Vital Interests and Objectives of Our Major Allies

This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected.  Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies.  Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue.  The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.

According to my instructions I am to perform two roles in this production. In one I am sup­posed to look at our European allies from outside in, in the other I am to look at world affairs in gen­eral and the United States in par­ticular from the point of view of our European allies’ individual na­tional interests. I trust you will not hold it against me if I change cos­tumes rapidly and at times wear parts of each.

There are a good many things which all our European allies hold in common. To begin with, they live in the narrow corner of West­ernmost Eurasia—a peninsula simi­lar to, though larger in scale than, the peninsula of Greece appended to Europe. Like the purloined letter, the fact of Europe’s geo­graphical location is the most im­portant though most frequently overlooked fact about Europe. Heavily indented by various bodies of water, narrow at the waist and cut up by several mountain ranges, Europe does not possess large areas for military maneuver, except for the Baltic Plains, and, even in the age of the jet plane and hydrofoil, presents some considerable diffi­

culties to the traveller and shipper of goods. Our European allies share a long and checkered history. Nearly all of them still cleave today to the classic historical state model of the epoch between the 14th and 17th century, namely the nation state, ethnically, linguistically and, in general, culturally cohesive. The largest of these nation states and, incidentally, the youngest, boasts of a population of around 65 million which, were East Germany added to West Germany, would bring the population of a united Germany t° a little above 80 million. France) Britain, and Italy have each crossed the 50-million mark. All the other European states are rela^­tively densely populated. None of them could develop, within ^lts borders, the resources and markets adequate for the development of ³ relatively self-sufficient domestic economy. Hence, all European states are to a much higher degree dependent upon foreign trade and are more sensitive to the interna' tional economic climate than are the United States and the Soviet Union.

All our European allies, except one, were defeated in World War If and even the one exception, namely Great Britain, emerged from the struggle greatly weakened ecO' nomically and diminished in world political stature. The experience of foreign, military occupation, national humiliation and of ³ counter revolution of various d*' grees of intensity has inflicted up⁰¹¹ the psyche of these peoples ³ trauma which can still be easily observed in popular reactions to history and institutions, peace and

that

most Europeans have come to

to

'^,var- True enough a new genera- ^tl°n has grown up, to which World ^^ar II i_s only a childhood memory and which does not regard the vic­tories and defeats, the achievement ^and the sins of their fathers with a P^ersonal sense of participation. Yet, ^ln the subconscious of even this, the new generation, there lurk doubts ^and fears which stem from the shattering experiences of two world ^wars. Hence, what seems to be to ntany Americans the deplorable ambiguity of European attitudes— ^lhe attitudes of Europeans towards °ne another and the attitudes of Europeans towards the two great Powers which emerged trium­phantly from World War II and ^a§g^randized their world influence ^at the expense of Europe.

Towards the United States, P

^Uropean sentiment manages to be °ne of gratitude and, at the same ^tlnie> one of envy. There is really ⁿ°thing contradictory in the fact

^rely on the protective nuclear shield °f the United States as if it were a Oatural phenomena like the celes- constellations and, at the same jO^ric> question the prudence of • S. statesmanship and dread a ⁿuclear war triggered, deliberately °^r accidentally, by American pol- J^cy. Perhaps, this dilemma is but a gment of Europe’s unstaid imagi- j^tion. In any case, it is this di- otma which has moved to the ^Ceoter of Europe’s political con- ^;^rr>> and the French Force de ^raPpe must be understood as a ⁽herapeutic device applied to a ^c*^eeP sense of insecurity as well as a Solitary instrument designed to Produce certain political effects ^UP°n friend and foe alike.

Our European allies have shared, varying degrees, in the develop­ment of the great ideologies which ^e>tPress the revolutionary ferment °f °Ur age. It has been our good for- *Une that from the late Forties to ^e early Sixties the lands of our major European allies were gov­erned by conservative regimes, the °nservatives in England and ^Various combinations of Christian

Democratic/Center regimes in the NATO countries of the continent. Comprehensibly, during this epoch of forthright polarization in world politics, American attention has been concentrated upon the most vocal and intransigent opposition to these conservative regimes, namely the Communists. Thus, it was easy for Americans to overlook the vast following of the non-Communist Marxist parties which did not com­mand governmental majorities, languished in the opposition and were riven by internal struggles between factions resolutely opposed to cooperation with the Commu­nists on one hand and factions either infiltrated by the Commu­nists or genuinely seeking to restore the unity of the workers’ move­ment. It is these parties that now are rising in political importance and confidently look forward to a change in their fortunes.

