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dangers and difficulties of the world. This attitude, as I say, has been expressed, has been debated, and the contrary decision has been taken in each one of the steps which I have mentioned.

POLICY EXAMINATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF NATIONAL SECURITY

COUNCIL

This attitude is one which is continually examined. It is the task of the National Security Council to examine all alternatives and make recommendations regarding them. When the National Security Council performs its duty in this respect, it speaks for the whole Executive branch of the Government which is concerned with the defense problems of the United States and with the moblilization of the economic power of the United States which is necessary to back up that defense. So that the National Security Council means, of course, the President, who presides at it and whose sanction is necessary for the validity of any of its acts. It means the whole military establishment on the civilian side and on the military side, the whole organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It means the Department of State; it means the Treasury Department; it means the economic branches of the White House and the economic departments of the Government. They have examined this attitude many times, the last time quite recently, and, every time they have examined it, they have recommended unanimously that this is an impossible attitude for the United States to take because it spells defeat and frustration; it has no possibility of success; and therefore it is not an attitude which this Government can usefully take.

CONCLUSIONS REGARDING POLICY OF WITHDRAWAL

In our work on this particular question we have brought out many considerations. I shall mention a few of them.

It is our unanimous conclusion, and has been throughout all these years, and is now, that such a policy is a policy of withdrawal into our hemisphere and an attempt to deal on a defensive basis with the dangers in the rest of the world. Our conclusion is that the first result of that would enable the Soviet Union to make a quick conquest of the entire Eurasian land mass.

To do that leads us to the second conclusion, which is that it would place at the disposal of the Soviet Union a possession of military resources and economic power vastly superior to any that would be then available for our home security. It would give the Soviet Union possession of a strategic position which would be catastrophic to the United States.

In such a

In that situation we come to the third conclusion. position, the Soviet Union would be able to nullify our power. Such nullification would be attempted, because, isolated as we would be, we would still have some potential threat to the success of the Soviet plans.

We then come to the fourth conclusion, which is that such a developing situation would make any negotiation, any peaceful settlement of the problems before us, quite impossible. It would so unbalance the

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power in the world and put us at such a vast disadvantage that negotiation would not be possible at all.

That leads to the fifth conclusion. Negotiation not being possible, we would then be brought either to the position where we must accept whatever terms were imposed or where we would have to fight without allies merely to maintain, if we could in that precarious position, our own physical existence.

I say physical existence because that brings us to the sixth conclusion. A position of that sort, accepted by us, would undermine the entire constitutional structure, the entire morale position, and the entire heritage of the American tradition.

Therefore the National Security Council has rejected this policy because it concludes that it is a self-defeating policy and one which could lead only to surrender or to defeat.

BUILDING STRENGTH TO MAINTAIN FREEDOM

The attitude which we take is that we and our allies are moving ahead with courage and with determination to build our common strength. We regard our dangers as common dangers and we believe that they can be met and must be met by common strength. We believe that they need our help in order to maintain their security and that we need their help. We know that, if, by an indifferent attitude, we abandoned our allies without regard to future consequences, we would find ourselves in a position of unutterable national shame and great national weakness.

Therefore, we are taking a policy of going forward with vigor and with determination and with courage. We are rejecting any policy of sitting quivering in a storm cellar waiting for whatever fate others may wish to prepare for us. As I say, we have rejected that course and, as the President made entirely clear last week, we are firmly resolved to build our strength side by side with our allies. By doing so we believe that we are calling upon the great potential strength of the entire free world to maintain its freedom. We believe that we can, if we pull together, build that strength and we are determined that we shall build it.

24. STATEMENT BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEES ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND ARMED SERVICES, FEBRUARY 16, 19512

A useful starting point in dealing with the most important questions which must be considered by the committee is to fix clearly in our minds the fundamental problem of which these questions are a part.

1 Address of Dec. 15, 1950; Department of State Bulletin, Dec. 25, 1950, pp. 999-1003.

2 The Joint Defense of Western Europe (Department of State publication 4126; 1951), pp. 1-13; see also the statements of Feb. 15, 1951, by Secretary of Defense Marshall (ibid., pp. 14-18), and of Feb. 16, 1951, by General of the Army Bradley (ibid., pp. 19-22).

The basic problem before us is how best to protect the security of our country against the threat we face.

The source of this threat is clear. It is the powerful military force assembled by the Soviet Union and its satellites, combined with the hostile intentions which the Soviet Union has demonstrated toward the entire non-Soviet world and the willingness it has recently shown to risk general war.

The job of protecting our security against this threat has three parts:

First, to prevent the outbreak of war;

Second, to prevent the Soviet Union from accomplishing its aggressive purposes by means other than war; and

Third, to make certain that the free nations will not be defeated, if war is forced upon us.

All three of these elements are essential in the strategy of our defense as it relates to the threat in Europe, which is what we are primarily concerned with here today. Our primary aim is to prevent an attack against Europe. At the same time, we seek to prevent Europe from being taken over by the Kremlin through other means. And finally, if despite our best efforts there should be an attack on Europe, we want to prevent it from succeeding.

It is important for us to keep in mind that all three purposes are essential to our security and that the building of a strong, integrated force in Europe is vital to each of these elements.

