I understand the hon. Member's point of view, but I disagree with him. The best way of safeguarding the future for people in this country and for British people in Africa is to work towards meeting halfway, or more than halfway, the desire of the Africans to govern themselves and to be independent. The more we dig our toes in and the more we back intransigent diehards the more is the chance of the whole thing ending in violence and extremism.

I want to talk about the basic issue in the whole of our international policy, both foreign and defence, and one to which little attention has been paid in this debate or on any other occasion. I want to talk about the crisis of N.A.T.O. which I believe is so serious that the foundations of our policy, which is N.A.T.O., are crumbling and cracking. I want to analyse why this is so and what ought to be done about it.

The crisis, which was latent all along and is inherent in the very nature of N.A.T.O., came into the open over the Cuban crisis with the assertion by President Kennedy of the right to condemn his allies to a nuclear war without con- sulting them. The famous dispatch of the Washington correspondent of The Times, of 24th October, has been mentioned frequently in the House, but as the point has not sunk in I permit myself to quote three sentences. After making the point that American action over Cuba had transformed the nature of the Western Alliance, he went on: The President has, in fact, assumed the supreme political authority that was always inherent in the American deterrent….The firm belief of the U.S. Administration is that as the leader of the alliance with control of most of the nuclear power available to the West, it has a duty to defend itself and its allies—even to the extent of bringing about a nuclear exchange. It is also firmly believed that in an urgent situation there will be no time for consultation, that a threat of war cannot be met by committee decisions. A further report, emphasising and elaborating this American attitude, was published by the Sunday Telegraph on 23rd December from its political correspondent then in Washington, Mr. Peregrine Worst Horne. As he mentioned in his dispatch that he had his information from a High White House source, which, I presume, was Mr. Pierre Salinger, the head of the Press Bureau, I think that we should pay attention to it.

Mr. Worsthorne gave it as the view of the Administration that A refusal to consider rationally that it may be necessary for the United States to…impose nuclear tutelage on its allies could end the era of Anglo-American cooperation. In Kennedy's thinking it is once again quite simply a question of first principles, of fundamentals, of forces beyond sentiment; and, just as self-evident Eighteenth Century moral and political truths compelled Jefferson against his will to break with England in 1776, so today another set of truths—thermonuclear truths—which Kennedy sees as equally compelling, are forcing him into equally painful and revolutionary paths….Unless these articles of closely reasoned faith are appreciated better than were their earlier counterparts in 1776, there is a danger of another American Declaration of Independence, quite different in form but no less historic in its consequences. Here we have a phenomenon frequently met with, and that is President Kennedy's curious trick of inverting reality. This time he is standing Thomas Jefferson on his head. Jefferson thought it necessary to make the Declaration of Independence on the issue of no taxation without representation, whereas Kennedy is now threatening us with a new U.S. Declaration of Independence of Britain if we refuse to accept annihilation without representation at the hands of the United States.

Mr. Worsthorne says: A high White House aide informed me that Cuba was the first time that the United States had acted on behalf of all, Europeans as well as Americans….But we know, and you know, that in the foreseeable future this is how it will always be in moments of thermonuclear drama, when the only measure of Division will be, not between Americans and Britons, nor Americans and French, but between those who are in the White House and those outside. He goes on to say that the Americans have no more say, nor have their legislature any say, in these decisions than have America's allies and that the decisions are concentrated in the hands of a few men and the Administration is increasingly operating at times of crisis in the utmost secrecy, cut off alike from allied consultation and national debate…moving towards a new and terrible megalomania… but that whatever one thinks of the merits of this there should be no illusion about the fact that the Administration is entirely sincere in its views and utterly determined to give effect to them.

He concludes that Britain and Europe have to reckon with not some lightly formed American impulse, prompted by national ambition, but rather with the deepest purpose of a President at the very peak of his authority, convinced that he has at last found his historic mission as leader of the West as a whole. This is the reality with which we have to reckon and it is one which cannot be reversed, even if the President were unreasonable in his attitude. But if one accepts his premise, the alleged necessity for N.A.T.O., there is no faulting his reasoning. We can only quarrel with his argument by rejecting his premise. His argument follows logically from the nature of nuclear weapons and the realities of the distribution of power in N.A.T.O.