To Europeans, socialism was, once upon a time, a truly interna­tional and anti-national move­ment. The decline of Stalinism, real or alleged, now holds out to European socialists the promise of the socialist unity restored. To many European Marxists, it was the Stalinist excrescence and not the collectivist institutions of the Soviet Union which precluded a rapprochement between Europe and Russia and her European satellites. This fact is well illus­trated by the attitude of many of Europe’s leading socialists toward Tito’s Yugoslavia, a truly socialist state purged of the “Byzantine” arbitrariness of Stalinist rule. It is difficult to assess the degree to which European socialism has come to terms with the political processes of “bourgeois” parlia- mentarianism. It is my personal guess that some of the most influen­tial socialist leaders of Europe and, especially, their intellectual associates do not cavil particularly at the idea of a welfare state ad­ministered benevolently by a one- party government. My opinion seems to be confirmed by the paeans of praise addressed by staid

Second International European Socialists to burgeoning democ­racy in Yugoslavia. Surely, the Yugoslavia democratic model re­veals a good many features that cannot be squared with the idea of parliamentary government as so diverse a company as Burke, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Church­ill, and Einaudi understood this term.

In any case, the resurgence of European socialism, anti-Stalinist yet avowedly Marxist, constitutes a phenomenon which is likely to affect profoundly the European end of the alliance. Premier Khrushchev’s coexistence propa­ganda has been directed particu­larly at the socialist parties of West­ern Europe. The pacifist wing of Britain’s Labor Party has re­sponded to Premier Khrushchev’s advances enthusiastically and trustingly. It is no accident that, in the early summer of 1964, Premier Khrushchev turned his personal attention to the Scandinavian states which are governed by social­ists. In Italy, politically the most sensitive country in Europe, the opening to the Left—the rap­prochement between the Chris­tian Democrats and Saragat So­cialists, on one hand, and the Nenni Socialists of venerable fel­low-travelling antecedents, on the other hand—signifies not so much an opening as a massive shift of Italy’s political center of gravity towards pacifism, if not neutralism. This development, highlighted by Pope John’s encyclical and ever closer economic ties between Italy and Eastern Europe, makes explicit certain trends which are manifest­ing themselves, though less openly than in Italy, in the rest of Europe. It is to say the least doubtful that the socialist parties of Europe, had they been the ruling parties, would have striven as manfully for the economic unification of Europe as did in fact the Christian Demo­cratic parties under the leadership of Robert Schumann, De Gasperi, and Adenauer. Nor is it at all cer­tain that they could have per­suaded themselves to make the budgetary sacrifices which mem­bership in NATO entailed.

Even the German socialists, though less susceptible to the blandishments of disengagement and peaceful coexistence than their English, French, and Italian comrades, wavered when the Bun- desrepublik was about to take the vows of NATO, and only reluc­tantly adjusted themselves to Ger­many’s commitment to NATO, the maintenance of a large German army and to a non-compromise posture on Berlin. Fortunately, Berlin is ruled by Social Democrats, and the realism of the Berlin social­ist leadership has prevailed in the councils of German socialism.

It has been argued that Euro­pean socialists dragged their feet on the road towards Europe’s eco­nomic unification because they envisaged a united socialist Europe rather than a Europe dominated by conservatives, and that the European socialists, had they been in power, would have pursued European and Atlantic policies not substantially different from those initiated by Schumann, De Gasperi, and Adenauer. This is an interest­ing hypothesis. In fact, on matters of European unification and At­lantic solidarity the socialist parties of Europe have been more paro­chial than the Conservatives, Chris­tian Democrats and Liberals (with a capital L). British Labor and affiliated trade unions opposed Britain’s entry into the European Common Market, and the Euro­pean socialists who have identified themselves with the movement for Atlantic Unity represent a con­spicuous minority in their respec­tive national parties.

Thus, all our European allies have in common geography, mostly cramped and cluttered; history, mostly contentious; and a pattern of politics which, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the individual country, has been traced by the contest between, on one hand, a variety of socialisms, and, on the other, a variety of conserva- tivisms, the latter occupying the seats of political power in the ma­jor European countries ever since the early Fifties to this day.

