Soviet Forces

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1949, Page 5

Soviet Forces

Throughout this struggle for freedom in Western Europe there has been in existence, behind the Iron Curtain, the greatest peacetime combination of military forces the world has ever known.

“The fact that such forces exist, and can be set quickly in motion, constitutes a form of pressure which has helped to maintain unpopular minorities of Communist conspirators in power in Soviet satellites, and in the case of the coup of Czechoslovakia undoubtedly played a large part in putting them in power.’* Mr Acheson said that in the light of the North Atlantic Treaty, and with the military-assistance programme, no aggressor would dare gamble on the possibility of provoking total war. “An invasion of Western Europe would mean total war, in which the aggressor, would be putting its strength against the combined strength of the Atlantic Pact nations,]’ he continued. “That is a choice which no nation would make unless it believed swift military action could gain it enough usable miliary potential to more than balance-the remaining forces arrayed against it.” Mr Acheson continued: “It is the aim of this programme to insure that successful swift and comparatively effortless military action by an aggressor would be impossible.” Mr Acheson rebutted the contention that the programme could be cut down, and said: "The programme has been designed for the minimum level expenditure which makes sense in view of the political and military objectives to be achieved,”