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the United States would maintain and improve their forces in Eurore, provided that a similar effort was forthcoming from their European allies.
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There is thus a critical level for our contribution to NATO in political as well as in military terms, but the two do not necessarily coincide. Exactly where the critical level in political terms is drawn depends not only upon the totality of our contribution to NATO but also upon its composition in detail and upon how we consult our Allies and present our proposals. Amongst the points to which our Allies will attach the rost importance are the maintenance of our undertaking to make no reductions in the central area except as a result of MBFR negotiations; our readiness to Lake our contribution in terms of balanced Alliance forces rather than of balanced Eritish forces; our willingness to join with them in promoting specialisation and standardisation within the Alliance; our readiness to cut tail units rather than teeth units, particularly tlose forward-based on continental Europe; the extent to which cur proposals respect the doctrine that the securit; of LATC is indivisible; and the genuineness of cur consultation with our Allies.
Until these consultations have at least begun it is not possible to define the critical level politically with any precision. It' would not be surprising if the politico-military judgements of sore of our allies and of the LAN military authorities differed from ours. home of them would certainly dissent iron the proposals outlined above for a critical level in purely military terms. of them at least will also disagree with the financial calculations set out above. For example, the Americans and the Gerrans have already put us on notice that they do not accept our arguments bout the relative burdens of defence spending. We can expect th: t several of our Allies will claim that we are at rcsent doing ro more than our fair share. considerable diplomatic effort will be required to get our partners to understand the reasons for any proposals we may make and to acquiesce in something on these lines. 5. In the light of these wider political considerations, we would need to be flexible about timing and about the particular programme of cuts proposed by the Chiefs of Staff on the basis of their military assessment of the critic el level: this programme should therefore be regarded only as illustrative at this stage. We shall have to be prepared to accept some amendments though these need not necessarily be in the direction of increased costs.
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