Lastly, our European allies share the same strategic problem. This strategic problem is neither coeval with that of NATO as a whole nor with that of North America. It is this fact which underlies the present and apparently chronic crisis of NATO.

As seen from Europe, the threat of Soviet aggression and of nuclear war appears at once less plausible and more terrible than it does as seen from North America. It is not easy to explain this paradox. It stems in part from the balance of power prevailing throughout the last 20 years: the Soviets did not attack Europe; the nuclear bombs failed to go off. Europe, having experienced at first hand two dis­astrous and immensely costly world wars, cannot envisage anybody being foolish enough to start de­liberately a third one. Of all Euro­pean countries, Russia—West Euro­peans insist upon viewing Russia as a European country—suffered the most grievous losses in both world wars. Thus, most Europeans, no matter how deep their aversion to Communism, deem it unlikely, to say the least, that any Russian government would start another world war, not to speak of starting it with a nuclear barrage. Yet Europeans, to a man, are con­vinced that, if the unthinkable came to pass, their chances of sur­vival are far less promising than those of both the Americans and the Russians. Their warning time being from zero to five minutes and most of their populations being densely settled, they derive small comfort from the subtle dialectic of deterrence developed by advanced American strategic thought. For Europeans, the sophisticated con­cepts of “Counterforce,” “Counter City” and “Finite Deterrence” merge into the monochrome ghast­liness of continental holocaust.

Those Europeans who are so­phisticated strategically and well disposed towards the United States give credit to American strategists for seeking a way out of this di­lemma, i.e., how to defend Europe without reducing it to ashes. Yet, they find it difficult to reconcile such American safety devices as for example the “pause,” and other untested strategic concepts, with the well-tested strategic configura­tion of their continent. What hap­pens to the rest of Western Europe when a Soviet attacking force, hav­ing enjoyed the respite of the “pause” and thoughtfully kept its tactical nuclear weapons under wraps, has struck in the general direction of the Rhine? How much defensible real estate would then be left to the residual defenders of the narrow promontory called Western Europe? What exactly is the differ­ence between the effect of tactical nuclear weapons deployed be­tween, let us say, Essen and Diissel- dorf and the effect of a strategic nuclear warhead fired from the vicinity of Omaha at the vicinity Moscow? As the Europeans see it> for the respective target popul^a" tions, there would be no difference at all.

Last but not least, Europeans consider their geography as impor­tant as Americans presumably con­sider theirs. Hence the Europeans ask: how much of their important geography are Americans prepared to stake on the defense of some p^art of NATO Europe, perhaps picayune in size when compared with Texas> yet overarchingly important to i^ts local inhabitants? American states­men, soldiers, and computers have given meaningful and reassuring answers to all these questions. On^e gnawing uncertainty remains: ^l<] the nature of things, the dialogue ts confined to the thrust and counter­thrust of strategic theories; no nu­clear war has ever been fought; and hence no one has the slightest no­tion, susceptible to empirical veri­fication, what statesmen, soldiers> and computers as well as ordinary people will do when the alert has been sounded and nuclear trigg^erS have been pulled. It is this unan-

the

intricacies of deterrence and,

*ith

|.cst interests of the Western Al- _t^^nce as official spokesmen say

Hey are. Yet Europeans could not becoming increasingly aware how much of the Alliance’s «^uality of interests has to be ^en on faith and how inconse- '^l'"-'nti_al is their say about the final,

^e ultimate, decision.

^Svvered and unanswerable question ^which lends credibility to President Gaulle’s force de dissuasion, per­^haPs the one and only credibility ^hich it can safely claim. If the f°^rce de dissuasion cannot dissuade, ^exactly what is there in place of it ^hich will under every and all ^Clrcumstances? In this country, it ^has become the fashion, especially *he official and the officially in­spired fashion, to explain de ®^aulle’s contemptuous rejection of American proposal for the Ration of a multilateral force;

ntish conservatives’ determina- ^tlQn to hang on to Britain’s residual ^nuclear forces; and the lively inter- ⁶⁸¹ of NATO’s European field ^c°tnmander in control over nuclear "'capons; as manifestations of re­agent European nationalism, °ated by miraculous economic Access. This analysis is, however, ^ar from complete.

