WESTERN EUROPE: Strong Words

To the statesmen of its 13 North Atlantic allies assembled in Paris, the U.S. this week spoke with measured bluntness. Unless the French Assembly acts within a few months to approve the European Army, said U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, there will be “an agonizing reappraisal” by the U.S. of its basic policy in Europe.

The implication was plain: continued delay in formation of the six-nation European Army (including twelve West German divisions) might mean withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Continent. His warning and his urgency reflect the U.S. conviction that Russian progress in atomic and thermonuclear weapons has increased, as Dulles said, in “the quality of the danger.”

Dulles’ speech was strong talk, and spoken clearly enough to guarantee fresh debate, self-examination, alarums and recriminations within the democratic alliance. Afterward, leaving the council chamber where the NATO foreign ministers and defense ministers had just convened for their twelfth formal meeting since NATO’s birth, Dulles spoke even more emphatically to 200 newsmen.

Suicide Alone. “We are not so much interested in getting German troops,” said he, “as we are in a situation in which the Western nations, especially France and Germany, will not commit suicide.” He paused. “But if they decide to commit suicide, they may have to commit suicide alone.”

Some of the assembled correspondents gasped. Dulles went on.

“If EDC is to be created,” he said, “it will have to be created soon. There are strong forces working to bring this unity about. But there are contrary forces working to prevent it, and it would be illusory to think that the occasion would always be there.” His talk of suicide referred not so much to immediate military threat as to the historical war-breeding potential among West Europeans themselves. The EDC plan was drawn up by the French, the Germans and other Western Europeans, and not by the U.S., Dulles went on. It has become a significant symbol of “whether there was to be a sincere, rational attempt to put France and Germany together again” and thereby end the hostility which had “threatened Western civilization for the last 200 years.” The Russians were trying to divide the Western allies; the rest of the world would now watch, and judge by the “significant symbol” of EDC, whether the Communists would succeed.

Agonizing Re-Appraisal. The reporters pressed him. If EDC is not approved soon, one asked, just what does the U.S. plan to do—withdraw from its European commitments? The U.S., Dulles replied, would not renege on its North Atlantic

Treaty commitment to go to the aid of each and every one of the 13 NATO allies in the event any is attacked. But, he added, “the disposition of our troops would, of course, be a factor in the agonizing reappraisal I spoke about.” There would be, he added, “a re-study” of ways of keeping the U.S. commitment to NATO. Congress, he said, is already impatient for European unity and it will soon be considering whether to spend more money to aid the European allies.

It could hardly have been put more plainly.