What interdependence for NATO

IN NATO's early days statesmen spoke glowingly about subordinating national military interests to a truly international "balanced collective force," a goal similar to classic free trade in its promise of mutual gain secured at the cost of dependence upon foreigners. Naturally, in so nationalistic a field as defense, achievement fell far short of this sweeping aspiration. But we are ill-placed now to belittle either the slogan or the degree to which we realized an international division of military labor. Nowadays the slogan is "interdependence," but in practice this seems to mean performance deviating still more widely from the goal of integrated defense. Currently, General de Gaulle supplies the dramatic examples. With France demanding greater voice in NATO's political councils and military commands, resisting integrated European air defense, bargaining stiffly over the terms for American IRBM's, refusing Americancontrolled nuclear stockpiles on her territory, and, above all, determined to manufacture her own nuclear weapons, the challenge to interdependence is obvious. Yet France's vainglory is understandable and even admirable up to a point, and her stubbornness must not be taken to be the sole or even the main obstacle to efficient collective defense. Other allies are merely less obviously culpable. For NATO it is better to divert troops to Algeria than never to raise them at all, a concession that puts the contributions of some others in better perspective. And Britain long ago began the costly pursuit of prestige via an independent deterrent with its own nuclear weapons and delivery systems. More fundamentally, the main obstacle to efficient collective defense lies beyond vainglory. It lies in strategic conceptions, and not least in American ones. Whether there is much point in discussing these strategic conceptions is the first question. Sometimes American actions seem to indicate that we do not care very much about efficient collective defense and, accordingly, worry little about the obstacles that impede achieving it. Yet at the same time we claim to have great difficulty in financing a defense