ments in that country's economic development, to help the people of India and to demonstrate to the people of all underdeveloped nations that there is a straighter and smoother road to economic and social progress than communism. Now we must consider what is required to help defend the fruits of our mutual efforts.

One complicating factor in this situation is the deep-rooted antagonism still existing between India and Pakistan. The United States has taken great pains to assure the Government of Pakistan that our aid to India will not be at the expense of Pakistan's security to which we are committed under our mutual defense agreements. It is our belief that both India and Pakistan must now recognize that they face common enemy to the north in Communist China, that from this recognition must come the impetus for resolution of their differences and that in the future their efforts must be directed against the real threat in Asia rather than dissipated against each other.

5. SOUTHEAST ASIA

In southeast Asia the Communists have for the present foregone the use of open armed aggression in favor of the more covert techniques of subversion, insurgency, and guerrilla warfare; in other words, what Mr. Khrushchev calls popular revolts. Although the principal arena of the struggle at the moment is South Vietnam, it could easily spread to neighboring areas.

For example, the situation in Laos is still quite precarious. We have withdrawn our military advisers and training missions but we have as yet no assurance that the other side has done the same. Meanwhile, we are doing what we can to stabilize the situation by assisting the Government of Laos in meeting its financial responsibilities. We are under no illusions that stability has been established in that country or that the Communists have given up their aspirations for complete political control. However, we are taking political and economic measures and have extended certain military assistance within the framework of the Geneva agreements to strengthen and maintain the non-Communist elements in Laos and their resistance against Communist threats to take over. Of course, we must remain alert and be prepared to take whatever measures may be necessary to safeguard the freedom of the neighboring countries, as we did last year when it appeared that the Communists might overrun Laos and invade Thailand.

In Vietnam we are continuing to support the Government in its undeclared war against the Communist guerrillas. In addition to large-scale economic and military assistance, we are also maintaining a very substantial training mission in that country. Including the Military Assistance Advisory Group, there is now a total of more than 11,000 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam, providing training, airlift, communications, and advice to Vietnamese forces, and administering the military assistance program.

As I have said before on several occasions, victory over the Vietcong will most likely take many years. But now, as a result of the operations of the last year, there is a new feeling of confidence, not only on the part of the Government of South Vietnam but also among the populace, that victory is possible. Although there has probably been

some increase in the strength of organized Vietcong units, with greater confidence in the Government's ability to maintain law and order support of the Vietcong among the people appears to be declining. Vietcong units are finding it increasingly difficult to gain recruits in the central highlands and to obtain food supplies from the local population. The Government's program of fortified or strategic hamlets has made a major contribution to the Vietcong difficulties. In general, with better communications, better training and better equipment for the local defense forces, as well as for the central forces, the ability of the Government to cope with the guerrillas is improving.

We are not unmindful of the fact that the pressures on South Vietnam may well continue through infiltration via the Lao corridor. Nor are we unmindful of the possibility that the Communists, sensing defeat in their covert efforts, might resort to overt aggression from North Vietnam. Obviously, this latter contingency could require a greater direct participation by the United States. The survival of an independent government in South Vietnam is so important to the security of all of southeast Asia and to the free world that we must be prepared to take all necessary measures within our capability to prevent a Communist victory. However, short of such an overt attack, I believe the measures we are already taking in support of South Vietnam will eventually achieve their objective.

In this connection, we are both teaching and learning in South Vietnam. Personnel from all four of our military services are being rotated to South Vietnam, both to assist in the organization and training of the indigenous forces and to gain practical experience in counterguerrilla warfare. The experience that they bring back with them greatly enriches the training of other U.S. military personnel and assists in the development of new techniques and doctrine for counterinsurgency operations. In this way, we have considerably improved the training of the counterinsurgency units of the Army and the Air Force.

