NATO: IN THE WAKE OF ILLUSION

When the ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last met scarcely five months ago, it hardly seemed worth the trip to Iceland. As Secretary-General Manlio Brosio recalled before the ministers gathered last week in NATO's bleak new heaquarters outside Brussels: "Hopes for detente were so high that they tended to put in doubt the very necessity of a common alliance." That was not the mood in Brussels. In the interim between the semiannual sessions, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had shattered all illusions of an imminent accommodation with the Russians. Gone were the pleasant prospects of further military cutbacks in the budgets of member countries or of a drawdown in force levels. In the wastebasket were the blueprints for converting NATO into a nonmilitary instrument of East-West bridge building. The situation that now faced the alliance was bluntly put by NATO Supreme Commander Lyman Lemnitzer, who had doubted detente and disapproved of the military dilution of NATO all along. The ten Soviet divisions that Russia has moved permanently into Czechoslovakia have "significantly altered" the balance of power in Europe, he said. He urged the allies to put their forces in a greater state of readiness, to bolster their reserve units and revamp their mobilization plans.

Modest Yet Vigorous. Such measures would cost money--money that the Europeans, protected for nearly 20 years by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, have always been loath to spend. In his 16th and farewell appearance before the ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was as candid as Lemnitzer, telling the European partners that they must carry a greater share of the burden. Rusk and U.S. Defense Secretary Clark Clifford offered only an estimated $50 million in fresh U.S. aid. They also promised to return to Europe for maneuvers two infantry brigades and four tactical Air Force squadrons that had been repatriated to the U.S. last year, to replace 80 F-102 interceptors with newer Phantom jets, and to build shelters for U.S. planes now parked on open ramps in West Germany and The Netherlands. To this, the Europeans were expected to chip in new expenditures that will total some $450 million.

The result would be a response to the Kremlin's new aggressiveness, said Rusk, that was "modest enough to show restraint, yet vigorous enough to demonstrate concern." Despite the new Soviet threat that, after all, touches Western Europeans most directly, the European response seemed more modest than vigorous. Italy agreed to a 7% budget increase, equal to an extra $140 million; West Germany promised to spend an additional $180 million and to bring its twelve divisions up to strength. The British managed a neat juggling act by announcing a hike in their contribution without any increase in defense spending, accomplished in part by pledging to NATO some of the forces being withdrawn from east of Suez.

Officially as detached about NATO as ever, the French promised nothing. But Charles de Gaulle was shaken by the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the French have shown some signs of cooperation--where their own interests are clearly at stake. Some French commanders quietly continue to participate in infantry exercises with NATO forces in West Germany. French ships openly joined some 50 other vessels of the U.S., Britain, Italy and Greece in the alliance's "Operation Eden Apple" naval maneuvers in the Mediterranean last week.

The Seismic Quaver. Whatever buildup eventually results, it will only represent progress toward the force levels long ago set out for NATO, and never achieved. The new concerns are not causing any genuine enlargement of the organization's military muscle. A far more difficult task confronting the ministers and the commanders is what to do if the men in Moscow decide to invade yet another socialist country like Rumania or Yugoslavia. The West has a bad conscience about Czechoslovakia, feeling that somehow, somewhere along the line leading to Aug. 21, some pressure might have been exerted to dissuade the Soviets from striking.

NATO's planners have had three months to devise a counter for future Soviet moves, but not all of the thinking was productive. U.S. planners even dusted off an old scheme to fire a controlled nuclear explosion as a warning. Where? Why inside allied territory, of course. Presumably the seismic quaver on Russian monitoring instruments would bring Soviet tanks to a shuddering halt. There were, however, no volunteers for the territory to be used for this backyard bomb. Equally unimpressive was the suggestion to fire a nuclear warning shot at sea, a latter-day version of the old shot-across-the-bow.

Grey Areas. In the end, the ministers could not agree on measures that should be taken if the Soviets decide to invade another country. But in their final communique, they issued a double-edged warning that 1) they were "wholly determined to defend the members of the alliance against any armed attack," and 2) "Any Soviet intervention directly or indirectly affecting the situation in Europe or in the Mediterranean would create an international crisis with grave consequences."

Perhaps this was not the unmistakable signal to Moscow requested by British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart, but as diplomatic warnings go, it was strong language. "Foreign ministers are not village idiots," a top U.S. official explained. "They know we're not talking into thin air. What we're saying is watch out."

While the communique did not name names, allied diplomats did in background sessions with newsmen. Secretary Rusk declared to the ministers that

Yugoslavia and Austria were clearly related to the security interest of NATO. American officials insisted that this was not a pledge to come to the aid of those two countries or others, like Rumania, in the so-called "grey areas"--the small Communist and neutral states into which the Russians might be tempted to move. But as one American official noted, "The security of NATO is no longer just something that involves the legal boundaries of NATO."

U.S. planners are studying the options open to them should Russia push into a "grey area" country--partial or full mobilization, activation of reserve units, immediate airlifting of additional U.S. troops to Western Europe, full-alert status for strike aircraft and for troops on the frontiers of the Communist world. Such moves would be coupled with a grave new warning to Moscow, and no doubt a call on the White House-Kremlin hot line.

Any Socialist Country. The Russians seemed to go out of their way last week to demonstrate that such contingency plans might well be needed. In a speech in Warsaw, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev defiantly reasserted the new Soviet doctrine that has come to bear his name. Russia, he said, has the duty and the right to intervene not only in Communist countries like Czechoslovakia that are within the East bloc, but also, for that matter, in "any socialist country" where the forces of imperialism and capitalism and bourgeois revisionism threaten to make a come back. In repeating the justification for taking over in Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev cited a novel new source: an unnamed U.S. magazine that had outlined "precisely what was expected" by the West in Prague had not Moscow moved.*

The Russians were equally adamant in defending the buildup of their fleet in the Mediterranean (see following story). "The Soviet Union is known to be a Black Sea and, hence, Mediterranean power," the government newspaper Izvestia proclaimed, declaring that Soviet ships were in the Mediterranean to stay. In Red Star, the organ of the Soviet Defense Ministry, Vice Admiral Nikolai Smirnov said it was "imperative for the Soviet Union, in the interests of security," to strengthen its fleet. The presence of Soviet ships in the Mediterranean, the admiral wrote, "does not allow the Sixth Fleet to carry out the Pentagon's designs with impunity and behave as unceremoniously as before."

*In the November FORTUNE, Herman Kahn, director of the Hudson Institute research organization, wrote that most experts in the West anticipated that, without Soviet intervention, Czechoslovakia would start trading with West Germany, permit the establishment of strong Western cultural influences, allow a "general atrophy" of the Communist Party and the eventual flowering of social democracy.

All of that, in turn, the experts believed, would lead to the fall of Communist Party Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka in Poland and "a likely eventual loss of the Soviet hold over East Germany."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.