The Times, in its leader of 27th March, entitled"Nuclear Metaphysics", pointed out that The difficulty, not yet sufficiently recognised, is that the needs of a strategic deterrent are incompatible with the traditional concept of a military alliance of sovereign equals. The effectiveness of the modern deterrent depends upon the certainty and speed of its response. If it is controlled by more than one sovereign power it must be subject to veto and political consultation, either of which can make it useless.The Times then says that this leaves three choices. The first is that each member should have its own deterrent, which, of course, would involve the very thing which we are trying to avoid at any price and would break up the alliance. The second choice is to leave things as they are, that is, leave it to the United States to run the alliance; in other words, to accept annihilation without representation. The third choice is that N.A.T.O. should"develop such a degree of political unity that it can act as a single power". This is simply what I call a"two penny-coloured" edition of annihilation without representation at the hands of the United States.

Whatever one may think of the merits of the present position and the price paid for being in N.A.T.O. and the perpetuation of N.A.T.O., it is this fact which touched off General de Gaulle's revolt. In effect, he took his stand for independence of the United States, on the principle of rejecting annihilation without representation, with his own little addition,"Unless I can do the same to you". He said that he had no objection to the United States condemning its allies to war unconsulted on an issue arising in the Western Hemisphere, but he claimed the same right for France on an issue arising in Europe. He thought that, with a French nuclear deterrent, he could achieve a position in which he would be able to exercise equality of rights in genocide.

This claim is politically unreal, militarily absurd and morally abominable. Politically, what General de Gaulle wants is an old-fashioned military alliance of sovereign equals, which, of course, is not possible, given the nature of the nuclear deterrent. In fact, in any alliance in which there is great inequality of military and financial power, the strongest ally always runs the alliance. This has always been so; there never has been any equal alliance unless there has been equality of power among the members of it.

In the second place, when General de Gaulle argues that France may produce a deterrent at some time in the 1970s, we may be quite certain that, by that time, the minute French deterrent will be obsolete before it is operational. As a military and financial enterprise, the whole thing is sheer megalomania and utterly unreal.

When he says, as he did in the famous interview on 14th January, that France, to be independent, must acquire"the sombre and terrible power to annihilate millions of human beings in a few minutes", he is talking like a wicked man, making Genghis Khan sound like what the French would call an enfant de choeur.

But we should not overlook that the first half of de Gaulle's stand, his declaration of independence and his rejection of annihilation without representation at the hands of the United States, has given him a great deal of support not only in France but in other countries on the Continent. Indeed, Mr. Peregrine Worsthorne, in the Sunday Telegraph of 24th February, said that the repercussions of de Gaulle's stand were almost as great, and his rejection of annihilation without representation was almost as popular, in this country as in France.

He went on to say: The difficulty preventing Britain from opposing General de Gaulle's so-called grand design for Europe is that most politicians and many of the public basically agree with it…Judging by their speeches, indeed, it seems that Ministers are piqued not by the direction of the General's policy but by the fact that France rather than Britain is taking the lead. As for the public, who doubts that if the declaration of independence of America had been made by the British Prime Minister it would have won him the next election? That, I think, is the explanation of the reason for the Government's ambiguous and ambivalent attitude towards this question.

On the one hand, they claim to be a loyal and faithful ally of America to the bitter end. They boasted of the fact that, when the United States violated the United Nations Charter by blockading Cuba, they alerted the rockets and V-bomber force and were quite ready to immolate the people of this country in support of that American policy. Also, we had the declaration by the Foreign Secretary at Oxford, some months ago, that the people of this country were ready to be reduced to radioactive ashes for the sake of the freedom of Berlin, which is a rather misleading way of talking about the difference between a compromise policy such as that acceptable to the Opposition over Berlin and the intransigence of Dr. Adenauer backed by the Americans.