Some have approached this problem as though the chief, if not the sole question is: "How do we repel the attack after it is launched?" The trouble with talking about this part of the problem as if it were the main question, or even the question of primary concern to our own security, is that it increases the risk of losing Europe in other ways. It is not only the threat of direct military attack which must be considered but also that of conquest by default, by pressure, by persuasion, by subversion, by "neutralism," by all the paraphernalia of indirect aggression which the Communist movement has used.

If we approached this problem as though our sole concern were how we were going to act after Europe had been attacked, regardless of the human cost, whatever the devastation, then we can scarcely expect our European allies to show much enthusiasm for the prospects of the future. This kind of strategy drives our friends in Europe into a mood of nonresistance, a mood of "neutralism," which is, for them and for all of us, a short cut to suicide.

So our first purpose-and this is something we need to make absolutely clear to our friends in Europe-is to deter the aggressors from attacking Europe. Our primary concern is not how to win a war after it gets started but how to prevent it and how to help Europe stay free in the meantime.

Now, what is it on which we can rely to prevent an attack on Europe?

There are three deterrent factors to be considered. One is the retaliatory power now in our possession our capability of striking with air power against the centers of aggression. Another is the

reserve power which helps to convince the Russians that they could not win in the end. And finally, there are the integrated forces in being of the North Atlantic Treaty nations.

This third deterrent factor is the one at issue. This is the deterrent which is now weak and which we are now striving to build up as quickly and as effectively as we can do it.

A number of questions have been raised about this effort to build. up the forces in being in Western Europe. Some have asked why we need to do this-why we can't continue to rely on the deterrent force of our retaliatory air power, and our reserve power elsewhere. Some have argued that this European defense force cannot possibly be made large enough to be effective, while others have argued that this European defense force would be so great a threat to the Soviet Union that it would be provocative. These concerns, although contradictory of each other, have led to a common line of reasoning-that we should not move ahead with our European allies in building a defense force in Western Europe.

Apart from the helpless and defenseless predicament in which this course of action-or more accurately, this course of inaction-would leave us, there are a number of powerful considerations which point to the conclusion that our own security, as well as the security of our allies in Europe, requires vigorous efforts to build an effective defense force in Europe at the earliest possible moment.

One reason why we cannot continue to rely on retaliatory air power as a sufficient deterrent is the effect of time. We have a substantial lead in air power and in atomic weapons. At the present moment this may be the most powerful deterrent against aggression. But with the passage of time, even though we continue our advances in this field, the value of our lead diminishes.

In other words, the best use we can make of our present advantage in retaliatory air power is to move ahead under this protective shield to build the balanced collective forces in Western Europe that will continue to deter aggression after our atomic advantage has been diminished.

Another reason why the availability of defense forces in being in Western Europe is necessary is that it enables the free nations to deal more effectively with, and thus to prevent, the various forms of aggression that threaten them. So far we have been talking about the possibility of bold, naked aggression by the Soviet Union itself. But we have seen recent examples of another form of Communist aggression-disguised aggression through a satellite.

We see at the present time the build-up of forces in East Germany and the satellite states. This build-up contains the possibility of overt moves which could be disclaimed by the real center of ag gression. In the absence of defense forces in being, satellites might be used for such disguised aggression in the hope that they could get away with it, since the free nations could respond only with the weapons of all-out general war or not at all. The presence of adequate defense forces would remove this temptation.

We have also become familiar with the Communist use of indirect aggression, in which the Communists employ the weapons of fear and threats to undermine confidence and paralyze the will to resist. We saw this happen in Czechoslovakia. The presence of adequate defense forces in being is also a bulwark against this kind of aggression. The argument is sometimes advanced that the Western European defense forces cannot be made large enough to equal the forces available to the potential aggressor, man for man, and therefore would be useless. The difficulty with this argument is that it considers the European defense forces in isolation, as a sole weapon, instead of considering these forces as a vital adjunct to the other deterrent forces available. It is not the case that ground forces would or could be sufficient by themselves or that air or sea power by themselves could or would be sufficient, but that the three elements of our deterrent forces, taken together, are the best means of preventing an attack from taking place.

However overwhelming our available air striking power is likely to be in the period ahead of us, the presence of defense forces in being in Western Europe is a vital part of the effectiveness of our air power as a deterrent to attack. Not only do air forces require bases from which to operate, which must be held on the ground by defense forces, but air power alone is not a sufficient deterrent against the risk of a quick all-out effort to seize the continent. Without integrated forces in being, a potential aggressor may be tempted to gamble on the possibility of a quick initial thrust. If there are no forces available on the ground even to slow up this rabbit-punch, our air power, though it worked great damage against the centers of aggression, could not be in a position to prevent the devastation of Europe.

An adequate initial defense is an essential part of our efforts to deter an attack against Western Europe, and this initial defense can come only through having forces in being in Europe.

All these considerations which apply to our efforts to deter an attack by building collective forces in Europe apply with equal force to the necessities we would face if, despite our best efforts, Europe were attacked.

In the event of an attack the availability of defense forces in Europe would give us time that we would vitally need to bring our other forces into operation. In the meantime these defense forces would oblige the aggressor to use up his available resources, while his home sources of supply were being bombed. These forces would also deny him access to the industrial, human, and other resources of Europe. These are the resources that balance the scales of power. These are the forces that would prevent Europe, in the event of an attack, from having to go through another occupation and liberation.

I believe that the American people understand and agree on the importance of Western Europe to our own security. There was a time when the argument that the United States should concentrate on its own shorelines, and leave the rest of the world to its fate, had some appeal for Americans. But the inadequacy of this approach to our

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