While there are no U.S. ground combat troops in other southeast Asian countries at the present time, we are continuing to furnish military assistance, including training, to most of the free nations there. Thailand with its 1,000-mile frontier on Laos has assumed increased importance as a focal point for U.S. security efforts in southeast Asia. We are now engaged in a major effort to assist the government of Thailand in improving the capability of its military force to meet Communist infiltration and subversion, and in strengthening its internal military communications and logistic facilities. We do not expect that this military assistance will enable Thailand to withstand an all-out military attack by Communist China, but it should help them to maintain internal security and, in the event of a major aggression, provide at least an initial resistance until other free world forces could be deployed to the defense.

Today, all of southeast Asia is highly vulnerable to Communist aggression, both open and covert; this situation constitutes for the United States and the rest of the free world a major threat for which we must provide in the design and deployment of our own military forces.

6. FAR EAST

The principal threat in the Far East, as well as in south and southeast Asia, is Communist China, for the Soviet Union is unlikely to initiate a war in the Pacific alone. Although the situation in the Far East has remained fairly stable during the last year, the threat of aggression from Communist China has not abated. It may well be that the logistic effort involved in the Chinese Communist attack on India will detract from their ability to undertake military adventures elsewhere. But we know from experience that the pressure can be quickly shifted from India to southeast Asia, Korea or Formosa, or even Japan or the Philippines, and we must continue to help guard all of these areas.

Our principal effort in the Far East is still in Korea where we maintain two divisions and are helping to support a large Korean military establishment. Korea is still the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance and is also the recipient of a very substantial amount of economic aid. Although the Korean Government is studying the possibility of reducing somewhat the size of its active army which inhibits the country's economic development, there seems to be little likelihood in the near future of being able to reduce significantly the economic and military assistance we must provide that country. Moreover, in the event of a renewed Communist attack on that country, Korea would need very substantial direct military help from the United States, and this too must be taken into account in calculating our own military force requirements.

We also have specific responsibilities to assist in the defense of our other friends and allies in the Far East-the Philippines, the Republic of China, and Japan. By and large, our contribution to the joint defensive effort in the event of attack on one or more of these countries would be in the form of naval and air power which lie within the capability of our present and planned forces-both active and reserve. All in all, the relative strength of free world countries in the Far East continues to improve. Japan is growing in economic and military strength. Although somewhat less dramatically, the Philippines are also progressing well. Considering the heavy burden of military requirements, the Republic of China has made notable advances. Nevertheless, the large standing forces maintained by the Republic of China continue to constitute a major drag on economic development.

7. NATO

I have deliberately deferred to the last the discussion of the NATO European NATO, with a population of more than a third of a billion and a gross national product of well over $350 billion a year, is still a principal bastion against the spread of communism. The six Common Market nations, plus the United Kingdom, by themselves have a total population, a military manpower pool and a GNP well in excess of that of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the rate of economic growth of the Common Market nations compares very favorably with that of the Soviet Union and they have been able to provide their people with a much higher standard of living.

With the continued growth and extension of the Common Market, coupled with an increasing degree of political integration, in time there will inevitably develop in Europe a new power center, more

nearly the equal of the Soviet Union and its European satellites. With the manpower, production capacity, and technical and scientific skills available to them, the nations of Europe should not only be able to provide larger contributions to their own defense but should also be in a position to contribute more to the defense of freedom in other parts of the world.

In view of this growing strength, some basic changes in our present arrangements with our NATO partners would be very much in order. We have no desire to dominate NATO. In fact, we would be very happy to share more equitably the heavy burdens we now carry in the collective defense of the free world. But as long as we do carry so great a share of the total burden, we cannot escape carrying a proportionately large share of the responsibility for leadership and direction.

This is particularly true with regard to the strategic nuclear forces, the great bulk of which is provided by the United States for the defense of NATO. NATO is founded on the concept of collective defense. We have all agreed that an attack upon one would be considered an attack against all. Therefore, a decision to invoke the use of strategic nuclear weapons with their tremendous destructive potential and speed of delivery against another nuclear power would almost inevitably involve all the members of the alliance in a global nuclear war.