At the same time, the Government claim that they are prepared to engage in a nuclear war single-handed, and talk like an Ersatz de Gaulle. In the last foreign affairs debate in Another place, the Foreign Secretary declared that it was for the Government to decide when a moment of supreme national emergency had arisen in, he added, areas outside N.A.T.O. and outside Europe. This, again, if one takes his words at their face value and believes what he says—which I do not—suggests that the Government's bellicosity goes to the point where they are prepared to incinerate the people of this country for a cause so bad that it would not even be backed by the Americans, let alone by the United Nations, in a far corner of the world. It is sheer irresponsibility to talk like that, but that is the way they talk.

The truth is that the Nassau agreement tied us firmly to the Americans. The moment we become dependent on the Americans for obtaining missiles, the Americans have ultimate control of what we do with them, and the reservation of independent action in moments of supreme national emergency is a mere paper reservation which does not mean very much.

The alternative so far put up by the Opposition to meet this new situation with which we have been confronted since the Cuba crisis is, although less dishonest, just as unreal as the policy of the Government. What my party has called for—my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition called for it in the House on 31st January and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) elaborated the thesis in the defence debate on 4th March—is this. We say that we reject annihilation without representation. We reject both the multilateral fleet and a multinational nuclear force on the ground that they would augment the tension and the danger of war in Europe. This, I agree, is true. But our way out of this is to say that there must be political control of N.A.T.O., a collective control of N.A.T.O. decisions. This was elaborated on 4th March to the effect that we should offer to increase our conventional forces in exchange for the Americans' agreement to a measure of international control of their nuclear forces.

In fact, the nature of nuclear weapons makes this demand illusory and the distribution of power in N.A.T.O. makes it irrelevant. Even with the best will in the world, we could not have collective control of a decision to resort to nuclear weapons. I do not often agree with the Foreign Secretary, but from his premises he argued logically the other day when he complained that too many fingers on the safety catch would destroy the credibility of the deterrent. There is no time for that kind of thing. If one is going in for genocide, one must do it in a fit of madness. There is no room for consultation about it, because the people consulted might show a preference for staying alive, even at the cost of a compromise, even at the cost, possibly, of abiding by their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations.

Secondly, there is no question of controlling American nuclear weapons. I asked some Questions in the House and received a very clear reply from the Lord Privy Seal on this which confirmed my own analysis. What is proposed is merely to find a way of internationalising the control of such nuclear weapons as are assigned to the N.A.T.O. command, and that, ex hypothesi, means the minute British nuclear force, the derisory French nuclear force, if and when it comes into existence and if and when President de Gaulle changes his mind—but only those nuclear weapons which the United States chooses to assign to N.A.T.O., which are about 3 per cent. of its total nuclear force.

The rest remains at the disposal of the President, as at present, and may be used by him as he threatened to use them over Cuba to consign us all to cremation or incineration, or whatever one likes to call it, without going through the formality of asking us whether the idea appeals to us.

The whole object of the operation with this multilateral or multinational fleet, and so on, is not to extend N.A.T.O. control over the huge American nuclear armoury but to extend American control over the minute nuclear weapons which her European allies insist on having, although the Americans think it all nonsense and that we should not have them.

That is why The Times, in its leader of 27th March, to which I referred, begged the Government to blow away the fog that has enveloped all discussion of a N.A.T.O. nuclear force. There is a growing danger that if people are left much longer to play blind man's buff among all the multilateral and multinational deterrents and weird apparitions such as polyglot crews on phoney freighters they will gradually come to believe in them as if they were real. The truth is that an attempt is being made to overcome a political dilemma with technical tricks that are largely meaningless in either military or political terms". I claim that this political dilemma in N.A.T.O. is basic and insoluble because it arises out of the very nature of N.A.T.O. itself and of nuclear weapons. On the one hand, collective control of nuclear decisions is a military impossibility and politically unacceptable to the United States. There is not a hope of getting the Administration to agree to it. It would be repudiated by Congress and the Pentagon. The other alternative of annihilation without representation is intolerable to the allies of the United States. The whole thing illustrates the truth of what George F. Kennan said in 1958 in his November-December Reith lectures on the B.B.C. He, as Chief of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department at the time, was one of the founders of N.A.T.O. His views are those of a senior American diplomat.

