Matter Of Fact • 

REF ID:A39373 

• • 

_; ~ -. -- 'Gi 

By Joseph and Stewart Alsop f 

Atomic Age Defense or Balanced Budget?------

A.'11,f IMPORTANT faction 

within the Eisenhower Administration is determined to sac- rifice a serious American defense effort in favor of a bal· 

anced budget. For the time be· 

ing, moreover, this faction ap· 

pears to have the President's 

backing. These conclusions are very clearly suggested by a hitherto u n d i s c l o s e d and 

highly significant exchange of 

letters between the Budget 

Bureau, the Defense Department, and the White House. 

Before Congress adjourned, Budget Director Joseph Dodge 

sent a form letter to Defense 

Secretary Charles Wilson. The 

meat of this letter was con- tained in the following para· graph: · "The fiscal year 1955 budget 

will have to show further sub· 

stantial reductions from -the 

fiscal year 1954 revised figures. These reductions will haw to 

be at least equal to and may have to be greater than those 

already made in the fiscal year 

1954 budget." Wilson mulled o v e r the 

Dodge directive for a couple of weeks, and then sent a re· ply. He pointedly reminded 

Dodge that "the Congress wns informed by both the Secretary of -Defense and the Pres· 

ident that . . . the new .Joint 

Chiefs of Staff would make an intensive and detDJ° ed study of all aspects of defense • . . Until the completion of the re· view of the military plan iy 

the Joint. Chiefs. it would ap· 

pear undesirable to make an estimate as to the amounts re· quired ••• " ~ 

WITH THIS POLITE but 

.Ii.rm rejoinder, Round One ap- narently w e n t to Wilson. 

Round Two started when Wil- son received a second letter, 

this time from the President 

'1imself. shortly before the 

"'resident left on his vacation. 

'his letter closely followed the 

:dget Bureau line-indeed, vas almost certainly drafted 

by Dodge for the President's 

signature. Like the Dodge letter. the 

President's letter told Wilson 

to "reduce current expendi· tures"-this being official lan· 

guage for stretching out de· 

fense spending. The letter 

urged Wilson to "correct" 

th o s e Defense Department practices which had been criti· 

cized in Congress. Finally. the 

Eisenhower letter also called 

for reductions in the forthcom· 

ing defense budget ''beyond those indicated for :fiscal 1954." 

Wilson dutifully circulated 

this letter to top officials in the 

son's famous stubbornness can son's famous stubbonness canr be a virtue and he repeated in 

his covering note that the 

presidential letter meant ·;no 

change". in defense planning, until after the new .Joint 

Chiefs had compieted their review. 

To judge from his response 

to both letters, Wilson is more aware than he once was oi his 

grim responsibilities 3S Secre· 

tary of Defense. At any rate. 

Wilson clearly lost Round 

Two, since the President's let· 

ter uncompromisingly backed 

the line taken by Dod~e :n his 

original directive. 

It is imnortant to understand 

what defense cutbacks "beyond 

those indicated for fiscai 1954" 

would mean. The reductions 

aeadly made in the currnt de· 

fense budget come to well over six billion dolla1•s. the great bulk of its money from the 

Air Force. A similar reduction 

from the current level would mean a defense bud2et of 

around 28 billion dollars. ~ 

DEFENSE "HOUSEKEEP· 

ING'' outlays alone-keeping 

the men in the armed forces 

paid and .'.ed and clothed and 

transported-now runs to about 

22 billion dollars a year. This 

cannot be much reduced with· 

out greatly reducing force levels. A 28-billion-dollar defense 

budget would thus hardly be 

sufficient to keep procurement 

of aircraft and other "hard 

goods" ticking over. 

This is so even if unexpended 

balances were heavily drawn ot 1 

-which would knock subseiquent budgets out of kilter. T•O 

take 011e example. a 28-billloudollar defense budget wou"ld 

probably mean accepting an s:ir 

strength level of about '85 

groups. as against the 143 grOu_ps 

which the Joint Chiefs or.tly last year laid down as the mi ni· mum requirement for Amr~ri· 

can :iir strength. A defel:lse 

budget of about 28 bilUon 

dollars. in short. s11nply :will 

not permit any kind of real 

cieiense against the steadily growing Soviet air-atomic e<apa- bility. 

The Dodge and Eisenhewer 

letters were. no doubt. more an expression of a fervent hope than :t firm declaration of in· 

tentions. Yet they suggest the 

kind oi pressures under wl1ich 

the new .Joint Chiefs are &per- ating, as they proceed with their 

"new. look" at our defense _lev- , els. 

There a1·e, howe\•er, at least 

two factors which are operating a.gainst this ;iressure for a bal· 

anced budget at almost any cost. 

One iactor is the Soviet hydro- 1 

gen oomb. which had not been - tested when the '1.ew chiefs , were 1ppointed. or when Dodge ij and the President wrote their : letters to Wilson. Another fac· : 1~r is .1 new :u~d c~refu.l stu~y ' 1 

nt ou~· stratesw: situation, m . the light of the-Soviet air-atomic l 

threa·. : This new study, which will be I 11 

considered in a forthcoming re- i ~ 

port in this space. is the last of I a series. all of v.•hich point, not j 

to less spending for our defense, 

J:lut more. These two factors ' are certain to weigh very heav· c ily with the Joint Chiefs. They < 

are al~o certain to weigh very hea,•ily with President Eisenhower. on whom the aWful re- sponsibility of making the final 

decisi.on rests. · I~