§ Viscount Trenchardasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will:
- (i) estimate the approximate percentage increase required from NATO budgets at the existing ratio of the defence budgets of European members of NATO, to reach parity of deployment with the forces of the Warsaw Pact, taking into account numbers of all weapons systems and stating whether or not they have left chemical weapons out of the calculation of parity.
- (ii) if possible, estimate the approximate cost to the USA of increasing its European deployment in proportion to make an equitable contribution to reach parity.
§ Lord BelsteadI assume the noble Viscount is referring to conventional forces. In view of the preponderance of in-place forces in Europe in favour of the Warsaw Pact, NATO would need to deploy substantially greater numbers of almost all its main equipment to achieve parity of deployment (in many cases, increasing numbers by two or three times) with corresponding increases in manpower. This in turn would necessitate very substantial increases in the defence spending of NATO members, although it would require further study to establish even approximately the cost of achieving such parity.
Moreover, defence spending alone could hardly remove the geographic imbalance between the two alliances: reinforcements from North America would need to travel 6,000 kilometres across the ocean whereas it is only 650 kilometres overland from the western borders of the USSR to central Europe.