Europe has awakened to the Glides of the nuclear age. Ameri­^Can strategic thought, steeped in

^ irom shunning wide publicity, ⁹⁸ done much to raise the standard Europe’s education in nuclear ^strategy.

^*th Europe’s increasing knowl- about the inwardness of nu- car strategy have come doubts, ^hese doubts have not been stilled y American controversy on nu- ^f'^lr strategy, the ambiguous 'Message of the Cuban crisis and the f from explicit evolution of the ’ S./Soviet relationship. Ameri­^Can foreign and national security j*°f>cies might well be as logical and . ent, as adequately endowed means and as devoted to the thi

Affej. ^ y^ears> NATO remains alliance of sovereign nations: It ⁹⁸ not evolved towards a closer

political union, possessed of a com­mon organ for making the ulti­mate, the crucial, decision. For this stagnant state of affairs the nations of Europe do not bear the exclusive responsibility. The question of the future of the Western Alliance can be put quite simply as follows: to which extent are sovereign nations prepared to live and die with and for one another? No amount of diplomatic finesse and techno­logical ingenuity can answer this question. It can only be given by an act of political will.

With the wisdom of hindsight we can now see why General de Gaulle appointed himself as spokesman of Europe’s case against established NATO doctrine and for co-deter­mination of NATO strategy. Like every nation, France remembers the days of glory and seeks to forget the days of humiliation. To undo the past which one cannot undo by whatever one does, one needs a myth. De Gaulle supplied France with a healing myth: France was never really defeated; Frenchmen never collaborated with the con­queror; in the hour of need, France’s allies reneged on their pledges; French resistance forces and regular troops played a major role in the defeat of Germany; France reborn now takes her place again in world power and as a leader of Europe. It would be too much to expect that every French­man should accept all of these myths. Almost any Frenchman accepts at least one or two, and this is enough to make him at heart, though perhaps not by virtue of formal party affiliation, a Gaullist.

A nation and its leaders do not let themselves be maneuvered onto the psychoanalyst’s couch. We can­not know the mind of France, if not for any other reason than, at best, national mind is a figure of speech, at worst a grab-bag of hoary cliches. Suffice that de Gaulle has succeeded in melding French facts and aspirations, the has-beens-and the should-have-beens, into a na­tional legend by which the great majority of his countrymen are

content to live and which legiti­mizes his rule. Of course nothing is quite as the national legend would have it. It was the Fourth Republic of Guy Mollet and Mend^s-France which launched the French nuclear program. De Gaulle’s restoration of French grandeur culminated in the liquidation of nine-tenths of France’s overseas possessions. The costs of the French nuclear program have been several times larger than originally estimated. More likely than not, even the diminutive French force de dissuasion will not become operational by the offi­cially announced target date—and then only with some help from abroad. The creation of the kind of balanced French military establish­ment which M. Pierre Messmer, the French Minister of Defense, has projected, will endow France with weapons systems which, by the time they would be available, will have become obsolescent.

Although de Gaulle does not care to dissimulate his authoritarian bent, he has neither shackled the press nor seriously abridged the freedom of parliamentary debate. Paris book stores abound in litera­ture critical of de Gaulle and his foreign and domestic policies. A good many Frenchmen vocally condemn the waste at Pierrelatte and the uselessness of the force de dissuasion which, they argue, threat­ens no one but France herself. Contrariwise, there are Gaullist factions in most every European member country of NATO. The Gaullist current runs most strongly in certain business groups and those scientific-technological-managerial circles which are spearheading the modernization of European indus­try. Just as in the 19th century the metallurgical industries opened the path to world power and riches, so now nucleonics is the wave of the future.

The British might still harbor their grievances at de Gaulle’s brusque veto of Britain’s admit­tance to the European Common Market. Yet those Englishmen, negligible neither in numbers nor

in political-economic influence, who wish to retain the V-bomber force until it can be replaced by a new generation of weapons systems, are Gaullists at heart. In Germany, the Gaullist faction, led by Ade­nauer, von Guttenberg and Strauss, has not been able to defeat the Atlanticists, Erhard and Schroder, in open parliamentary battle. Yet it is not without friends in the high places of business, and, at the grass roots level, commands a following large enough to circumscribe severely the freedom of action of the Erhard-Schroder faction.

