The Limitations of NATO

By PATRICK LORT-PHILLIPS* rhe charge o question the value of friends is to invite disloyalty. And when these friends are nations bound together in a military alliance, the charge may well be one of treason: for loyalty is the cardinal military virtue; and the disloyal comrade, who may stab you in the back, is a greater menace than the foe who confronts You openly in the field. To question the value of the NATO alliance today is bound to make many Co Pie hot under the collar. But not to question d is to hide one's head in the sand. Both actions are uncomfortable, but only one is fatal. A military alliance which is militarily ineffective is a far greater danger than no alliance at all: uncommitted governments act cautiously, but a belief in a non-existent military security may well Precipitate the very disaster which the alliance IS designed to prevent. The NATO alliance today is completely in- effective. The military forces of the fifteen nations are unable to defend themselves against aggression from the East. This is a stark, un- assailable fact. To what extent nuclear deterrence Plays a part in our security is beyond the scope of this article. But let us be clear about it. Strategic nuclear weapons, on which the theory of deterrence is based, are the sole prerogative of three nations, the US, Russia and Britain (France Is a Potential rather than actual nuclear power), and the means of delivery of these weapons is exPlicitly beyond NATO control, and explicitly the Private concern of the nations who own them. NATO may or may not act as a trip-wire to set "global nuclear war. But a trip-wire is not a defence force, nor will a major nuclear exchange respect the fate of the other NATO nations any more than it will respect the fate of the neutral and uncommitted nations of the world. When nuclear suicide is at issue, the decision will rest with the owners of thee weapons; and this can- not be otherwise. TO press the nuclear button is to commit suicide. Everyone knows this. And no nation will v°Itintarily commit suicide for the sake of anther nation, whatever, ties bind them together. The American nuclear umbrella is a myth. TO say this is not to question the good faith and the resolution of the American people. The resPonsibility of the President and Congress is primarily to the people of the United States, who elected them. They have no mandate from the "c°131e of America to condemn them to suicide: and this same limitation applies to all civilised h latit)ns, where suicide is considered as a moral kading. No civilised nation can ever press the the first. No civilised nation can ever press its button until it is too late to save itsifitand lts friends. The deterrent may deter an enemy f trcln) using his own strategic nuclear weapons, nut it will not deter him from doing anything Lort-Phillips commanded the 1st Bn. g' nadier Guards in Normandy. He fought the :-'1_0ocester by-election as a Liberal in 1957, polling li_efror that time--heartening number of votes; and Iv"; became one of the party s treasurers, a post „,',:n he recently ceased to occupy as a result of a 10" te revolution. He proposes to contest Ebbw Vale the party if it decides to sanction his candidature. else. All other forms of aggression remain open to him. Thus the effectiveness of the NATO alliance depends solely on the weapons and man- power available to the NATO high command at any particular. time, and to the powers of decision delegated to it by member governments.

In other words, its effectiveness is closely related to the degree of unity and common pur- pose existing among the allies. Alastair Buchan, the Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies, and one of the best-informed military commen- tators in the world today, has this to say about NATO.t 'If an ambitious political aim does not govern NATO's second decade, its purpose will be infirm, the tension between its members will grow, and its strategic and military planning will be a hand-to-mouth affair.' True: But what 'ambitious political aim' can NATO possibly have? NATO is a defensive military alliance, limited in time and space. Its fifteen member nations vary enormously in size, wealth and political development; and collectively they do not add up to a coherent geographic or strategic entity. Its most important members, the US, Britain and France, all have world-wide political commitments, which they cannot, with the best will in the world, subordinate to the 'ambitious political aim' of a regional military pact; and the smaller NATO nations have no desire to be enmeshed in world-wide commitments.

NATO is not designed to have an 'ambitious political aim.' The treaty does not envisage such a thing, and the machinery simply does not exist for such a purpose. The supreme body in NATO is the NATO Council, which consists of the fifteen foreign ministers and their deputies. These foreign ministers are responsible to their own governments and parliaments. They have no inherent powers in their own right, and they have no collective responsibility. They are delegates, committed in advance by the decisions of their respective governments. Their deputies have the status of ambassadors, limited to passing mes- sages. The Secretariat is nothing more than a post office. The present Secretary-General, M. Spaak, it is true, brings to his office the weight of his own considerable political reputation; but his influence springs from his personal qualities, and not from his office.

