ARMED FORCES: Man Behind the Power

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The Powerful Oar. During recent weeks Radford's quiet opinions have been showing up in so many phases—successful phases—of U.S. policy that Radio Moscow has taken to denouncing him as "one of the most influential men in the apparatus." With the prestige and style he has accumulated during 3½ years on the J.C.S. and 40 years in the Navy, Radford dips a powerful oar into nearly every basic policy decision confronting the nation. Currently he is urging that the U.S. speed shipments of short-and medium-range missiles (Nikes, Matadors, Snarks) to bolster the defenses of Great Britain. He is helping to work out the details of the agreement whereby the U.S. will send arms to bolster Saudi Arabia while also getting a new five-year lease on Dhahran, the crucial Saudi Arabian air base from which the U.S. Air Force's nuclear bombers can command the southern reaches of the Communist empire. Everywhere, Radford argues publicly and privately for the alltime-peacetime-high defense and foreign military assistance budget of $43.3 billion (58¢ in every U.S. tax dollar) designed to give muscle to U.S. commitments to 43 friendly nations as an essential element of U.S. security.

"The free world of which we are a part should have three main objectives in the Middle East," Radford testified on behalf of the Eisenhower Doctrine. "First, the nations of the Middle East must be kept independent of Communist domination; second, the strategic positions and transit rights in this area must be available to the free world; third, the resources, strategic positions and transit rights must be kept from slipping behind the Iron Curtain . . . It follows that the present situation presents a dangerous situation to the U.S., a condition against which we must have an effective defense." Then Radford quietly turned to the big stick that gives the Eisenhower Doctrine its meaning. "I would say," he testified evenly, "that the Russians are not going to start World War III now because they know they would be defeated if they did. I would say that we are definitely superior in military power to the Communist bloc."

Before the Might. This interthreading of military and diplomatic factors and forces, the basic foreign-policy concept of Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, is ceaselessly advocated and practiced at high policy levels by Airman Radford. This Eisenhower concept, carrying downward through all levels of U.S. foreign policy, thus reflects a growing U.S. move to recapture the spirit of the logic of what the Navy's great theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, called "reasonable policy supported by might," limited by Theodore Roosevelt's word of caution, "I never take a step in foreign policy unless I am assured that I shall be eventually able to carry out my will by force."