Nuclear Force For N.A.T.O.

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30144, 30 May 1963, Page 12

Nuclear Force For N.A.T.O.

The Atlantic alliance has been in disarray, economically, politically, and militarily since President' de Gaulle’s celebrated press conference in January. The first step in rebuilding the military unity the alliance shared for more than a decade before 1962 was taken by the Ministerial Council of N.A.T.O. at Ottawa when it agreed to the establishment of an inter-allied nuclear force, which will be built on Britain’s obsolescent Vbomber force (with British bombs), fighter - bomber squadrons from eight other N.A.T.O. members, including France and West Germany (with American bombs under American control), and three American Polaris submarines stationed in the Mediterranean. The components will be assigned to N.A.T.O under the special command of a European deputy to the supreme commander in Europe. General Lemnitzer. but will remain under national control if needed. This agreement may restore some harmony to the alliance, which in recent months has looked little more cohesive than the disunified Communist bloc; but it is a modest step and will .tot bridge the serious political gaps between Britain, France, and the United States over the organisation and control of the nuclear deterrent. The force brings no real accretion to N.A.T.O. strength; and in deference to France, which insists on a purely national nuclear force, the N.A.T.O. force will be treated more or less as an evolutionary development of the N.A.T.O, system. It will not even have a name. France, as the “ New " York Times ” says, is given a semantic victory. For France the force merely means a shift in command For Britain it means the multi-national force Mr Macmillan and President Kennedy agreed to establish at their Nassau meeting. For Europe it merely means that Europeans will share in the planning of nuclear defence and that a foundation has beea laid to give N.A.T.O additional strength Britain first proposed the multi-national force to retain second place in what a “ Daily Telegraph ” commentator described as the “ Allied nuclear pecking "order”. The plan adopted, with some compromises, is merely a pilot project compared with the much more comprehensive American plan for a multi-lateral force— a fleet of Polariscarrying surface ships collectively owned by the nations subscribing to it. controlled by an -international staff, and manned by mixed crews from the various nations. The difference between “ multi- * national “ and “ multi- “ lateral “ may not seejn

wide; but because the American plan would eventually merge national deterrents into an international framework from which they could not be “ un- “ scrambled ”, it has met opposition not only from France, but from Britain, too; and no agreement is possible while both countries refuse to recognise that the unified control of nuclear weapons within the alliance cannot be reconciled with national deterrents. Even the multi-lateral force goes only part of the way towards the goal of an integrated N.A.T.O. nuclear force to which the United States would supply warheads under joint control. But if France and Britain block the creation of a multi-lateral force, the United States, too, bears some responsibility. The essence of the Atlantic alliance is that there should be equality among its members. There is no equality in national deterrents; and there is none when Europe has little voice in controlling American warheads. American laws forbidding the sharing of nuclear control probably bar the way to an integrated N.A.T.O. nuclear force as much as President de Gaulle.