We tend to talk about NATO as though it was a separate entity in its own right—a sort of supra-national State endowed with super-natural pqwers. It is nothing of the sort. It is an alliance, whose terms of reference and spheres of action are rigorously prescribed by agreement; and unless we take these limitations into account, we are bound to deceive ourselves as to its effective- ness.

The limitations of NATO fall into two distinct categories: military and political. Let us examine the military limitations first.

The Armed Forces of NATO are inadequate for their task. The original estimates called for a land force of seventy-four divisions; but it soon became obvious that nothing like such a t NATO IN THE 1960's. By Alastair Buchan. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 10s. 6d.) force would ever be mustered or maintained. Therefore at the Lisbon Conference of 1954, a reassessment was made, and a figure of thirty divisions was substituted. No serious observer has ever believed :hat thirty divisions were in fact enough. (Captain Liddell Hart has made out a case for twenty-eight divisions. But a condition of this is that the whole force should be an organic and mobile unity, which the NATO forces are not.) The figure was based on what was possible without endangering the political and economic stability of the allies. The 'appreciation' was political rather than military. But accepting the magic figure of thirty divisions at its face value, let us remind ourselves that today NATO has twenty-one divisions, or nine fewer than the acceptable minimum.

The French Army is committed up to its ears in Algeria. The German Army (the biggest single element in the whole NATO force) is as yet un- trained and unmanned. The British Army's organisation and equipment are obsolete; it is unfitted to compete in a modern campaign. But, in any case, the NATO forces lack all flexibility and manoeuvrability. Each of the separate national armies is differently equipped, and there- by condemned to move backwards and forwards along its own lines of communications to its own supply bases. British divisions could not be switched in battle to the south, nor could French divisions be switched to the north. The Supreme Commander cannot concentrate his forces, or manoeuvre them as an organic whole; each national contingent could be isolated and destroyed in detail.

The Force has no effective air cover. The cen- tral Tactical Air Force, which is designed to cover the central front, consists of some 200 fighter-bombers armed with nuclear weapons. But because General de Gaulle will not allow nuclear weapons on French soil except under French control, these aircraft are now based in England; and as matters stand, they could not intervene in the battle for Europe until too late.

The NATO front line is inherently indefensible under modern conditions. The front line lies in a great semicircle from North Cape to Mount Ararat, a distance of some 4,000 miles. Its depth, in most cases, is a few hundred miles. A resolute aggressor, choosing his time and place, could not fail to achieve most of his objectives before the defenders even knew that the war had started.

West Berlin, the key point of the cold war, is undefended and indefensible. The Russians could walk in tomorrow, and there is nothing NATO can do about it. Nothing, that is to say, but invite the US and Britain to unleash nuclear war. This is the fatal limitation of SHAPE's well-known slogan of the sword and the shield. The shield is too small and too soft to protect the body of NATO. and the sword of nuclear retaliation, if drawn from its scabbard, brings disaster to both sides alike.

But these particular limitations, although severally and collectively they add up to military disaster, do not themselves make up the sum total of NATO's military impotence. The greatest weakness is the complete absence of any coherent military strategy designed to deal with the problem of Russian military aggression as a whole. The NATO shield forces would no doubt give a good account of themselves. By ourage and skill they would undoubtedly slow 'own a Russian attack, and inflict severe casual- es on the invading forces in certain sectors of he front. So far so good, but what then? In this access, the NATO forces themselves would be .nnihilated.

There are no reserves. There is nothing left to ;o but accept defeat or press the nuclear button. the days are gone when we could assemble great irmies beyond the seas, and transport them to he battlefield. This is the fatal defect of a purely legative defence strategy.,A Maginot Line is an ,dmirable thing if it forms part of a coherent Iefensive strategy. The counterpart is a mobile 'orce designed to counter-attack and defeat the nemy after he has been brought to a standstill. Oit est la mas1ce de ntaturuvre?' was Sir Winston Iturchill's famous question to General Georges vhen he visited the crumbling front in 1940. And he answer was, there was none.

But long before Sir Winston had posed that iuestion, it had been put by young Colonel de 3aulle in his book Vers l'Arniee de Métier. In hat clairvoyant book de Gaulle attacked the vhole concept of military strategy based on static • lefenee; and pointed out its inevitable conse- luenees. But the ears of the Establishment were ',locked. As he sadly comments in his memoirs, Such a conception of war suited the spirit of the regime. Condemned by governmental weak- nesses and political cleavages to stagnation, it was bound to espouse a static system of this kind. . . .

