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OCR Page 1 of 155/15/54 - Reel 5 - track 2 - Page 16
MR. ACHESON:
As this went on we began to think that the Russian menace was a little
(con't)
bit more acute than we thought it was. The North Atlantic began to
evolve and we said, "Well, we've got to have something comparable to that
in the Middle East: And I am inclined to believe that we went off into
rather fanticiful ideas. I don't believe any of us really thought that
the Middle East Defense Organization was ever going to be a defense organ-
ization, that it had any defensive capacity. It might have developed
somewhere along that line, but I think it was chiefly a political instrument,
and we will talk about that tomorrow. But, it was highly unrealistic
this
from the words we were giving out about it. All of MS seemed to be based
on some ideas which were that it was of prime importance to us that no
country might go communist. We wanted to prevent that happening at all
costs. We thought these people had to be earnestly concentrated on
defending their own liberty. We wanted to help this, but we didn't want
to help it to the extent of getting in trouble in North Africa and various
other places. It seemed to be that we perhaps ended up with a series of
conflicting ideas which rather cancelled one another out and which mainly
prevented us from getting very far in this part of the world with our
problems. And in looking over this paper that Paul will talk about
TRUMANE
tomorrow, I wondered since whether it wouldn't have been, it may not
-NATIONAL ADMIN-
the
REFORDS
be wisder now, to concentrate perhaps first on a really sound, sensible
strategic position for the United States in that part of the world so
that we could develop our own and our allies' power in a way where it
would be real power, whereas at the present time, I think there is no
real power anywhere east of Malta. I don't think there is any and I
don't think there is going to be any that amounts to very much.
VOICE: Mr.mcGhee
You don't mean to exclude Turkey?
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