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.The French navycommando elements operating under the skillful direction of the youngestadmiral in France, Admiral Ponchardier, moved in swiftly to do away withNasser.French and British forces steamed across the Mediterranean at topspeed to join the action.It was certain that Nasser would be knocked outin a short time.At this point several strange things happened.John Foster Dulles,seeing all this before him and knowing, despite his technical protestations,exactly what was taking place, demanded that the British and French stopwhere they were and ordered Dayan to a halt.Over the other horizon,Krushchev thundered that if the attack did not stop he would hurl missilesat all hostile targets in Europe.With pressure from Dulles, fromKrushchev, and with the vociferous opposition of the Labor Party inEngland to contend with also, Selwyn Lloyd and Guy Mollet submitted.They called their troops to a halt.The magnificent plan, which might havedone much to change the course of history during the past fifteen years,was shattered.This Suez affair has perhaps been one of the mostunfortunate episodes of the past twenty-five years.It prevented the Britishfrom re-establishing an enlightened control over the Canal, and it created asituation that made further French action in North Africa untenable.And ithas led to fifteen years of unrest on the Arab-Israeli border, not to mentionwhat the weight of its failure had upon events in the Far East.One otherthing that came out of this odd situation had a tremendous impact upon theUnited States.The United States Army at that time had been going downhill sinceits glorious days in World War II and its slight though unsatisfactoryresurgence in Korea.Then, in the pre-Sputnik era the Army had assembleda team around Werner von Braun in an attempt to regain some of its lostglory in space.Just at this time, Maxwell Taylor, the Army Chief of Staff,heard Krushchev's threat to hurl rockets across Europe, loud and clear.Heand his staff sat down without delay and computed that this meant that theRussians must have in operational weapons delivery system that coulddeliver a warhead effectively about 1,750 miles.This was derived fromthe computation of the average distance from Russian launching sites toall European capitals.Using this as their battle cry, they set up a greatclamor for an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile with about l,800 milesrange.The IRBM battle was under way to win supremacy for the Armyover the Air Force and the Navy in the new missile and space era.In the clamor of this battle the Suez crisis was nearly forgottenwhile the U.S.Army and the Air Force fought it out in the halls ofCongress and before the eyes of the unwary public.The Army came upsuddenly with an IRBM called the Jupiter and the Air Force with its ownThor.Actually there was very little difference between the two.In fact,they both utilized the same rocket motor and many other commoncomponents.However, the battle was on not only for the Jupiter or theThor; but to determine which service would have the primaryresponsibility for IRBM warfare.Behind the scenes those who were in the know were aware that the Army and the Air Force were puppets for muchmore serious contenders.All of the services were joined in a struggle that really involved themost powerful segments of the vast military-industrial combine.The warwas not so much about which service would be supreme in the missilebusiness; but it was about whether the great American automobile industrywould get the majority of missile contracts or whether the powerfulaviation industry would get these contracts.The Navy joined in the fraylater and quietly, on the coattails of the steel industry and the conventionalmunitions makers, with its Polaris system.(The prime contract wasthrough Lockheed for the missile structure; but the whole system wasdependent upon submarines and submarine base support and with a solidpropellant system that would utilize vast quantities of explosives, whichwould mean huge contracts for the munitions industries.) Forces werejoined, and Maxwell Taylor was at the forefront, leading his Armycontenders and fronting for the automobile industry.At that time theSecretary of Defense was the former president of General Motors, CharlesWilson.The ensuing decision from which there could be no escape wasnot for him to avoid or to make.How could a pre-eminent auto maker ruleagainst his industry? On the other hand, how could he rule against aviationand its powerful industry? With every practice missile shot, the tensionsmounted, and Maxwell Taylor was demanding a decision.He saw this asessential to the automobile industry, which had always been the friend ofthe Army; but he saw it more as a chance to spur his old commandinggeneral, now his Commander in Chief, into making a decision in favor ofthe Army.This was something Eisenhower had not done for a long time.Finally Eisenhower finessed the decision by accepting theresignation of Secretary of Defense Wilson and appointing a man from thesoap industry, Neil McElroy of Proctor and Gamble, to make thisdecision.After more study and after working out a more or less acceptablecompromise on the business front, McElroy ruled against Maxwell Taylorand his Jupiter crowd.This, along with other decisions that had made theArmy the least of the three armed forces, weighed heavily on GeneralTaylor.By 1959 he announced that he would resign from the Army beforethe expected termination of his assignment as Chief of Staff.On the firstof July 1959 General Lyman L.Lemnitzer succeeded Maxwell Taylor asChief of Staff of the U.S.Army.This was a most important time.We have discussed how theAgency had grown in size and in capacity so that it had become involvedin a really major campaign in Indonesia and in the U-2 global operation.While the CIA grew the Army declined in strength as John Foster Dullesand Eisenhower shaped the world for a grand move toward lasting peacebased upon the recognition of the power of nuclear weapons and upon therealization that because they were so powerful no reasonable nation wouldemploy them.Even this was not enough.President Eisenhower wasembarked upon a crusade for peace.He had mobilized his Administrationwith but one objective: to leave as a lasting monument enduring peace.However, there were many small clouds on the horizon. Castro had come to power in Cuba, and he posed a threat to LatinAmerica.Eisenhower went to Acapulco to meet with the President ofMexico and to win assurance that Mexico understood the Castro menace.De Gaulle had become President of France and had embarked upon a newera, with the Fifth Republic.De Gaulle was occupied with Algeria, whichwas then a losing cause as a result of the failure to defeat Nasser, and hehad little time to work on matters other than French problems
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