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Schemes & Dreams. Norstad's report, which went to all NATO members more than two months ago, is the basis of U.S. military proposals for next week's summit conference. With the Sputnik, the establishment of IRBM bases in Europe has taken on an added significance for the U.S., as a necessary counter to the Soviet missile threat to Turkey, Europe and Britain, to say nothing of its ICBM threat to North America. Though final arrangements will be left for later negotiation (since the U.S. does not yet have an operational IRBM), the U.S. will offer missiles to any NATO members that want them, but nuclear warheads for the missiles will be held in U.S. custody "only a few feet" from the launching platforms. The missiles could be armed at the first sign of attack, but the decision to use them would be a matter of mutual agreement. The French or Germans will need U.S. consent to use the warheads, and the U.S. will need French or German consent to use the missiles which carry the warheads.
Though it will be the most dramatic issue discussed at the summit conference, the proposal to establish NATO missile bases represents a relatively simple form of interdependence. Far more complicated are some of the other suggestions now being mulled over in the chancelleries of the NATO nations.
The U.S. will offer (subject to congressional approval) to relax the restrictions of the MacMahon Act in order to share with its NATO partners U.S. know-how in the military uses of atomic energy. It will also propose increased cooperation in scientific education, training and research, with particular emphasis on joint effort in weapons development and manufacture. Likely specific proposals: establishment of a NATO fund for educating budding scientists, establishment of a NATO missiles training and research center, an all-NATO program for exchange of weapons blueprints and designs.
Britain will generally follow the U.S. lead, but will place more emphasis on the need for member nations to subordinate their individual foreign policies to NATO interests. The British will also press cautiously for steps toward a program of complete military interdependence under which member nations would cease trying to maintain all-round military forces. Thus Britain would like to concentrate more of its resources on antisubmarine defense, thinks France could better spend its money on plugging one of the many gaps in NATO's conventional defenses than on the wasteful French A-bomb program (TIME, Dec. 9). Britain also wants greater pooling of scientific talent. "The Germans are free to devote 95% of their technological know-how to their export drive while we have 70% of ours tied up on defense work," they complain.
France, which fears an Anglo-U.S. monopoly of nuclear weapons, will demand that control of any missile warheads based on French soil be vested in NATO rather than in the U.S. It is inadmissible, says Premier Gaillard, that some allies "should be a bit more equal than others." What the French most want is a formal reaffirmation that Algeria is included in the NATO area, plus a pledge that no NATO member will take action affecting the interests of another member without prior consultation.