PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH
THE fact that the post-Stalin Ruisian attitude to the non-Communist world is not much different from the attitude adopted under the implacable direction of Stalin himself is being readily grasped in the West, The implications of that fact for European defence are not. Full acceptance of the need to recover all the ground lost during the past eight months and to resume solid progress towards a really formidable Western defensive system is difficult to detect any- where. ' Britain certainly has not fully awoken from the extremely pleasant dreams of slackening tensions and diminishing military commitments which it was beginning to have (partly because of Sir Winston Churchill's own sanguine estimates of the European situation) even before Stalin died and which became, after his death, positively roseate until Mr. Malenkov broke the spell. The Labour Opposition has been arguing this week for the introduction of a new element of uncertainty into the period of national service (through an annual Parliamentary review) and its Bevanite wing continues to argue triumphantly that because the burden of defence expenditure is irksome the only thing to do is to drop it. It would be wrong to attach too much attention to these political squibs. The Opposition in any case accepts the necessity for national service in some form and it is obviously not opposed to national defence as such. But it is not positively, deter- minedly and urgently for an upward revision of the programme. Nor is the Government.
All kinds of allowances can be made. No Government, and certainly no Opposition, can afford to get too far ahead of public opinion on the subject of defence in peace time, when expenditure on that defence stands between the public and a higher standard of living and the man-power demands of the services are such an unwelcome interruption of the lives of its young men. No people can be expected to start up too, sharply after a pleasant dream induced by reassuring speeches from a respected leader, particularly when the people are the British, who notoriously need some disaster of the Dunkirk order to rouse them to all-out action, and when the leader is Sir Winston Churchill, who reached the peak of his fame by breaking dreams, not making them. Nobody wants to exacerbate such genuine fears as the Russians may have of being themselves the object of an armed attack. But we have not only to take account of British reluctance to accept the consequences of the fact that Russian policy has not altered in any overt particular. There is also a virtual standstill within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; a patent desire on the part of France to postpone any new commitment until it can be assured and reassured of the complete purity of all German military intentions; an unwillingness on the part of the Germans to betray undue haste to build up armed forces; and even a degree of doubt about the willingness of the United States to maintain or increase its present forces in Europe. The time has clearly come to stop making allowances and go straight to the practical problems of defence in November, 1953.
The first problem is not one of expanding arms production and increasing the strength of the armed forces. That will have to come of course, but the first step is even more fundamental. It is to remove the element of uncertainty from the defence, policies of the individual Western Powers. This week's debates in the House of Commons, with their rejection of the suggestion that the period of service should be subject to annual review and their acceptance of the, Bill requiring the retention of national service men in the Reserve forces until June 30th, 1959, certainly represented an advance towards 'stability. So did Sir Winston Churchill's assurance that he was going to Bermuda " not in order to weaken our forces or our resolves, but to discuss ways of strengthening them, both morally and materially." There was also reassurance in President Eisenhower's statement in Ottawa that the protection of North America against surprise attack by air would be achieved without whittling down pledges to Europe. But state- ments of this kind must be repeated and expanded. They must not be allowed to remain embedded in wide-ranging general speeches indicating good intentions.
In particular President Eisenhower would do a great deal of good by giving chapter and verse for his assurance, given on November 14th, that pledges to Europe will not be whittled down. At the moment it derives most of its authority from the fact that it happens to be the American statement on this subject which bears the latest date. During October a state- ment was published by General Gruenthek, the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers Europe, in which, despite a constant insistence on the need for continuity in European defence policy, he gave no assurance whatever that American 'forces in Europe would be increased, or even not be reduced. On November 13th, General Hoge, commander of the United States Army in Europe, said in Frankfurt that he knew nothing of any policy for reducing United States forces in Europe. But on -the same day the US. Army Secretary, Mr. Robert T. Stevens, said in Washington that some troops had been with- drawn from Europe, his single qualification being that they were only support forces. European observers may be a little uneasy at all this, but their uneasiness could readily be dis- pelled by a final and authoritative American statement amplifying what the President said in Ottawa last Saturday.
In the meantime it is hardly for British observers to complain too righteously, for Mr. Head, the Secretary, of State for War, told the Commons on Monday that the British Army would be reduced from 435,000 today to 400,000 in 1956-57. There is, of course, a general explanation of reductions in the number of troops on the continent in that the policy of SHAPE must rest, in the long run, not only on men in the field but also on large and readily available reserves. But chapter and verse for present American policy would be helpful just the same, particularly in giving reassurance to the unhappily vacillating French and a new, firm indication to the West Germans that there will always be non-German troops in Germany while the present threat from the East lasts, and until, if ever, the concept of united West European defence is dropped.
Nor is the need for a clear re-statement of Western defence policy based solely on the need to strengthen the resolution of the Western peoples. It must also be made in order to leave the rulers of Russia in no doubt as to the continued firmness of Western policy. " Peace through strength "—the phrase which Sir Winston Churchill repeated in the Commons this week—remains one of the more solid and sensible slogans. It also represents the only policy which has been successful in containing aggressive Communism in the past eight years. The sad experience since the death of Stalin indicates that it is the only policy that will be taken seriously by the rulers of Russia. It is not a pleasant line to have to take. Indeed if the Russians' protestations that they feel themselves threatened by Western rearmament are taken at their face value, it is also a dangerous line. But the plain fact remains that the Russians are not threatened with Western aggression, and therefore to take their expressions of uneasiness at their face value would be not merely to adjust Western policy in the light of a Russian misapprehension but also to abandon the instrument of policy which is the most effective we have ever had in our hands. That would be foolish now, and ultimately fatal. For the Russian forces, according to General Gruenther, are still growing.
This is the point at which fellow-travellers begin to talk about competitive rearmament and " the guns going off of themselves." But even if the rulers of Russia genuinely have the fears of invasion which they profess to have, the rearma- ment which is going on in Europe today is still competitive defence—not competitive preparation for attack. After all, Western policy in the Berlin blockade, in the defence of Greece, and in Korea has been based on the assumption—the assump- don which contains an element of risk—that the Russians do not want a major war. It has been justified every time. And as to " the guns going off of themselves " the only answer is the crude one. They don't. They have to be fired. So all that remains to be criticised in a strong Western defence policy is the fact that it is very painful and expensive and cannot be contemplated as going on for ever. All that is true. But it cannot be abandoned until the Soviet Government gives its first clear and solid indication that it genuinely wants peace, and wants it so badly that it is willing to abandon all thought of deliberately imposing Communism on the non-Communist world.
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