French foreign policies of the last five years have been General de Gaulle’s foreign policies. The world has scrutinized his rare press con­ferences and memoirs, a literary masterpiece, for the motivations of French conduct in world affairs. From de Gaulle’s utterances it is possible to deduce his understand­ing of French national interest. Not so surprisingly his formulation of national interest stacks up to a series of platitudes: a strong people occupying an important place in the world; the requisite military strength; a say in the council of the West’s Great Powers; the restora­tion of European civility from the Atlantic to the Urals; French hegemony in Continental Europe, circumspectly undefined, in the association of the overseas coun­tries emancipated from French rule. There is nothing particularly original or eccentric about these objectives. De Gaulle has managed to couch them in magnificent lan­guage laced with those mystical allusions which de Gaulle himself has defined as essential ingredients of national leadership.

Like any statesman worth his salt, de Gaulle knows how to ex­press nobly the aspirations of his people—and plays the day-to-day conduct of affairs by ear. Having failed to lick the unspeakable Algerian rebels, for whose liquida­tion the French people had recalled him from retirement in the first place, de Gaulle accorded them recognition as legitimate rulers.

Having tried, after Nassau, to woo the then apparently willing Prime Minister Harold Macmillan from American tutelage and the en­tanglement with the Skybolt- metamorphosed-into-a-Polaris sub­marine, de Gaulle, when Macmil­lan relapsed into the American embrace, slammed the door of the European Common Market in Britain’s face.

Indeed, France retains consider­able holdings, economic and cul­tural, in Indochina. Yet, de Gaulle’s intervention in the Vietnam tangle smacks of improvisation. More likely than not, his proposal for the neutralization of Southeast Asia and sumptuous hospitality ac­corded to the rules of Cambodia, a vocal opponent of U. S. policy, were designed to please the French public. Since 400,000 Frenchmen could not hang on to Indochina and suffered inglorious defeat, the United States, sparing in men and profligate in the use of hardware, must not do any better. With un­disguised Schadenfreude, de Gaulle invited his countrymen to behold the discomfiture of the major An­glo-Saxon. Sad to relate, the great majority of his countrymen were delighted.

De Gaulle, like all born practi­tioners of power, understands power, that is, he knows exactly when he has and when he has not enough of it for getting what he wants. Better than any other Frenchman, de Gaulle knows that the French military program ex­ceeds French means. To complete it, somebody else’s help is needed—- be it English or German, or even American. The rationale underly­ing de Gaulle’s conduct of French affairs, as distinct from his sombre rhetoric, is to maneuver France into a position from which she can exer­cise the leverage needed to induce one or several major industrial powers to co-operate in the build­up of the force de dissuasion, or faute de mieux, of a European nuclear force under one supreme com­mander, namely a French one. Since neither solution need neces­sarily redound to the detriment of Europe as a whole, a few good Europeans who do not necessarily approve of de Gaulle’s personal style and antiquarian notions, side with de Gaulle’s strategic notions rather than with those of the United States. In the meanwhile, de Gaulle utilizes the fragmentary force de dissuasion as a political bar­gaining counter. One has to work with what one has: if the Mirages are slow in coming off the assembly line, there is always Paris, the world’s most beautiful city, suitably turned out to greet and impress foreign rulers. The Chinese em­perors bade foreign rulers, some of them more powerful than they themselves, to Peking. Dazzled by the golden palaces, the foreign rulers returned home, and heedless of their national interest, paid tribute to the artful Chinese. There is much which the Chinese and the French have in common: an old civilization, cynicism, and a pro­found contempt for all foreigners- De Gaulle’s recognition of Red China is unlikely to have earth- shattering consequences. Perhaps it was meant only as a gesture of spiritual, rather than diplomatic, recognition.

al

ni

tr

of

of

lo:

of

E,

is

W

th

sel

in

th,

fot

sat

fre

th,

*ⁿj

the

alt

hoi

tioj

lea,

Mii

gro

^rat<

tvvc

beh

•ten

I

off

tior

sen.

