The Bargain Revised

Abstract

The ink was barely dry on the European Defense Community treaty when the Lisbon package started to come apart. The force goals so bravely adopted in Lisbon soon appeared unreasonably optimistic. Neither the British nor the French Government could fit substantial troop increases into budgets already stretched thin by non-European military commitments — the French bogged down in Indochina and the British struggling to keep a global role intact. Rumors spread around Europe that the United States was reducing its aid to the NATO countries. Press sources speculated that the entire NATO structure was on the verge of collapse (a prediction heard many times since).