Command Decision

While the rest of the U.S. had its eyes on Korea, the nation's top strategy planners were spending much of their time looking the other way. This week their eyes were on Europe.

It was Secretary of State Dean Acheson who turned their heads. The main battleground, he argued, is not in Asia, where the shooting is, but in Europe, where the balance of world power is. And in its present state of unreadiness, Western Europe could be overrun any time Russia decided to march her gigantic land army westward.

In New York next week, Acheson will face an emergency meeting of the West's Big Three foreign ministers; he wanted tangible evidence to show the others that the U.S. intended to defend, not merely liberate, Western Europe in case of war. He needed something to spur Britain's Bevin and France's Schuman (see FOREIGN NEWS) into getting busy too. This is what Acheson proposed:

P:Send substantial U.S. ground forces--at least five divisions, maybe more, to Europe, to back up our paltry two divisions in West Germany.

P:Rearm the West Germans, not as an army controlled by their own Bonn government (an idea which made France jittery), but as a force under command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

P:Send an American to Europe as supreme commander of the western forces.

Behind closely guarded doors in a room set aside for the National Security Council, the argument went on. Acheson's blueprint originated in the State Department's planning and policy group, headed by Banker-Economist Paul Nitze. It had the backing of Foreign Affairs Adviser W. Averell Harriman and War Mobilizer W. Stuart Symington. After two days of shirtsleeved debate, it won the endorsement of the Chiefs of Staff of the three armed services--General J. Lawton Collins of the Army, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg of the Air Force, Admiral Forrest Sherman of the Navy.

But two key men in the Pentagon were reportedly dragging their feet. Defense Secretary Louis Johnson agreed that the U.S. was committed by the North Atlantic Treaty to the defense of Europe. But he thought the West Europeans should be happy to provide all the ground forces while the U.S., for its part, provides the threat of atomic retaliation against the Russian homeland. That was all the U.S. should promise to do.

To this position, Louis Johnson apparently won JCS Chairman Omar Bradley--a conquest which caused one Administration official to remark: "My God, the town is upside down. Even Leon Keyserling is talking about more divisions, while General Bradley is talking about how much the economy can stand."

This week the National Security Council will make its command decision, and submit it to President Truman.

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