Tremors echoed in Washington this week from an atomic explosion atop a steel-lattice tower in the faraway Sahara Desert. France became the fourth nation in history to explode a nuclear device (see FOREIGN NEWS). France would not, for some years to come, achieve a militarily significant nuclear capability without U.S. help, but her determination to be a nuclear power at whatever cost raised, or complicated, some touchy problems for U.S. policy. Foremost among them: When and how—if at all—should the U.S. arm its NATO allies with nuclear weapons?
President Eisenhower brought up the subject at his press conference fortnight...