Implementation of the New Look strategy in Europe proved no less daunting and, in certain key respects, even less successful. Eisenhower, like Truman, considered the presence of US combat forces in Western Europe an essential requirement to deter the potential threat posed by superior Warsaw Pact forces. But Eisenhower, ever since his stint as NATO supreme commander, believed that stationing US troops on European soil was merely a temporary expedient. From his earliest days in the Oval Office, Eisenhower made clear his determination to withdraw US troops from Europe as quickly as possible by persuading Europeans to accept the principal responsibility for their own defense. Achieving that objective required that European troops be mobilized much more fully; it also necessitated a greater reliance on nuclear weapons in the defense of Europe.
Yet each of those prescriptions just exacerbated underlying allied tensions. The tensions arose especially from the discomfort of West European nations with their overdependence on the United States and from their corresponding unease about the prospect of their homelands becoming the principal battlefield in any Soviet-American military confrontation. As Secretary of State Dulles confided to the NSC on December io, 1953: "While we regarded atomic weapons as one of the great new sources of defensive strength, many of our allies regarded the atomic capability as the gateway of annihilation."410 411 Following the Bravo tests of March 1954, the secretary of state voiced concern that a "wave of hysteria" was "driving our Allies away from us. They think we are getting ready for a war of this kind. We could survive, but some of them would be obliterated in a few minutes." He worried, consequently, that allied fears of nuclear war "could lead to a policy of neutrality or
«i6
Appeasement."
The European Defense Community initiative had, since the end of the Truman administration, offered the prime US hope for an expansion of allied military capabilities. Its rejection by the French National Assembly, in i954, compelled an "agonizing reappraisal" of US policy, in Secretary of State Dulles’s memorable phrase. In line with a British proposal, the Eisenhower administration and its Western allies agreed upon the alternative solution of a West Germany rearmed within the constraining fabric of NATO. The subsequent assumption of sovereignty, in i955, by a rapidly rearming Federal Republic of Germany helped resolve the key riddle of how to assimilate German power for European defense, while at the same time preventing Bonn from developing a fully independent military force. The broader problem for the Eisenhower administration, however, remained: how could Washington induce its NATO partners to accept a much larger share of the collective security burden, thus reducing the enormous costs being borne by the Americans?
Annoyed that the Europeans were "making a sucker out of Uncle Sam," as he once put it, Eisenhower decided, early in his second term, that the only way to induce Europeans to assume more responsibility for their own defense was to grant them de facto control over tactical nuclear weapons.412 The controversial nuclear-sharing concept also grew out of Eisenhower’s desire to treat
European allies as full partners rather than as “stepchildren.” The question of whether overall US security would be enhanced, or compromised, if certain NATO partners - including West Germany - gained control over nuclear weapons proved intensely controversial among US defense planners and within the Western alliance. This critically important issue remained unresolved as Eisenhower’s tenure in office came to a close. By then, however, the president had gravitated to a more restrictive policy centered around the possible development of a multilateral nuclear force. Plainly, none of the administration’s various initiatives had brought the goal of a US troop withdrawal from Europe any closer to realization, leaving a cornerstone element of Eisenhower’s New Look strategy unfulfilled.
World History
