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REPORT BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE (ACHESON)

MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 1953

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in the Committee Room, U.S. Capitol, Senator Alexander Wiley (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Wiley (chairman); Smith of New Jersey, Taft, Ferguson, Knowland, Green, Sparkman, Gillette, Humphrey, and Mansfield.

Also present: Dr. Wilcox, Dr. Kalijarvi, Mr. Holt, Mr. O'Day, and Mr. Cahn.

The CHAIRMAN. It has been suggested that we proceed. Senator Smith has another meeting coming up, and if there is no objection, why, we will do so.

This is the 50th time that the Secretary has been before this committee since he became Secretary 4 years ago.

As figured out, 50 times are a lot of times to spend with one committee during that period.

Senator SMITH of New Jersey. The Secretary looks pretty good to me; I congratulate him on surviving the 50th time.

Senator GREEN. The committee has also survived.

Senator FERGUSON. Not all the committee, part of it.

The CHAIRMAN. The purpose of this meeting was for us to get fully informed as to the latest developments at NATO, and any other information that the Secretary thinks we ought to have, we will welcome.

After devoting so much of his time out of his life to public service, we understand he is now going back into private practice.

Probably you will find that private practice is a little more remunerative, in many respects a little more pleasant. Anyway, we wish him Godspeed. Mr. Secretary, carry on in your own language and tell us about the developments in Europe when you were last over there. Any of those things that should be kept off the record, you can designate that, and if there is anything that you want to indicate that should be given to the press, why, Dr. Wilcox here will act accordingly, so we will give a little statement of it to the press as to what has taken place here today.

You may proceed, Mr. Secretary.

STATEMENT OF HON. DEAN G. ACHESON, SECRETARY OF STATE, ACCOMPANIED BY GEORGE W. PERKINS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

Secretary ACHESON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have had a very long and happy relationship with this committee. The chairman mentioned that this was the 50th appearance since I became Secretary of State, but if you added those that went on in the preceeding years, I think there will be very many, indeed, Mr. Chairman, but it has always been a happy and friendly relationship, and it is with sorrow that I see it come to an end now.

DECEMBER MEETING OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC COUNCIL

The chairman has suggested that I give you a report on the situation in NATO, and I assume that he has particular regard to the last meeting of the Council which took place in the middle of December, at which various things were discussed and acted upon.

At that meeting of the Council, although it was not a spectacular meeting, I think it was a most useful one, and one which accomplished some very important results. The treatment of it in the press, I think, was not worthy of the accomplishments of the meeting; it really did more than the general impression which you have received from the press.

The meeting was held at the time it was because at the meeting in Lisbon it had been decided that the Council would try to meet in its full ministerial membership twice and if possible three times a year. We met at the end of February and the early part of March 1952 and then we had not met again in 1952.

We had some doubt as to the utility of the meeting, which would be attended by members of an outgoing Cabinet. However, the Europeans felt it was very important that there should be two meetings, at least, in 1952, and then we considered the problems which would be created for our successors if we had no meeting, and we thought it was much wiser to go forward because, it seemed to us, they would want at least 6 weeks or 8 weeks after they took office before they were taken off to Europe to get into a technical and difficult meeting at NATO; therefore, if we could hold the field for a little while by meeting in December, they had a much better chance of going forward with one in April. So we went ahead with a meeting, and I think it turned out to be thoroughly worthwhile.

THE MEDITERRANEAN COMMAND

We had several important matters which were dealt with. The first one was the Mediterranean Command, and this has been a source of a great deal of difference of opinion and difficulty in NATO; there were all sorts of ideas which were put forward, the British believing that there should be a naval Mediterranean command and a British officer should be the commander-in-chief. They thought that it should not only be a commander-in-chief, but a supreme command just like the supreme command in Europe.

The French had their views, and we had our views about it. After a great deal of trouble it was finally worked out in a thoroughly practicable way from the military point of view, and a sound political adjustment here.

What was done was, in the first place, not to create a supreme command but to make a Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, who should be under the supreme commander in Europe. Therefore, General Ridgway retains the supreme command, but there is a commander-inchief for the Mediterranean under him, and that is Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was appointed to that post.