Moreover, the targets against which such weapons would be used must, as a practical matter, be viewed as a single system. Because of the speed at which such an exchange would take place and as missiles become the predominant part of the strategic nuclear forces on both sides, the time would be reduced to minutes-decisions must be made and executed promptly. Targets must be allocated to weapons in advance (of course, with options) and in a very carefully planned manner, taking into account the character of the targets, their urgency, importance, and degree of hardness, as well as the character of the weapons, their range, yield, accuracy, and speed.

Clearly, under these conditions, a partial and uncoordinated response could be fatal to the interests of all the members of NATO. That is why we have consistently stressed the importance of a single, integrated strategic nuclear force, responsive to a single chain of command, to be employed in a fully integrated manner against what is truly an indivisible target system.

The essential point here is not that this force must be under exclusive U.S. control but that we must avoid the fragmentation and compartmentalization of NATO's nuclear power, which could be dangerous to us all. If our European NATO partners wish to create a European strategic nuclear force, we certainly should have no objections. But we should insist that that force be closely integrated with our own so that it could be jointly targeted and directed in a coordinated fashion.

Furthermore, we are convinced that such a force could be successfully built only as a collective European undertaking and not on the basis of separate national efforts. We well know the heavy costs involved in creating and maintaining a strategic nuclear force. Our own nuclear forces cost us about $15 billion a year, almost as much as all of our European allies, together, spend on their total defense programs. Even assuming a continued high rate of economic growth,

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it would take the combined resources of all of them to create a truly significant nuclear capability with which to face the Soviet threat. That is why I said last year at Ann Arbor that weak "national" nuclear forces operating independently would be very costly and of questionable effectiveness.

The United States does not oppose a nuclear capability for our NATO partners. In fact, we have for many years been providing them with tactical nuclear capable weapon systems, although the nuclear warheads are retained, in accordance with our laws, under U.S. control. We have provided training in the use of these weapons to a large number of allied military personnel. We are making every possible effort to keep our NATO partners fully informed of the problems of nuclear war and the measures we are taking to deal with them. And last year we announced that we had earmarked a fully operational POLARIS force to the NATO Command.

It was in this same spirit of mutual confidence and support that we recently entered into a new series of agreements on nuclear armaments with the United Kingdom at Nassau. The immediate issue between the two Governments in this area arose from our judgment that the SKYBOLT air-to-ground missile should not be developed and procured for our own strategic forces, for reasons which I will discuss later in connection with the Strategic Retaliatory Forces program. This judgment created a major problem for the United Kingdom, which had planned to buy 100 of these missiles to equip their Vulcan bombers in order to extend the useful life of these aircraft through the 1960's.

In 1960, the United States entered into an agreement with the United Kingdom to make available, under certain conditions, SKYBOLT missiles, if we proceeded with production. We undertook to bear the entire cost of the SKYBOLT development. The British undertook to bear the costs of adapting the missile to their bombers and their warheads. The entire agreement was contingent upon the successful development of the missile and its use by the United States. In the event that we found it undesirable to complete the program, the British would have the right to continue further development at their own expense.

The President, wishing to assist the United Kingdom in every possible way to adjust to our cancellation of SKYBOLT, explored with the British Prime Minister at Nassau a number of possible alternatives. As one alternative, the President offered to continue the development of SKYBOLT as a joint enterprise with the United Kingdom, with each country bearing equal shares of the future cost to complete development, after which the United Kingdom would be able to place a production order to meet its requirements. This offer went considerably beyond the original agreement, under which the United Kingdom would have had to stand the full cost of further development, but the British Prime Minister decided not to accept it in the light of the uncertainties involved in the project.

Another alternative suggested by the President was the use of the HOUND DOG missile, but because of the technical difficulties involved in adapting this missile to the British V bombers, the Prime Minister declined this suggestion also.

A third alternative considered was the sale of POLARIS missiles to the United Kingdom, with that country furnishing its own submarines and warheads. This was the alternative suggested and favored