Washington’s View Doubted

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31580, 18 January 1968, Page 9

Washington’s View Doubted

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Jan. 17. Britain’s decision to cut its defence budget and speed up its military withdrawal from South-East Asia is almost certain to reduce America’s forces in Europe and increase United States responsibilities in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, according to James Reston, of the “New York Times” News Service. President Johnson and the Secretary of Defence (Mr Robert McNamara) have been trying to avoid this prospect for years, Reston writes. In fact, they have been urging Britain to pursue a policy east of Suez it could not afford, and the latest British financial crisis has merely hurried along what was probably an inevitable process of retrenchment. Historically and psychologically, it is a sad moment, but economically it may be a good thing. As long as Britain remained in Singapore, the United States did not feel quite so lonely, but the British forces there were more important as a symbol than as a military reality, and in the end it will probably be better to have Britain strong economically at home than pretending to be a world power in Asia. Of course, Washington officials are saying, as they usually do when the British retreat from old Imperial responsibilities, that the United States is not going to fill the vacuum, and in the present

mood of retrenchment in Washington, this is good politics. , . But it is probably had strategy and, regardless of what is being said publicly here for the moment, privately officials are already talking about a re-deployment of American forces from Europe to Asia. The United States now has five divisions plus two brigades in Western Europe, or about 235,000 men, plus their families, which add considerably to Washington's balance-of-payments problem. There is not likely to be any sudden withdrawal of any large part of the American forces from Germany, but as the huge C-5A transport aircraft come into production tn the next few years, the capacity of the United States to move power quickly to any part of the world from a central reserve will increase substantially. Then, if not before, it may be practical to talk of redeploying at least two United States divisions now stationed in Europe.

Meanwhile, Washington is now having more trouble than is generally realised in coming to a satisfactory arrangement with Spain over the future of United States bases in that country. General Franco is unhappy over Washington’s failure to back him in his dispute with the British over the future of Gibraltar, and the Treasury in Washington is unhappy with the effect of those bases on its balance of payments. So there may be another adjustment of forces and finances there. This does not mean that the United States is likely to take over from the British in Singapore and Malaysia. The rising political cry here is that the United States is already overextended and over-committed, but Washington will now be hearing more from Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minis-

ter of Singapore, about a “N.A.T.0.-type arrangement” for the defence of South-East Asia. More attention is now likely to be paid to the development of stronger collective security arrangements among the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines’ and, hopefully, Japan. For some time, anticipating the ultimate withdrawal of the British from that part of the world, officials here have been talking about establishing a naval squadron from the Seventh Fleet in the Indian Ocean, and, again, as longerrange aircraft become available, new strategic concepts for the defence of this vast area from the Indian subcontinent to Japan are likely to involve the United States more and more as a Pacific power. For the time being, however, Washington is more concerned about the immediate trends towards restrictionism than it is in the longer-range

trends towards the redeployment of United States power to the Pacific. Great efforts were made here to persuade the British Foreign Minister (Mr George Brown) that Britain could, with America’s help, deal with her financial crisis and still not cancel the Fill aircraft contract or pull out of Singapore and Malaysia. The efforts failed on political and psychological, as well as financial grounds, for it seemed bard to impose austerity on the British people at home while keeping up the pretence of military strength east of Suez. The state of the alliance, in short, is not good and is getting worse. Collective security gives way to financial security in the crisis, and the result, as usual, is that more and more of the burden falls on the United States precisely at the moment when that burden is becoming a political issue with the American people.