ARMED FORCES: Man Behind the Power

• Share

(9 of 9)

Problem No. 3 is that the three services, moving into this uneasy grey area, are also moving on to new bickering about the future of missions and budgets and careers. When the Navy starts serious groundwork and lobbywork on its projected 15 atomic carriers, the interservice roof may fall in. "There are going to be some investigations on missiles," one Air Force general sadly predicted, "that'll make the B-36 hearings seem like a powder-puff game."

"To Avoid Insult." Around and about these capabilities and problems there is gathering an acute awareness of the importance of the military-diplomatic role. "So we're the big stick," said one SAC officer. "So maybe old Dulles thinks of us when he sits down at the mahogany." And when Admiral Radford one day paraphrased Teddy Roosevelt, "Never extend a military projection beyond its capability of winning," one of his officers echoed afterwards: "Substitute 'diplomatic' for 'military' and you have a currently valid statement. In fact, you have a policy."

As he moves on toward August, when his second and (by law) final term on the J.C.S. is due to expire, Radford sometimes plunks forward into the future of American life and American defense, now inextricably intertwined. Says he: "We haven't seen anything yet." Then Radford turns back to the meaning of what George Washington, the first Commander in Chief, had said as he confronted the turbulence of the Old World and got the American Experiment on the way. "There is a rank due to the United States among nations," said Washington, "which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be ready to repel it." Then Arthur Radford, the quiet admiral, adds the postscript that is his life: "The more our country sweats in peace, the less it will bleed in war."