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General Cutler went on to point out that in its comments on the above
recommendation, the Department of Defense had agreed that the capabilities of forces for limited operations should be augmented and the
readiness of such forces increased, in relation to our over-all posture to meet the requirements of a general war. But Defense wished
to defer implementation of this recommendation pending completion of
@ national-level study, a plan for which would be recommended by De-
fense to the Council about March 15, 1958.
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Secretary Dulles hed ex-
Secondly, continued Secretary Dulles, the Gaither Report
had recommended a study of this problem at a level higher than the
level of the military services. He believed that the State Department should be brought into this study at its inception, because the
kind of forces referred to in the Panel recommendation were those
that the State Department was particularly interested in end on whose
composition the State Department had pronounced views. Secretary Dulles went on to say, in explanation, that in the course of carrying out
our foreign policy over the last five years, the State Department had
sometimes felt a need for the United States to have non-nuclear-equipped
forces which could, if necessary, put on a demonstrationo? U. S. interests in various parts of the world. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had responded well when called upon to mount such demonstrations in the past.
There had been and would be occasions when aircraft carriers, air pover,
and even potential landing forces had been very useful in this context.
Perhaps such forces should even now be deployed in the general area of
Indonesia, because we do not know what will happen there. Such forces
had recently proved very valuable in the Eastern Mediterranean when
they had been called upon to demonstrate U. S. support of King Hussein
of Jordan. Such examples illustrate in general how limited forces can
be of assistance to U. S. foreign policy. Accordingly, political and
foreign policy considerations should be meshed into the study by the
State Department from the very beginning.
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Secretary Dulles said that in the first place, the comments
‘of the Department of Defense on the recommendation of the Gaither
-Panel were not wholly responsive to the Panel's recommendation. While
we did not necessarily have to follow the Gaither Panel recommendation,
_ that recommendation actually called for the augmenting of our forces
for limited military operations. The Department of Defense comment,
on the other hand, merely stated that we should augment the capabilities and the readiness of such forces. Thus there existed a discrepancy.
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pressed concern over the delay in the submission of this plan to the
Council. He had also questioned the advisability of postponing action
to augment the capabilities of our forces for limited operations, until after the completion of the proposed Defense Department study on
this subject. Accordingly, these two questions were before the Council today. General Cutler then called upon the Secretary of State.
‘