This is what he said in his broadcast lecture: The beginning of understanding rests in this appalling problem with the recognition that the weapon of mass destruction is a sterile and hopeless weapon…which cannot in any way serve the purposes of a constructive and hopeful foreign policy. The suicidal nature of this weapon renders it unsuitable both as a sanction of diplomacy and as the basis of an alliance. That was said in 1958.

Last October, President Kennedy proved the truth of this proposition in practice, because, by using the threat of nuclear war as the sanction of his power-political diplomacy over Cuba, he succeeded in revealing the total impracticability of making the nuclear deterrent strategy the basis of the Western Alliance. It is threatening the end of the alliance. It seems to me that this is the essential fact which should be borne in mind.

That does not mean that there is no way out of the situation. There is a way out, but it lies in invoking a new dimension—the dimension of foreign policy. This has been recognised again and again. It was recognised in that speech by Dean Acheson at West Point, on 5th December last, which caused so much offence. One sensible thing which he said was that the great weakness of N.A.T.O. is that there is no agreement on policy between the members of N.A.T.O.

And President Kennedy at Paulskirche, near Frankfurt, a few days ago elaborated that point. He said: our partnership depends on a common political purpose. He went on to quote Thucydides on the Peloponnesian war, an apt quotation of the dangers to an alliance of each member pushing its own policy and attempting to further its own interests and forgetting the common cause, and said: Is that also to be the story of the Grand Alliance? Welded in a moment of imminent danger, will it disintegrate in complacency, with each member pressing its own ends to the neglect of the common cause? This must not be the case…The greatest of our necessities, the most notable of our omissions, is progress towards unity of political purpose. What"unity of political purpose" means is to reach such a degree of agreement on foreign policy with the United States that we are prepared to entrust our survival or extinction to decisions taken unilaterally by the United States to resort to nuclear war in defence of whatever policy has been agreed on.

Is there any prospect of such a situation arising? What is American world policy for the sake of which we are expected in N.A.T.O., even now, to accept the risk of annihilation without representation? One rather striking statement of how the present American Administration see their global policy was made at President Kennedy's Press conference on 18th December last. He began by saying that when he thought of the willingness of the United States to accept burdens all round the world he thought it was a fantastic story, and went on: We have one million Americans today serving outside the United States. There is no other country in history that has carried this kind of burden. There are other countries who had forces serving outside of their own country, but for conquest: we have two divisions in South Korea. Not to control South Korea but to defend it. We have a lot of Americans in South Vietnam. Well now, no other country in the world has ever done that since the beginning of the world: Greece, Rome, Napoleon and all the rest always had conquest. We have one million men outside and they are trying to defend these countries. What we are saying is that rich Western Europe must do its part, and I hope it will. Let us examine that statement a little more closely. As stated in the parallel statements made by the President in Germany, all that the U.S.A. stands for is defending freedom in Asia and other parts of the world, the frontiers of freedom.

In Formosa, the Americans keep General Chiang Kai-shek and pretend that he represents China, although his régime is a police State and dictatorship. There is not enough democracy to put in a pig's eye. Well there is, but not enough to impair the animal's power of vision.

Then there is the claim of the Americans to start a world war if the Chinese Republic tries to push Chiang Kai-shek's forces out of the coastal islands of Matsu and Quemoy, which the Government of this country recognise as being part of the territory of the Chinese People's Republic and under its sovereignty. In Laos, it was American policy which insisted on joining together those"whom God hath put asunder" by forcing the reactionary dictator Boun Oum on a people who did not want him. He would not have had a look-in if he had not been propped up by American arms and money. There are great social problems to solve. The great Majority of the people want to solve them in certain ways and it is this Western Intervention, led by the United States, which creates the deadlock by preventing their solution.

