November 30, 1965

Miss Sylvia Baruch
Council on Foreign Relations
58 East 68th Street
New York, New York 10021

Dear Miss Baruch:

Thank you for sending me the
review from the *Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists* (November). I was glad to
have it.

Kind regards.

April 26, 1966

Miss Sylvia Baruch
Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
58 East 68th Street
New York, New York

Dear Miss Baruch:

Thank you for sending me the
review from *The Listener* which
I had already seen.

There was also a very good
review in The Sunday Times at
about that time which you might
want for your file.

Kind regards.

# Uneasy alliance

## PETER KIRK on the problems of Nato

Peter Kirk is M.P. (Conservative) for Saffron Walden; he was a member of the Council of Europe and Western European Union Assemblies 1956-63, and Under-Secretary of State for War 1963-64

PROFESSOR HENRY KISSINGER has long been one of the leading strategic pundits in the United States—indeed, he might be said to be the archetype of a new breed of academics who, from outside the military sphere, contribute radical discussion to the great debate about world strategic affairs. His latest work, *The Troubled Partnership*, which has just been published in the United States, is one of the most remarkable analyses that even he has yet produced.

The partnership to which the title refers is Nato, and there can be no doubt that it is now greatly troubled. Some might claim, as Professor Kissinger hints, that it has been troubled from the start, in the sense that very few of its targets have ever been achieved. One remembers the heady optimism of the Lisbon meeting in 1952, when the Nato Council happily proposed a target of ninety divisions for the alliance, each country apparently under the impression that the others would supply the bulk of them, and that really there was little further effort to be called for on their part. One can remember the row about the placing of short-range missiles in this country, a row which subsequently turned out to be unnecessary, as within a few years

these were removed again. There has been the Skybolt row, the row about the French fleet, and innumerable occasions when we have seemed less like a happy band of brothers than like a collection of Kilkenny cats. And all the history, all the argument, comes back in the end to the rock-like figure of the President of France. General de Gaulle is more than just Professor Kissinger's King Charles's head; he is the core, mainstay, binding-force of the whole book and all the argument in it.

Yet this book is not a diatribe against the General and those who think like him; on the contrary, Professor Kissinger displays a surprising sympathy for the monolithic French leader. His criticism of him is mild; many of the General's arguments seem to the Professor to have a considerable validity, though he carries them to extremes, and it is on his own country—America—that the author turns the main weight of his withering critical fire. It is the Americans, rather than the General, who have failed to see the full significance of the changes which the nuclear stalemate has brought about in the alliance, and it is the Americans, more than the General, who are going to have to make the major change, if anything is to be saved from the wreck.

I am oversimplifying, of course; no one as closely concerned with strategic matters as the author has been for so long could possibly make the dialogue appear quite so one-sided. Yet it remains a book more critical of American strategic policy—and therefore of Secretary McNamara—than any I can recall that have recently come from the same egghead stable, and it is all the more valuable for that.

We have been far too prone, I think, to dismiss General de Gaulle as an irritating old nationalistic wrecker without examining the basis for his behaviour. Of course, his behaviour has in many cases been unforgivable; if he did not want this country inside the Common Market, then he should never have encouraged and connived at our opening negotiations in the first place. If he really is completely opposed to France moving into the third and supranational stage of the Rome Treaty, then he should never have allowed things to go as far as they have before clamping down and threatening to wreck the whole affair, as he is now doing. All this is outrageous, and France's partners, in

'The rock-like figure of the President of France'

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cannot be overestimated." (p. 129). In comparison to the tremendous
propaganda machine, backed by financial and commercial magnates, which
Congress maintained in India and in England, the Muslim League was idle.
Dr. Aziz discusses the reasons for this. The Muslims were educationally
backward and economically handicapped. But he concludes that "if
British public opinion was and still is hostile to the Muslim cause, Muslims
themselves must bear a good portion of the blame for it." (p. 23). It is a
good evaluation of the benefits of propaganda.

The book will be valuable for any study of British attitudes towards
Muslim India. It is interesting and lucid. Dr. Aziz deserves praise also for
the biographical sketches of Leaders of Opinion in Appendix 1.

The Troubled Partnership, A Re-appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance. Henry A. Kissinger. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company (for the Council on Foreign Relations). 1965. xiv+266 pp. $5.95.

The present volume by Henry A. Kissinger is the first of the Atlantic Policy Studies to be published by McGraw-Hill. At a juncture when the Atlantic Community is regretfully exposed to emotional outbursts of accusations and counter-accusations hurled from both sides of the Atlantic, Dr. Kissinger's brilliant and candid study is most welcome.