oie,

Olo

Ch,

G,

Pol

bin-

f>fo

*Ou,

-rr

Hi

¹

'•■v

t>0r

th,

gro

Oi^,

Olo,

tio,

ant

Pr₀

Upon closer inspection, the na­tional objectives of Great Britain are not so very different from thos^e of France. On the via dolorosa from imperial splendor to straitened circumstances the British met with every injury and frustration which dogged the French on the sam⁶ path. Incidentally, at Suez, they walked it together, a fact which Americans will do well to remem­ber for another decade or two. The buildings at Whitehall and thei^f annexes, the clubs of St. James Street and Carlton Terrace, were not built to minister to the publ'C need of, as world geography goes, ³ medium-sized island. Much ha^s been written about the purposeful­ness with which Britain carried ou⁽ the devolution of her empire. Th^c process, we are told, was not only necessary but also beneficial and elevating for all participants. No¹

ll

,d

1'

.ll

le­

ns

id

Il­

l's

ir-

rk

;es

dv

he

>iy

ess

Tl“

of

ey

by

gⁿ

ess

aid

ere

the

old ,ro- ers. ted ■th- ap^s : of itic,

na-

tain

ios^e

rot¹¹

tied

/vitb

hid¹

air>^e

they

hid¹

leifl"

The

heir

irnes

/rer^e

tblie es, ³ has efd' l oU¹

The

only

and

Nd

,ⁿgland

with its great houses,

°^vides nostalgic surcease from

^all Englishmen agree. To a large ⁿuinber of civil servants, planters, traders, sailors and soldiers, the loss °f empire signified not only the loss of career but, more painfully, the oss of status. What makes this loss / status and the loss of status of ^J,1gland as a whole so hard to bear hard bought victory in World ar II. The imperial nations of ^e continent readjusted them- fdves more gracefully to the change ¹¹¹ their fortunes, for they had gone ^{1 r}°ugh the purgatory of defeat, j. ^e British know that they °Ught well and that their searing artifices bought not only their own ^eedom but also that saving pause 'yhich allowed America to mount .j,^c°unteroffensive against Nazi ytanny. Hence the deep sense of ^justice which pervades English ^0ught about the world. America,

* ^a‘e comer to the War and her vast °niel_ancj unscathed by enemy ac- ⁿ> has taken England’s place as a ^eading world power. The Ger- and even the Italians prosper he Britain’s economic rate of y^r'j\vth limps behind not only the ate of economic growth of these b k-^ex"^enemies of freedom but also ^e *nd that of the rest of the conti­ⁿent.

*ⁿ all countries, the formulation foreign policy is but the projec- ⁿ abroad of the domestic con- Usu_s arrived at by toting up do- tic resources, physical and Cl/³*' ^Strict'y speaking, ever since q ^Urchill’s withdrawal from ^feece> Britain has had no foreign i. ^Icy except one of a negative ⁿd. The reason for how pallid has ^0vvn Britain’s image in the world j ^Ust be sought in her social di- ^Uima. There are two Britains:

[, *^erarchic society, its roots in rural

₍^^rke’^s peerage, complex conven- th ^nS’ ^3nd seasoned snobbery; and teeming, motorized, pushing, , °^{ss an}d raffish society of the urban ^asses. The popularity of cere- tio °^la* ^disP^lay^s> ^which, a genera- _a ^ ago, were casually presented fi_r^{3re now} self-consciously staged, the harsh and brassy realities of contemporary English life. The process of social fusion is as yet in­complete. The past, with its lordly pretense, still rests heavily on Eng­land; ragged and unwholesome, British society still gropes for the moral content which would enable Britain to play its rightful role, if not in the world, then in Europe. Britain, the land of Pitt, Palmer­ston, Disraeli, and Churchill, has not found her leader—perhaps be­cause, as yet, she does not want to go anywhere and hence does not wish to be led.

Uncertainly poised between the increasingly unresponsive Com­monwealth and Europe, between her “special” American relation and an independent foreign policy of spasmodic stabs at accommoda­tion and fast trading deals, Britain is a worrisome country. The chances are that under Labor, this worrisomeness, worrying to all of Britain’s friends, especially to us, will increase. Perhaps, things must get much worse before they can get better.

Since the British cannot make up their mind as to whether they are or are not Europeans, Europe can­not achieve that unity which Britain’s greatest statesman, Sir Winston Churchill, was the first European leader to acclaim as the sole alternative to European an­archy and collective enfeeblement.

