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A Sudden Buzzing. The Anglo-German quarrel was unhappily symptomatic of a recent Europe-wide tendency to back down on NATO commitments. But for all their poor-mouthing, most of the European members of the alliance had little economic justification for cutting their contributions (see box). Germany is in the midst of a boom that is the wonder of the Western world. Italy is more prosperous than ever before in her history. Britain, despite its recent White Paper assumption that it cannot afford both conventional and nuclear forces, manages to maintain one of the world's highest living standards. Even France, whose government finances are in hopeless confusion, is a rich country, and fundamentally growing richer.
In the light of the Soviet moons, the bickering and niggling of NATO's members boded ill. Clearly, NATO had reached a critical point at which it must begin to evolve into something stronger or face an almost inevitable decay. It was this realization that sent Harold Macmillan flying to Washington two months ago for a dramatic post-Sputnik meeting with Dwight Eisenhower. "The countries of the free world are interdependent," said the Eisenhower-Macmillan communiqué. "Only in genuine partnership, by combining their resources and sharing tasks in many fields, can progress and safety be found." The whole Atlantic world began to buzz with schemes for unifying political policies, coordinating military forces and pooling scientific knowledge.
But the concept of interdependence is easier to write into a communiqué than to put into practice, or even to hammer out in detail around a conference table. Proud and ancient nations like to command the means of their own defense; jealousies are hard to still. Interdependence would obviously dictate that France, for instance, give up its expensive project of building atomic weapons and rockets of its own, but France doggedly persists, in the hope of re-establishing its status as a major power alongside the U.S. and Britain.
Philosopher in Uniform. Few men have such high hopes for NATO interdependence, and so much firsthand knowledge of the pitfalls that stand in the way of achieving it, as Lauris Norstad. As the top man in Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Norstad commands a polyglot, 15-nation force consisting of 5,000 aircraft and about 30 divisions. These are not the total forces that NATO member countries can muster. Total mobilized armed strength of NATO's Western European members alone is 3,500,000 men, 10,000 combat aircraft, and several thousand naval craft, including nine carriers, 21 cruisers, 162 destroyers and 100 submarines. They are the forces assigned by NATO allies to the common European defense.
NATO's divisions range in size from 8,000 to 20,000 men; their equipment varies so widely according to national predilection and military tradition, that standardized small-arms ammunition is virtually the only combat material that all of them have in common. And between SHAPE and its field forces stands a bewildering spider's web of 21 major headquarters. "I could show you a chart of the organization, and you will tell me that the damned thing can't possibly work," says Norstad. Then he adds: "But it works perfectly well."