That immediately raised another question which created a great deal of difficulty for the military people. There had been an argument as to whether the Mediterranean should be regarded as a theater by itself, through its own commander-in-chief, or whether the naval forces in the Mediterranean were not really basically, from the military point of view, supplementary to the land operation in Europe, whether it was not the Mediterranean, with its naval forces, sort of a wing of the European command.

That was resolved in this way: The 6th Fleet, which has our carrier striking force in it, which has always been conceived of as a part of the defense operation, was made a separate command and the commander-in-chief is under General Ridgway. That is, it remains as it has been before, under Commander-in-Chief South, who is Admiral Carney, stationed in Naples.

That takes out these large American striking forces, which are called the 6th Fleet, and leaves them attached as they were before, to Admiral Carney.

The rest of the Mediterranean is there regarded as an area of communication through the Suez Canal, and into Turkey and Egypt, and that will be, that part of the operation will be, conducted by Admiral Lord Mountbatten.

I think, and the Chiefs of Staff seemed to agree, that from a military point of view this is a workable and good solution, and from a political point of view it is all right. It satisfied everybody concerned here that this is acceptable to them.

That was an achievement; it was not an easy matter to hammer these things out, but it was done.

THE ANNUAL REVIEW

The next thing that we had put a great deal of time in on was what is called the annual review, and that really means the statement by the various countries in NATO of what they will do in a calendar year in raising and in maintenance of forces.

We hoped that it would be possible to get all of that at this meeting. It was not possible to do that, and it will have to be completed at the April meeting, but we went a long way to make it possible.

Now, this operation is a little more difficult than it seems. It starts ont by the various countries under the direction and leadership of SHAFE and General Ridgway saying what they will do in the year ahead. Most of them have a fiscal year and a calendar year coinciding; others have just a few months out, but very few have a split year, as we know it.

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What they do is to write down on one side of the paper the ambitions of their general staffs and their soldiers. They write down on the other side of the paper the cold reality, as the Secretary of the Treasury or the Minister of Finance might point it out, and there is always a considerable gap between these two.

In many cases there is the hopeful expectation that we are going to fill that gap, which we have pointed out we cannot do. There are certain things we cannot do, and certain things we can do, but they must bring their effort in accordance with their resources, with such help as we have planned out for them.

Last year that was done by a very high-level group, with great success; the results were adopted at Lisbon.

This year it is being done by the new international staff under Lord Ismay, which is working out pretty well.

This year we hammered out in the Council, and adopted, certain rules and guiding principles which, I think, will very much help the solution of this problem, and along extremely sound lines, in my judgment.

STRUGGLE OF THE DESIRABLE AND ATTAINABLE

For some time we have had a struggle going on between the desirable and the attainable. There has been a tendency on occasion for some of the military people to insist that they wanted to put down what, in their military judgment, was necessary and desirable, and if it could not be done, well, that was too bad, but that is what they wanted to do. This has had a tendency to discourage; if what you could do was always said by the soldiers to be inadequate, people get tired after awhile, so we finally started out with a very fine speech that General Eisenhower made in Rome last year, the whole military conception began to change around and come together with the civilian conception, which was that we should put down what it was that was most important to do first; that we should not allow ourselves to become slaves of the calendar.

If you said this whole thing has to be done by 1954 or 1956, and it cannot be done, then despair takes hold of the people. We said, "Let us do everything that we can do, and let us have what we can do, the very most effective military thing to do."

Well, now, that idea was finally accepted completely, and it has resulted in a very sound objective which is, before you go on trying to increase the quantity of the force that you have in any spectacular way, to be sure that the quality of what you have got, the battleworthiness, the equipment, the training, the reserves of that force are adequate. Then you have got something that is hard and competent and good, and can do a job, and to which additions really are important.

Now, that is what they are doing this year. There will be an increase in amount as well as in quality. There will be an increase in the total expenditure, almost a billion dollars more, to be spent by our Western European allies on defense arrangements in 1953 than in 1952. That is all to the good.

Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organi

zation.

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