It is the halting pace of Euro­pean unification which aggravates the danger to all of Europe in­herent in the division of Germany. Theoretically, there are many solu­tions to the German problem. In fact, there are only two likely alternatives: a Germany integrated politically and economically into free Europe, or a Germany that has regained her maneuverability be­tween East and West and thus will resume her traditional power po­litical stance. The architects of modern Europe, Robert Schumann and Conrad Adenauer, both Catho­lics and sons of ancient Lotharingia, clearly understood the choice be­fore Europe in general and Ger­many in particular. The European defense community, which would have submerged irrevocably the forces of a resurgent Germany into a truly European supranational organization, failed because Britain abstained—because Britain was unable to make up her mind as to whether or not she was European. Today, as then, France and Britain are at odds in their policies towards European unity and hence towards Germany. Perhaps the most griev­ous error of American policy has been its mishandling of the Anglo- French relationship. Instead of furthering Anglo-French partner­ship, the United States has played favorites, mostly Britain, now Ger­many, and but rarely France. The failure of the Suez operation was not only a disaster for France and Britain but also for Europe. Had France and Britain carried out successfully this operation, a basis for their long range collaboration might have been laid and, inci­dentally, the West might have been spared the immensely costly mis­chief which Nasser and Ben Bella were allowed to perpetrate. Be that as it may, the lack of an Anglo- French entente precludes the only kind of unification of Europe which Europeans will tolerate, namely a united Europe that will not fall un­der German domination.

i

The Soviets, heirs of the czars, understand perfectly well not only the question which German states­men have been asking themselves ever since the Bismarckian era, namely is it better to go East rath­er than West? American foreign policy, whimsically unhistorical, has sought to skirt the Anglo- French stalemate and to devise, in the name of the Great Detente, a German “New Look.” Not only has the United States invited Chancellor Erhard’s government to seek openings in the Iron Cur­tain and to abstain from provoca­tions injurious to the Detente, but now takes pride in how quickly the Germans have learned their lessons and established trading posts in the capitals of Eastern Europe. This is

a classic case of teaching grand­mother how to suck eggs. Not so surprisingly, the Ruhr industrial­ists agree enthusiastically with teacher.

With profound satisfaction, American Statesmanship notes the respectful reception which the German government accorded to the proposal for the Multilateral Force which pleases neither France nor England. It is just possible that we are moving in the wrong direc­tion. Perhaps the real threat to world peace is not Adenauer’s in­transigent insistence upon the unification of Germany under a freely chosen all-German govern­ment or even nuclear war inad­vertently started in the Fulda Gap or at Checkpoint Charlie. The real danger to Europe and the world is the restoration of the status quo ante, namely the status quo of 1939. When Germany and the Soviet Union agreed upon the partition of Poland, World War II became in­evitable. Hitler was foolish and powerful enough to tear the Soviet- German Non-Aggression Pact to shreds. It is unlikely that a future German government will be as powerful and as foolish. The prin­cipal objective of Soviet policy is still the severance of Germany’s bonds with the West and the in­corporation of German resources, the world’s most disciplined work­ing masses and highest technical intelligence, into the sphere of Communist power. In view of the generic and incurable weaknesses of Soviet power this is the one and only solution to the external and internal problems of Russian-based Communism.

That NATO, like any other liv­ing thing, must grow lest it die, should not be a notion surprising to the third generation after Darwin. The paralysis of NATO, or, rather, the last few years’ Hamletian indecisiveness of Amer­ican leadership, is driving our major European allies back into the hard shell of their respective 19th century foreign policies. Not that the 19th century was a bad century; to the contrary, it was a century of peace. But in the 19th century, Europe was the center of world power; today, Europe, not to speak of the individual former European Great Powers, does not possess the means needed for recapturing her 19th century eminence. This is why the idea of a polycentric West —a pendant piece, so to speak to a polycentric East—is a silly, a dan­gerous idea.

The great father figures of

European unity, the Schumanns, De Gasperis, and Adenauers and, upon his fall from power, Churchill, pointed the way towards European and Atlantic unity, the two struc­tures reinforcing one another. At present, the stultifying squabble over NATO strategy and the con­trol over nuclear weapons muddies the waters of inter-European and European-American relationships- The quest of the United States fo^r unilateral agreements with the Soviets, triggered by a profound mistake about priorities, has not been conducive to clarifying the West’s fundamental problem. This problem is not so much how to de­ploy arms, nuclear or conventional! or how to open up Communist society, as it is how to make the Western peoples aware of their identity in fate. Seen from our shores, the problem is how to ex­tend the range of American visioