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NATO's Disarray and Europe's Future
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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PRESIDENT DE GAULLE announced on September 9, 1965, that after 1969 France will no longer accept an integrated North Atlantic military defense system. He recognized that in many areas France has “the best reasons for associating with others,” but must retain her self-determination:
so long as the solidarity of the Western peoples appears to us necessary for the eventual defense of Europe, our country will remain the ally of her allies but, upon the expiration of the commitments formerly taken — that is, in 1969 by the latest — the subordination known as “integration” which is provided for by NATO and which hands our fate over to foreign authority shall cease, as far as we are concerned.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1966
References
1 NATO Common Infrastructure Installations (airfields, communication systems, radar installations, naval facilities, missile sites, headquarters and training installations, etc.) are financed collectively by NATO member countries under the terms of various cost-sharing agreements. Such NATO installations set up on a national territory can be used by the forces of any other member country. Since 1951, the North Atlantic Council approved Common Infrastructure “slices” amounting to a total of about four billion dollars.
2 In the sense of “mixed manning,” NATO has no integrated forces; the only mixed-manned organizations are headquarters — SHAPE, the Major Subordinate Commands (Allied Forces Northern Region, Allied Forces Central Region, Allied Forces Mediterranean, and Allied Forces Southern Region), the Army Groups (e.g., Central Army Group), and the Allied Tactical Air Forces. NATO uses the term “integrated air defense,” but this is not a mixed-manned force; each of its operational components is made up of organizations which are all of one nationality, and only the command is “integrated” since it is exercised through headquarters in the Alliance chain of command which are themselves internationally staffed.
Integration in the sense of providing a single and united basis for coordinated action, under Allied command but carried out by national contingents, does of course exist — indeed, it is fundamental to NATO concept. NATO's military organization is based on national forces remaining under national command until certain specified stages of alert, at which time they come under Allied command exercised through internationally manned headquarters. With the principal exception of air defense forces, no forces are actually assigned to NATO command in peacetime in the sense of being already under NATO command on a full-time basis. Certain forces of the various Allied countries are referred to as being “assigned” but in fact this refers to units which (a) are in the general area in which they would operate in war, and (b) are pledged to NATO upon declaration of certain stages of alert. Other forces not in their probable operational area are “earmarked.” An example would be divisions or tactical air units in the United States. Such forces are pledged to be sent to NATO Europe when formal alert is declared. Actually both these categories represent commitments. The fact remains that (with the primary exception of air defense forces) no forces are actually maintained under NATO peacetime command. Naturally the term “forces” is used as distinct from headquarters and staffs such as SHAPE.
3 One of the purposes of a Multilateral Nuclear Force (MLF) and the British plan for an Atlantic Nuclear Force (ANF) is to prevent proliferation of atomic weapons within NATO. MLF partners would have a greater say in the formulation of atomic policy decisions, but the United States would not surrender its right to make the final decision about the use of thermonuclear weapons. Moscow does not accept the argument that the United States sponsored mixed-manned force and the British plan for an Atlantic Nuclear Force offer a guaranty against proliferation of atomic weapons in the West. It opposes the setting up of any kind of multilateral atomic organization in NATO. According to the Soviet view, such plans would in a round-about way make nuclear weapons accessible to West Germany. The Soviet position was forcefully expressed at the seventeen-nation disarmament conference in Geneva, when the American Delegation submitted a draft non-dissemination treaty in August, 1965, to prevent nations other than the present five from acquiring nuclear weapons. This treaty would not allow the increase ofthe total numbers of existing nuclear entities but would make possible the establishment of MLF and even the creation of a nuclear force under exclusive European control, provided at least one of the existing nuclear countries was participating in it. The British interpret dissemination in the strictest sense. They oppose any collective arrangement within the Western Alliance that would make possible the elimination of the veto power of existing nuclear countries.