Playing with Explosives

Every cherished future plan of the U.S. Army revolves around a time-honored concept known as the mobilization base. The mobilization base consists of a cadre of regular troops, a stockpile of arms and ammunition, stand-by production facilities, National Guard and Reserve units, etc.--all of which are geared to help the Army expand to 100 divisions in less than two years after war comes.

But the U.S.'s long-range military planners--including Dwight Eisenhower, Defense Secretary Wilson and Chairman Arthur Radford of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--firmly believe that the next big war, if it comes, will be an atomic-airpower onslaught. Consequently in planning future U.S. military policy, they put heavy stress on ready deterrent forces --the Strategic Air Command, atom-armed Navy carriers and submarines, guided missiles.

Discussion Postponed. Last week, well aware that the sacred mobilization-base concept is due to go out the window as deterrent costs rise in future budget planning, the Army fired another resounding round in the running Pentagon war (TIME, June 4) as the generals and the colonels dug in for a convulsive last stand. Leaked to the Army's dependable friend, able New York Times Correspondent Anthony Leviero, was inside information that Admiral Radford proposes to cut the U.S. armed forces from 2,800,000 to 2,000,000 in the next four years. The Army and Navy, said the report (correctly), would absorb most of the manpower slash. All three service chiefs, the story went on, are in revolt against Radford (incorrect: the Air Force's General Nathan F. Twining is with him, the Army's General Maxwell Taylor and the Navy's Admiral Arleigh Burke against). So torrid is the battle, wrote Leviero, that all discussions of the manpower program have been postponed until after the election.

Day after Leviero's story appeared, Admiral Radford moved swiftly to set the record straight. It is true, he said, that new weapons may ultimately reduce U.S. military manpower requirements. But so far as the rumored cut of 800,000 or any other specific proposals go, someone was "anticipating conclusions the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] himself has not yet reached ... As is usual in leaks of this kind, there is a mixture of fact and pure speculation."

"Fortress America." There was another kind of mixture in the leaks that held highly explosive implications for the welfare and safety of the U.S., especially since the Communists are doing everything they can to make neutralism inviting. In making their case to Leviero, the leakers whispered that the manpower cuts meant that the U.S. intended to retreat into "Fortress America" and abandon its allies overseas. Only last month, in a similar desperate gamble to preserve the Army's status quo, Lieut. General James M. Gavin, the Army's razor-sharp director of research and development, told a Senate investigating committee that the fallout from an all-out atomic attack on Russia might kill hundreds of millions of people in friendly nations should certain unfriendly winds prevail. His motive: to attack the deterrent principle.

It was clearly high time for responsible service chiefs to stop wrangling like rival labor leaders, high time for the Commander in Chief to put a stop to such reckless playing with the nation's welfare.

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