Union would behave rationally rather than rashly. That comfortable outlook has been severely jarred by the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, as the NATO Council conceded in Brussels last week. NATO’s guiding precept from now on, concluded the Council in a position paper, must be the unpredictability of Soviet behavior.

“We really don’t know what the Soviet leaders have in mind,” observed U.S. Ambassador to NATO Harlan Cleveland. He referred to the fact that the Warsaw Pact forces moved into Czechoslovakia without having prepared a quisling regime or accurately gauged the Czechoslovaks’ solidarity. Added Cleveland: “If the Russians couldn’t read their close neighbors, the Czechoslovaks, any better than they did in August, how well are they reading us in October?”

Forward Positioning. The NATO Council, which is the organization’s highest policymaking group, declared that, apart from the unpredictability factor, NATO must take immediate action to cope with two new threats in Europe. One is the buildup of Soviet naval power in the Mediterranean that, according to NATO, last week reached a record high of 50 ships. The other is the forward positioning of Red Army troops in Central Europe.

The Soviets seemed to be settling into Czechoslovakia for a long stay. With a treaty signed in Prague, the Russians last week imposed a legal veneer on their occupation. They reserved the privilege to intervene in Czechoslovak affairs whenever they again detect another threat of “counter-revolution.” The Kremlin is likely to use that clause to intimidate First Party Secretary Alexander Dubcek from attempting to reinstate his earlier liberalization policies. On the military front, Moscow gained the right to station troops on Czechoslovak soil indefinitely.

In return for the Prague leaders’ agreement on the treaty, the Soviets promised to send home all non-Soviet divisions in Czechoslovakia and reduce the number of their own divisions within the next months. According to speculation in Prague, seven divisions, armored and motorized, will remain behind. They are equipped with Scud and Frog tactical missiles that can fire either conventional or nuclear warheads. The Soviet command is setting up headquarters at Milovice, 25 miles northeast of Prague, where Russian technicians have already installed a troposcatter communications system that gives Soviet Commander Ivan Pavlovsky instant and unjammable contact with other Warsaw Pact headquarters.

Dangerous Imbalance. Under the treaty, the Soviets agreed to pay part of the upkeep costs of their troops, but the Czechoslovaks are obligated to furnish the garrisons with barracks. The Soviet air force is taking over five fields, from which it will fly MIG-21 interceptors and SU-7 and YAK-28 Firebar fighter-bombers. All in all, the Soviets will leave behind a force sufficient to keep the Czechoslovaks in line and NATO worried about the threat to West Germany’s exposed southern flank.

In addition, the Soviets have moved westward the Red Army’s logistical support system, either expanding existing or establishing new repair facilities and supply and ammunition dumps throughout the East bloc. In fact, the Soviets have assumed what NATO military planners call “an attack posture.” Says a ranking Allied general: “The imbalance between the two forces is so great that it could be dangerously misleading to Moscow and perhaps tempt the Soviets into applying military pressure in the West as well as among their allies.”

NATO has moved expeditiously to counter the growing Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean, where the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s some 50 ships, including two aircraft carriers, still remain more than a match for the Red newcomers. To keep tabs on the whereabouts of the Soviet men-of-war, NATO organized a new air command called MARAIRMED (for Maritime Air Forces, Mediterranean) that will coordinate some 30 reconnaissance aircraft, flying from fields in Turkey, Greece, Italy and Malta. Unfortunately, the alliance so far has taken virtually no other positive military action.

Fall-Back Space. At the annual conference of the Atlantic Treaty Association in Lisbon, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, NATO’s supreme commander since 1963, delivered some long-overdue straight talk about the alliance’s unhappy condition. He rebuked the U.S. for stripping equipment and trained men from its NATO-committed forces for use in Viet Nam and upbraided the Europeans for their unwillingness to develop stronger conventional forces.

Lemnitzer’s main criticism was aimed at Charles de Gaulle, who withdrew France from NATO’s military activities two years ago. The U.S. general finally said in public what military experts have known all along—that France’s refusal to commit itself in advance to let NATO forces use its territory imperils the alliance’s defense position in Europe. In the event of a Soviet thrust, the NATO armies, whose conventional forces are too weak at present to repel a Red Army attack, would have limited space to fall back in. The result, as Lemnitzer puts it, is that NATO forces “would be forced to commit nuclear weapons at an earlier point.” Such a necessity would leave even less time for rationality on both sides to prevail.

Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak, the grand old man of NATO, seconded Lemnitzer’s censure of Gaullist France. While also criticizing the Johnson Administration’s lack of empathy with its European Allies, he faulted France for obstructing the prospects of European unity. Declared Spaak, now 69: “The construction of a united Europe is the only way to save our liberty and our civilization. If necessary, we must pursue [this goal] without France.”

Re-Emphasized Role. The U.S. moved last week to re-emphasize its role as the ultimate guarantor of peace and security in Europe. Whatever NATO’s condition, the Soviets must also reckon that any invasion of Western Europe might bring down the full force of the U.S. nuclear deterrent on the Russian homeland—and World War III. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford visited West Germany and West Berlin to convey firm assurance of U.S. protection. A few days later, Under Secretary of State Nicholas deB. Katzenbach flew to Belgrade for talks with Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who is feeling pressure from Moscow.

Though the U.S. would not automatically respond to an attack on Yugoslavia, as it would to one on a NATO ally, the Johnson Administration nevertheless is eager to alert the Soviets to the U.S. concern. At Czechoslovakia’s request, the U.S. had refrained from any public warnings to the Soviets during the tense preinvasion period in order not to provide the Soviets with another pretense for marching into Prague. Silence having proved futile, the Administration is now determined to impress on the Soviets, given their new mood of unpredictability, that the U.S. will stand by its allies in Europe.