President Kennedy was coy about mentioning what the 17,000 Americans were doing in Southern Vietnam. They are waging a totally illegal war in violation of half a dozen treaties, a barbaric war which includes poisoning crops, together with people, including women and children, who get in the way, and a war which attempts to use starvation and terror to prop up a reactionary régime. Not only the Communists, i.e. the peasants, but also the Buddhists are now up in arms against the present puppet régime, which is simply a dictatorship supported by the United States.

In South Korea, there is a pure military dictatorship. As in South Vietnam, the United States pays the whole of the military budget. It has the fourth largest Army in the world—2 million men—and, at the same time, has 30 per cent. unemployed. There is such a hideously low standard of living among the peasants that they half starve. Their average income is about £35 a year.

The verdict on this Far Eastern policy was given by the Washington correspondent of The Times on 19th May, 1961, when he said: The events in Cuba and Laos have persuaded the Administration not only that the post-war truce lines must be held, but that the peripheral areas must be kept even in a semi-colonial status and with the force of American arms if necessary….The earlier promise of elasticity and with it a self-provided room for manoeuvre seems to have gone and may well be replaced by something not unlike the old Dulles system. On the same date, the New Statesmen had an apposite comment: America's attempt to export her formula of free enterprise democracy has met with almost unrelieved failure. A skin of capitalism has been grafted on to a feudal framework, and this ugly and inefficient hybrid is kept alive only by constant injections of dollars and arms. That is very much what is happening also in Latin America. Some hon. Members may have noticed that only a few days ago the Observer published a report on the results of the inquiry carried out by the Organisation of America States. They sent out the ex-President of Brazil, Dr. Kubitschek, and ex-President Lleras Camargo, of Colombia, to examine the situation and to report back. They reported back that the whole thing was on the verge of collapse and that there was great criticism in Latin America of the whole policy as being an attempt to impose a kind of semi-colonial status on the Latin-American countries.

The despatch concludes that in the view of unofficial Latin Americans who were consulted in Washington, the report ignores the total misunderstanding which has long existed between North and Latin America. Most Latin-American countries are keen to diversify their trading pattern in the direction of Europe and possibly Japan. Europe (Continental Europe at any rate) is keen to reciprocate.Senhor Kubitschek and Dr. Lleras were, by the limitations of their brief, precluded from pointing this out or from pointing out that the Alliance for Progress, as at present constituted, cannot possibly work. The report ignores the vital fact that the free-enterprise U.S. is in the impossible position, under the terms of the alliance, of giving aid only to countries which must, to qualify, be somewhat socialist U.S. legislators have noticed this paradox and are most unwilling to vote more money. The truth is that when President Kennedy talks of defending freedom in the world he is merely echoing what President Truman said in his famous doctrine of 5th March, 1947, that There is one thing that the Americans value more than peace. It is freedom. Freedom of worship, freedom of speech and freedom of enterprise. The pattern of international trade which is most conducive to freedom of enterprise is one in which major decisions are made not by Governments but by private buyers and sellers….The pattern of trade which is least conducive to freedom of enterprise is one in which decisions are made by Governments…Unless we act, and act decisively, it will be the pattern of the next century. That is what it is all about. American policy is directed to preserving freedom of enterprise in the world. The New York Herald-Tribune's comment at the time on the Truman message to Congress was the headline: Truman says Americans love free enterprise more than peace. I do not see what basis there is for unity of purpose with the United States in that policy, certainly not from this side of the House at least. We on this side are supposed to be Socialists.

In the same way, if one goes through the various items in Europe, looking at them from the point of view at least of what the Opposition believes to be a reasonable policy, we believe that Germany should not share in nuclear weapons in any form. We reject the principle of annihilation without representation. We want some form of disengagement, starting with negotiations on the Rapacki plan and taking both halves of Germany and some of her neighbours out of the rival alliances and within a nuclear-free zone from which all foreign forces would be removed and within which the forces of the Powers concerned would be reduced, limited and put under international control.

