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Assumptions Undermined. When Russia's scientists put their Sputniks into orbit, they undermined at one stroke many of the West's most cherished assumptions about the world balance of power. In immediate military terms. Sputnik made plain that the U.S., the powerhouse of the free world and presumed technological leader of the whole world, was or soon would be within range of Russian ICBMs. It was a threat that, for the time being, the U.S. could not match. This pointed a danger not only at the heart of the U.S. but also, because Europe's security rests on the deterrent effect of U.S. nuclear power, at the heart of all the other NATO nations.
Almost to a man, the leaders of the NATO world offered the same answer to the challenge of Sputnik. "It is mandatory that the North Atlantic community be strengthened," said Canada's Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. "The days of national self-sufficiency have gone, and I hope that we shall lose no time in matching our policies to these facts," declared Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Said Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: "I do not think that [NATO's] existing political-military mechanisms are adequate."
Strain & Dissension. Before the eyes of the world, NATO had developed alarming symptoms of strain and neglect. The death of Stalin in 1953 and the noisy shift of power in the Kremlin diminished the fear of Russian aggression that was the foundation stone of NATO cooperation. The U.S., concerned with the threat of Communist absorption of the ex-colonies that achieved independence after World War II, laid new stress on its alliances in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In the Suez crisis, the U.S. felt compelled to oppose Britain and France. More recently, France was infuriated by U.S.-British arms deliveries to Tunisia (TIME, Nov. 25), and in Paris last week Premier Félix Gaillard served public notice that henceforth France would, in effect, expect her NATO partners to underwrite French policy in Algeria. Otherwise, demanded Félix Gaillard, "what meaning would the NATO pact have, and how could one escape fears that governments would come to doubt the value of an alliance so limited?"
In London, West Germany's Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano was quarreling with British officialdom. On the verge of a major step-up of their own defense program, the Germans argue that they can no longer afford to contribute $140 million a year to the upkeep of the 65,000 British soldiers and airmen now stationed in Germany. The British, who argue that they are already contributing a disproportionately large share to NATO's defense and the wealthy Germans scandalously little, reacted with a threat to reduce British forces in Germany to 50,000 men. Backing the British, the U.S. sent Bonn its own bill for $77 million to help support the 250,000 U.S. troops in West Germany.