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114 nato before the korean war 6 To London April–May 1950 Spring Challenges The many holes in the foundations of a viable NATO defense program could not be filled in the Defense Committee sessions at the end of March, and there were no illusions among NATO planners—civilian or military—that they would be. It was expected that problems would be kicked up to the next level, the forthcoming NAC meeting in mid-May, when the foreign ministers would gather in London. Most of these issues were fundamental and wide-ranging—the unsettled linkage between the MPSB and DFEC, the uneasy relationship between NATO and the WU, the faltering efforts toward European integration, the continuing European resentment over American unilateralism, and the obstacles in exploiting German resources for NATO purposes. The foregoing do not exhaust the list but raise the question of whether NATO could meet these challenges—or needed to meet them. The Medium-Term Defense Plan (MTDP) The Medium-Term Defense Plan agreed upon at The Hague meeting provides a case in point. The MDTP, after all, was the most visible achievement of the Military and Defense committees meeting at the end of March. But how realistic was a plan that anticipated ninety active and reserve divisions, along with the specific numbers of 1,705 antiaircraft batteries and 8,820 aircraft to be in place by 1954? Where would the funds and equipment come from? How the forces were to be equipped and paid for was left for another time.1 All that the committees had done at The Hague was to look over the pooling of national resources derived from hasty Regional Planning Groups without taking into account the impact of such a buildup on the economic stability of the member countries. These were not insignificant issues, but from the U.S. point of view, the need to impress Congress with sufficient accomplishments to justify continuation of the MDAP trumped all other considerations. On paper at least, the reports seemed to confirm genuine progress in developing the MTDP. Reviewing the work of the recent NATO meeting, on April 7 State 114 to london 115 Department officials found that “the vicious circle as to whether military planners should first spell out and cost a detailed plan or whether Finance Ministers should first establish a financial ceiling calling for further military planning appears at last to have been broken.” But the evidence supporting this assertion was thin. Regional Planning Groups were to compile lists of equipment deficiencies and let the MPSB know the costs of production. Actually, the MPSB did have preliminary lists of available capacity for military production, but these were just a compilation of national lists unrelated to any coordinated NATO defense plans. Finance ministers were to “immediately study available capabilities for additional military expenditures.” Instead, they turned to the Defense Committee for its estimate of costs in meeting requirements for defense of the West.2 There was a promissory note in each of these activities, with one committee passing the buck to another. The major achievement of the MDAP and the DFEC was to disparage the British Finance Minister Sir Stafford Cripps’s demands for giving absolute priority to economic recovery by setting a financial ceiling for military planning. They agreed in principle that an effort to secure more funds for military purposes was necessary “without any implication that the Finance Ministers would be obligated to meet whatever figure might be supplied by the military planners.”3 This caveat rendered meaningless any serious effort to fulfill MTDP goals. Just a few days earlier, the Dutch indicated that the new coordinated defense plan would cause serious problems in the Netherlands. Problems in Indonesia diverted so much of that nation’s military budget that only U.S. additional aid would permit the Netherlands to contribute to the plan.4 Each of the European allies claimed cogent reasons for evading the requirements , sufficient for Field Marshal Montgomery, chairman of the Western Union’s Commanders-in-Chief Committee, to blurt in his customary blunt fashion that the “defence of Europe was a façade.” Actually his language was milder than usual as he blamed the problem on defects in the French military system in which “there was no strong, able and competent man in command of the French Army.” His feud with de Lattre de Tassigny was obviously still alive as Ambassador Douglas noted in his letter to Acheson. It was also obvious that the allies were still caught...

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