NATO: 15 Trigger Fingers

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In Paris last week, parliamentarians from 13 of NATO's 15 member nations* settled down around a giant, A-shaped table for their annual briefing on the problems before the alliance. This year's overriding topic: how to cope with the mounting dissatisfaction of other NATO members with the U.S.-British monopoly of the West's nuclear deterrent.

At the root of NATO's new nuclear worries is Charles de Gaulle's determination to give France its own atomic striking force. After De Gaulle exploded two of his costly bombs in the Sahara, other NATO powers knew that the time was coming when West Germany—which already possesses the knowhow to make cheap, do-it-yourself A-bombs—might also insist on an independent atomic force. This is a prospect that even the majority of Germans regard without enthusiasm and which raises distinct hackles on other NATO necks, most notably Britain's.

This Way Out. As a way out of this maze, NATO Commander General Lauris Norstad last week outlined a proposal he has been urging for over a year: the creation of a nuclear weapons stockpile to be placed under NATO control and left there so long as the alliance endures. Such a step would presumably stave off any German demand for independent nuclear strength, would also quiet the longstanding fear of NATO's European members that in the event of a Soviet attack on Europe the U.S. might hesitate to use its deterrent in the hope of avoiding Russian retaliation against the U.S.

What Norstad envisions is a pool of U.S.-built nuclear weapons, both land-based and seaborne, which would still be in the custody of U.S. officers (as required by Congress) but which could be fired by NATO's commander subject to the directions of all 15 NATO members rather than the U.S. alone.

Well Back, Please. Inevitably, Norstad's proposal met with less than unanimous welcome. British Socialist John Strachey, onetime Minister of War under Clement Attlee, nervously declared that the West's nuclear strength should be placed "well back," preferably "on the other side of the Atlantic." French spokesmen made it plain that, with or without the Norstad proposal, De Gaulle intends to go on building his own atomic capacity. There were questions, too, about the plan's feasibility. It would require congressional amendment of the McMahon Atomic Energy Act. And no one was quite sure just how, under the split-second conditions of modern war, 15 nations could be consulted quickly enough to make the NATO deterrent effective.

Norway's Finn Moe summed up the problem in one questioning phrase: "Fifteen fingers on one trigger?"