The Toothbrush Treaty

In July 1951, the late Admiral Forrest Sherman, then Chief of Naval Operations, slipped off quietly to Madrid to scout the chances for a military-aid pact with Spain which would give the U.S. the use of key Spanish naval and air bases. At that time Pentagon planners, worried at the poor progress of Western European defense, were anxious to insure a firm U.S. foothold behind the Pyrenees, in case the Russians should overrun Germany and France. In October 1951 with U.S. military and economic missions already active in Spain, Congress voted $100,000,000 for Spanish military and economic aid.

Formal negotiations were begun six months later--but they proceeded slowly. The State Department and the White House were reluctant to make any sort of agreement with Franco Spain. Their reasons: 1) the Franco government is a dictatorship; 2) a U.S.-Spanish pact "might cause the jittery Western European allies to think that the U.S. considered them militarily indefensible.

The Franco government, for its part, did not like to surrender sovereignty over any of its own military bases. Also, Spain hoped to raise the aid ante by playing coy. (Franco's hope: that the U.S. would outfit all Spain's armed forces, and re-equip the transportation system, in return for the base rights.) Complained a Spanish diplomat: "You Americans outfit the rest of the world with wardrobes, but for us you have only a toothbrush."

This year, the new Administration in Washington decided that 20 months is a long time to wait for a treaty. Ambassador James Dunn arrived in Madrid in April with orders from Secretary of State Dulles to get a pact signed. The Spaniards, meanwhile, had realized that they had best be content with what aid they could get, since bolstered NATO forces made Spain less important as a defensive position in 1953 than it was in 1951.

Last week Dunn and Spanish Foreign Minister Alberto Martin Artajo signed a 20-year defense agreement, with accompanying economic and military assistance pacts. The U.S. will give Spain $226,000,000, already appropriated by Congress, in military and economic aid. In return, the Spaniards give U.S. armed forces the right to use and develop certain Spanish bases. Their probable locations: air bases near Madrid, Barcelona and Seville; naval facilities at the Atlantic port of Cadiz, the Mediterranean port of Cartagena.

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