`Condemned by governmental weaknesses and )olitical cleavages'—NATO today is condemned o this same false doctrine, that it is only neces- ary to stop an enemy, and not defeat him; a foctrine which ensures that in the end you can- lot even stop him. The NATO armies will no loubt conduct their Retreat from Mons, or their )unkirk, with all the devotion of their predeces- ors. They will be written off; and this time there ,are no reserves to take their places.

The political weaknesses of NATO are even nore intractable. The ambitious political aim' !emanded by Buchan can only be built up on the • rm foundation of an integrated political com- nullity, united physically and psychologically, peaking with one voice, and acknowledging one ingle authority. Is such a concept possible? Is it yen desirable?

Is General de Gaulle interested in integration? )n the face of it nothing is more unlikely. 'Co- Teration, not co-ordination' is his policy—a )oliey which, Buchan points out, 'is unfortu- iately the recipe for military disaster.'

-Is Britain herself in the mood to submerge her overeignty in a closer integration of NATO ,owers? Clearly not. Even the silken ties of the I,uropean Coal and Steel Community and :uratom are made to appear as fetters of iron; .nd sections of the British press work overtime rying to keep alive old hatreds of Germany and e German people, when these same people are ow our most powerful and numerous allies this de of the Atlantic, and on them must fall le brunt of Russian aggression. In any case, iritain. France and the United States all have orld ide responsibilities which cannot be obordinated to the collective judgment of such :Hies as Portugal. Iceland and Turkey: nor can these allies have any desire to be dragged along at the wheels of our colonial chariots.

So long as the fifteen nations remain ostensibly sovereign powers, the logic of their situation compels each one of them to formulate its own policies in isolation, and then, and only then, to seek a basis for co-operation. A United States of Europe is a possibility for the future. It could clearly be a viable political entity, and power- ful in international affairs. But a United States of NATO is not even a possibility. It could never be viable politically.

For the present, we must recognise that security is a world-wide problem. No single aspect of it can now be isolated into a regional pattern. And it is not only military; it is economic and social. The implications of the Cold War stretch far beyond thearon Curtain in Europe to every underdeveloped and uncommitted country in the world. Hunger, poverty, ignorance and injustice are at least as powerful factors in creating world tension, as ideology. Events in Egypt, Iraq and Cuba, and indeed all over Asia and Africa, show how vain it is to classify all unrest and violence in the simple terms of Com- munism and anti-Communism. The breakdown of the Disarmament Conference was largely due to Chinese pressure. Whether China wanted to sabotage the talks or join them is beside the point. The point was that a disarmament treaty without China's signature would merely be a piece of waste paper.

President Eisenhower and Mr. Khrushchev have both publicly stated on many occasions that there is no alternative to co-existence. A détente is now vital. And in any détente, the neutral powers must play an increasingly important part. For much of the world, the Cold War is becoming ,frankly a bore. Our economic and political classifications do not fit into the social patterns

end ore :an

cw. all cat. tor• be nal )rld The the ion in pie' no one still had ons ith' age n to six ich* and ow' daY the just O's ,less of Asia and Africa nearly.as neatly as we pret to believe. The uncommitted nations are IT and more prepared to pick and choose elemi impartially from both sides.

World order, world security and world ernment are becoming the major concern of nations, whatever their form of governor Nuclear development, hunger, poverty, igt ance, trade, and capital investment can only tackled on a world-wide basis; and regic pacts which cut across the tangled skein of w( interdependence merely complicate matters. proper framework for security and peace is globe itself : the proper forum for all discus; is the United Nations—a United Nations which all nations are members as of right.

Where can the NATO Council fit into this ture? The answer is—nowhere. The circ stances which brought NATO into being longer exist. In 1949 the United States al possessed the H-bomb. There were no sputi and no inter-continental missiles. We were in the pre-nuclear age, when sovereignty some meaning. That age has gone.

The NATO Council's advice and deliberati count for nothing. Summit talks take place vt out its knowledge. The allied nations vi war from Algeria to the Persian Gulf, and a the China Sea without its knowledge. The nations of the Common Market make far-re; ing plans for the future without its knowle4 the Portuguese suppress their opposition, oppress their African subjects without its kn ledge. No body of statesmen in the world to takes more lying down than the members of NATO Council. And this, of course, is not done to annoy. It is the logical result of NA1 impotence. NATO today has become a 'meanini symbol.' It is time it was decently interred.