The author seriously attempts to rationalise objectively those factors
and motivations which have precipitated and catalysed the present state of
confusion in the Atlantic relations. At the very outset of his searching
analysis, Dr. Kissinger boldly refutes the ill-founded conviction, currently
in vogue in the American official and intellectual thinking, that it is President
de Gaulle who is solely to blame for all the ills that pervade the Atlantic
Community today. The author refuses to take sides in the polemic between
France and the United States, which according to him is the result of outra-
geous emotional stirrings in both camps. He further emphasizes that it is
not one individual's "intransigence" which has opened Pandora's Box in
Atlantic relations, for President de Gaulle's refusal to toe the American line
of action is merely a symptom, and not the cause of ills in the Atlantic
partnership.

To Dr. Kissinger, the real weakness of the Atlantic alliance is political
discord, which the United States has all along sought to overcome by goading
and cajoling its allies in Europe to agree to such military measures which

267

Washington believes will redeem the dwindling political fortunes of the alliance. Dr. Kissinger, a world-reputed authority on nuclear weapons and their impact on international relations, is most qualified to give such a balanced account of the incongruity and failure of American nuclear strategy in remedying the Atlantic malady. The main premise on which Dr. Kissinger builds up his argument is that the United States, in its present jittery mood, has totally failed to take note of the changes that have radically altered the face of European politics since its recovery from the shocks of war. At the end of the War, Europe was in disarray and completely at the mercy of the whims and fancies of its senior partner across the Atlantic. The United States, in those days of turmoil and turbulence in Europe, came to develop a "paternalistic attitude" towards the old continent. That attitude, unfortunately, has eversince remained the mainstay of all American policies, political, economic and strategic, vis-a-vis Europe. But the European Powers today do not readily acquiesce to American dictates in the military field as they did during the heyday of United States "hegemony." Whereas the Europeans would still, and do, want American nuclear protection, they would not agree to any nuclear scheme in which the United States would persist to play the old paternalistic role. Dr. Kissinger ruefully admits that in the military field Washington has "never encouraged the emergence of a specifically European point of view." (p. 94).

Tracing at length the causes of frustration over the MLF issue, Dr. Kissinger ultimately drives to his most forceful argument, the lack of political cohesion among the Europeans and the Americans, which has so sadly marred the prospects of the Atlantic Grand Design. Here again Dr. Kissinger holds the United States responsible for the present morass in Atlantic relations. Instead of working for political unity, the United States has tenaciously insisted on nuclear integration and assimilation in the military sphere. It is absurd, Dr. Kissinger argues, "to insist on centralized strategy while diplomacy remains national." In other words, "political unity must precede nuclear integration." (p. 155).

In conclusion Dr. Kissinger suggests grounds on which the fast decaying edifice of the Atlantic partnership may be resurrected. In his view, the alliance, if it is to survive and flourish, should have to be based on flexible and fluid premises as against the rigid grounds so long advocated by the United States. It is impossible, Dr. Kissinger argues, to strike complete identity of interests, even with a united Europe, which is heretofore far from reality. The vitality of the alliance would be served by an allied struc-

268

ture which makes possible "a variety of co-ordinated approaches." (p. 233). This calls for a total re-appraisal of the concept of alliances in the United States and a rational approach to the intricate and precarious state of Atlantic relations, which according to Dr. Kissinger, are at present full of many "time bombs."

## Pakistan—Birth and Growth of a Muslim Nation. Richard V. Weekes. Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co. Inc. (The Asia Library). 1964. $2.75.

The book, apparently full of facts, and comprehensive, is far from objective and seeks to create an anti-Pakistani bias in its reader. On the back of the cover, we are told: "Indeed religion is the very basis upon which the country was conceived and established by Britain...,", which is the theory propagated by India. No mention is made of the fact that Pakistan was created on the basis of self-determination by its people with the explicit approval of the late Pandit Nehru. On the same page to create the impression that Pakistan is pitiable and even contemptible, it has been described as "a nation struggling for survival."

In the body of the book, there is a large number of mistakes to correct all of which an entire book would be needed. On page 40, we are told: "Hinduism is intellectually and religiously tolerant." Either Mr. Weekes knows that this is not so or knows nothing about the matter. On page 61, Siraj-ud-daullah is described as the Nawab of Dacca, which he was not. Further evidence of the author's shallow knowledge of our history is provided by his description on page 64 of Sher Shah as a Mughul Emperor, which he was not. Historically unfounded is also Mr. Weekes' statement (page 77) that Mrs. Annie Besant's Home Rule League was the first group to advance the principle of Indian self-government. On page 87, Mr. Weekes is guilty of suppression of truth in regard to the reasons for the failure of the Cabinet Mission plan. Correctly assuming that his American readers know nothing about it, he does not say a word about the duplicity of the Congress party and the British in this plan and glosses over the whole thing by quoting a remark of Mr. Nehru: "The big probability is that there will be no grouping (of provinces)", which sentence by itself can mean nothing to the uninstructed reader. On the same page, we are told: "The League won all but 3 of the 79 Muslim seats". In which legislature, the Central or a Provincial one, we are not told. This is typical of the vagueness and irresponsibility with which Mr. Weekes writes.