We want a provisional Berlin settlement which calls for de facto recognition of Eastern Germany and final recognition of the Polish frontier and some form of disengagement, in return for international guarantees, to which both Germanys would be parties, as well as the Russians, Americans, ourselves and the French, for the independence of West Berlin and its freedom of communications, with the association in some form of the United Nations. On all those subjects, as well as on Labour's proposals for the reunification of Germany, it would not be difficult to reach agreement with the U.S.S.R. by a little give-and-take negotiation. The problem is how to induce our allies to negotiate on those proposals and to accept them as a basis of settlement.

The only way to do that is to act on the principle, which has been enunciated more than once from this side of the House by leaders of this party, that defence must be the servant of foreign policy. That means, first, that we have the right to determine what forces we need in Europe in the light of our own foreign policy. We do not need either conventional forces or nuclear weapons to induce the Russians to negotiate on the Rapacki plan—which is their own plan as well as one approved by Labour as a basis of negotiation. In all the other items it will also be found that we can negotiate from common interest and do not have to try to negotiate from strength. That is lucky for us, because we do not have the strength. We must borrow it from the United States, the condition for which is that we should not follow our own policy but should commit ourselves to American policies, with which at least this side of the House disagrees.

Therefore, we can cut our forces to a symbolic force in N.A.T.O., which would be the only way of finding the economic and financial resources necessary to carry out Labour's domestic policies. Those excellent economic and social policies will remain on paper unless we drastically cut the present-day staggering defence expenditure.

Moreover, we are also entitled to point out to our allies that since N.A.T.O. may legitimately be invoked only in case of unprovoked aggression, we are entitled to interpret that to mean that we will not be committed to war by allies who fail to come to terms with us on how to make peace. We can tell them that as long as they pursue policies which we regard as provocative and dangerous, they need not expect our help, because they are not entitled to it, and if they want to restore the military side of the alliance, they had better come to terms with us about how to negotiate a settlement with the Soviet Union which will enable us to wind up both the alliances by stages and by mutual agreement, as part of disarmament and disengagement.

What all that amounts to is that the policy of this country should be to build a bridge between the United States and the Soviet Union by working to transfer the relations between the great Powers from the balance of power to the Charter of the United Nations. That means that we reject the assumption of aggression and instead recognise that the arms race is kept going by mutual fear and suspicion; neither side wants to attack the other; and the more we prepare for instant war against a mythical danger of aggression, the greater we make the real danger of an incident sparking off a fatal accident. The only way to stop that is to take the initiative in making peace, to subordinate defence to foreign policy.

Once one recognises that it is fear and suspicion which is wrong on both sides, that the belief that the other fellow wants to attack one—which is shared by both sides—is mistaken, then one must also recognise that what is needed is a major country to break the psychosis of fear and the vicious circle of the arms race, by deciding,"We will not go on with this arms business, until we try to reach agreement with our allies on a reasonable basis of negotiation with the Soviet Union, both on the outstanding political issues and on the question of disarmament."

As a corollary to that, we should also recognise the truth of what Aneurin Bevan said in this House on 23rd July, 1957. As time has gone on it has become ever more clear and compelling as the doctrine by which we ought to be guided: …the fact is that the ends which are served by national defence and the means adopted for defence are so far apart from each other today as to add up to no sense at all. No one really believes that weapons which are weapons of mutual suicide are any longer means of national self-defence…If we abandoned flatulent generalisations about the wide differences that separate the Soviet system from our own, most hon. Members would privately agree…that there cannot be any differences about social systems so profound that we are prepared to run the risk of wiping out the whole of human society over them….Alter all, the primary condition for arguing about different social systems is that one should be alive to argue about them. But if the argument results in the extinction of all social systems, it seems rather absurd to be worrying about which particular one one is going to live under."—(Official Report, 23rd July, 1957; Vol. 574, c. 334.) That should be the doctrine that guides us. Those should be the insights which illuminate our path. It means that we should stand on our own feet and pursue an independent foreign policy and say that we do not need the protection of the United States against the Soviet Union any more than we need the protection of the Soviet Union against the United States. This country should take the lead in making peace and winding up the long nightmare and madness of the nuclear arms race.