Evening star., 1961-04-10
On NATO's Problems


In the joint statement they have
issued to sum up their talks here, Prime
Minister Macmillan and President Ken
nedy have used language much too gen.
eralized to be Informative. Indeed, one
searches in vain in it for even the
slightest clue as to whether or not they
have decided on any concrete courses
OF action to deal with the great chal-
lengeS that beSet and bedevil the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
free world as whole
1t may be assumed, of course, that
this vaguenesS is quite deliberate. After
ali, wholly apart from the desirability of
not telegraphing to the Kremlin every
little secret that exists in NATO, the
British leader and Mr. Kennedy have
been strangers until recently, and the
conversations they have just held might
well have been meant not so much to
arrive at specific decisions as to serve
as sort Of get-acquainted operation
designed to promote new measure of
Anglo American understanding and CO.
operation in an age full of the most
complex and dangerous kind of prob
lens. Further than that, the general
lied character Of their statement seems
altogether fitting in view of the fact
that the President has on his agenda
near-future meetings with Chancellor
Adenauer of West Germany and Presi-
dent de Gaulle of France.
In the circumstances, since the
views Of these two key personalities in
NATO must play vital role in the shap-
ing of the Atlantic community's ap-
proach to the hard task of coping with
the Red threat to the free world, the
President and the Prime Minister have
done well to declare merely as follows:
I'VE have reached very high level Of
agreement on our estimate of the nature
Of the problems which we face" Their
outlook, incidentally, is not optimistic.
AS they see it, the world on the free
side Of the Iron Curtain needs to recog-
nize "the gravity and depth Of the dan
gers" confronting it at points as far
removed from each other as Laos, Wet
nam, Berlin and the Congo-not to men
ton places like Fidel Castro'S Cuba,
which seems at the moment to be des-
tined for explosive events that promise
(or so let us hope) to de-communize 1t.
Moreover, as the Macmillan-K Kennedy
statement declares, "the Importance and
difficulty Of working toward satisfactory
relations with the Soviet Union" make
it imperative for NATO's members to
cooperate more closely than ever to
insure their cohesion, effectiveness and
adaptab1lity . In changing world"
This statement, obviously enough,
does not spell out exactly what the
Prime Minister and the President feel
ought to be done. But Mr. Macmillan,
in his address last Friday at the Massa-
chusetts Institute Of Technology, has
put special stress on economics. While
not downgrading the immense signifi-
canoe Of conventional and nuclear arms,
he has sharply emphasized the political
and economic imperatives involved in
efforts to build up NATO'S unity-"a
wider unity, tranScending traditional
barriers; unity of purpose, Of method,
Of organization" In short, unity that
will eliminate such potentially danger
Gus divisions as the growing trade
rivalry between the so-called Timer
Six" and "Outer Seven" in free Europe.
In Mr. Macmillan'S Judgment, the
present global struggle is not primarily
military. "The real test" he says, "will
not be on the battlefield but in the
market place." with the Russians SPAR
ing no effort-no lie, no chicanery, no
dishonesty Of any kind-to discredit the
West with venomous libels and thus in
tensify difficulties with the unsophis-
ticated, primitive and curiously preten-
tious governments now emerging in
Africa. We trust that the President and
Prime Minister have talked at length
on this subject. If they have, the At
lantic community may have less inclina-
ton in the future to be inordinately en-
thusiaStic about imposing democracy on
regions whose inhabitants have little or
no understanding of the complexities of
Self-rule.