"An Atlantic Policy"

Behind him in Paris, Dwight Eisenhower left his own brief, restrained assessment of what he and the other leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had achieved. "The decisions promise far-reaching results," he said, "and should make war less likely and peace more sure. Now we must carry forward the results of deliberations here."

This was a sound and sober analysis of the results of the NATO meeting (see THE PARIS CONFERENCE). The leaders of NATO had agreed unanimously to arm the Atlantic Alliance with history's most powerful weapons despite the Kremlin's threats that this could bring their extinction; they also had agreed to miss no chance for practical discussion of practical roads to peace. They had worked no miracles, but none had been expected; their mood as they left Paris was well described by Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak, secretary general of NATO, as one of "cool determination" rather than "poorly founded exaltation." Along with other NATO leaders who sat around the table, Secretary General Spaak could find little resemblance between what went on in the conference room and what was shouted in the headlines of dispute and disintegration that had rattled out of the press rooms. Said Spaak: "The double character of the alliance--defensive military effort, aggressive diplomatic effort--was clearly underlined. There is now an Atlantic policy."

Sharp Realization. The policy contained two major points: 1) an agreement that U.S. intermediate range ballistic missiles will be "put at the disposal of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe" [i.e., the U.S.'s General Lauris Norstad] with location of missile bases and details of their operation to be worked out later; 2) an agreement that NATO would seek new disarmament discussions with the Soviet Union--preferably in the U.N., but at the foreign minister level if Russia insisted on that procedure.

Between these two major points there was no quid pro quo; the U.S. was not forced to accept negotiation in order to get European acceptance of missiles, nor were the other NATO powers forced to accept missiles to establish the offer of negotiations. Many NATO countries had long been importuning the U.S. to provide them with modern weapons. But U.S. negotiators came to realize, more sharply than before, that the leaders of most NATO nations needed, for political reasons, to couple acceptance of missiles with a reiterated promise that the West is always ready to listen to practical offers of disarmament. A large part of this need --as reflected by Germany's Konrad Adenauer--stemmed from Russia's successes with the Sputniks, which had encouraged Europe's neutralists and embarrassed the U.S.'s most solid friends.

To Carry Forward. While the two major points held the attention of the world, another broad and basic result of the conference was more or less obscured. In the U.S. proposals around the table at the Palais de Chaillot, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles undertook a whole new program of U.S. commitments to NATO. They promised, in more certain terms than ever before, that the U.S. would come to immediate and full defense of any NATO nation attacked by an enemy; they promised to seek substantial increases in funds for aid, technical assistance and loans to NATO countries; they agreed to push vigorously for a program of increased trade; they proposed a plan for greater sharing of information and skills, including the eventual production of missiles in Europe. Clearly, as President Eisenhower said in Paris, the big task now lay in carrying forward "the results of deliberations."

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