Since our hope is peace, we owe ourselves and the world a candid
explanation of the military measures we are taking to make that peace
secure.
As we enter this new year, our military power continues to grow. This power
is for our own defense and to deter aggression. We shall not be aggressors,
but we and our allies have and will maintain a massive capability to strike
back.
Here are some of the considerations in our defense planning:
First, while determined to use atomic power to serve the usages of peace,
we take into full account our great and growing number of nuclear weapons
and the most effective means of using them against an aggressor if they are
needed to preserve our freedom. Our defense will be stronger if, under
appropriate security safeguards, we share with our allies certain knowledge
of the tactical use of our nuclear weapons. I urge the Congress to provide
the needed authority.
Second, the usefulness of these new weapons creates new relationships
between men and materials. These new relationships permit economies in the
use of men as we build forces suited to our situation in the world today.
As will be seen from the Budget Message on January 21, the airpower of our
Navy and Air Force is receiving heavy emphasis.
Third, our armed forces must regain maximum mobility of action. Our
strategic reserves must be centrally placed and readily deployable to meet
sudden aggression against ourselves and our allies.
Fourth, our defense must rest on trained manpower and its most economical
and mobile use. A professional corps is the heart of any security
organization. It is necessarily the teacher and leader of those who serve
temporarily in the discharge of the obligation to help defend the Republic.
Pay alone will not retain in the career service of our armed forces the
necessary numbers of long-term personnel. I strongly urge, therefore, a
more generous use of other benefits important to service morale. Among
these are more adequate living quarters and family housing units and
medical care for dependents.
Studies of military manpower have just been completed by the National
Security Training Commission and a Committee appointed by the Director of
the Office of Defense Mobilization. Evident weaknesses exist in the state
of readiness and organization of our reserve forces. Measures to correct
these weaknesses will be later submitted to the Congress.
Fifth, the ability to convert swiftly from partial to all-out mobilization
is imperative to our security. For the first time, mobilization officials
know what the requirements are for 1,000 major items needed for military
uses. These data, now being related to civilian requirements and our supply
potential, will show us the gaps in our mobilization base. Thus we shall
have more realistic plant-expansion and stockpiling goals. We shall speed
their attainment. This Nation is at last to have an up-to-date mobilization
base--the foundation of a sound defense program.
Another part of this foundation is, of course, our continental transport
system. Some of our vital heavy materials come increasingly from Canada.
Indeed our relations with Canada, happily always close, involve more and
more the unbreakable ties of strategic interdependence. Both nations now
need the St. Lawrence Seaway for security as well as for economic reasons.
I urge the Congress promptly to approve our participation in its
construction.
Sixth, military and non-military measures for continental defense must be
and are being strengthened. In the current fiscal year we are allocating to
these purposes an increasing portion of our effort, and in the next fiscal
year we shall spend nearly a billion dollars more for them than in 1953.
An indispensable part of our continental security is our civil defense
effort. This will succeed only as we have the complete cooperation of State
Governors, Mayors, and voluntary citizen groups. With their help we can
advance a cooperative program which, if an attack should come, would save
many lives and lessen destruction.
The defense program recommended in the 1955 Budget is consistent with all
of the considerations which I have just discussed. It is based on a new
military program unanimously recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
approved by me following consideration by the National Security Council.
This new program will make and keep America strong in an age of peril.
Nothing should bar its attainment.
The international and defense policies which I have outlined will enable us
to negotiate from a position of strength as we hold our resolute course
toward a peaceful world. We now turn to matters which are normally
characterized as domestic, well realizing that what we do abroad affects
every problem at home--from the amount of taxes to our very state of mind.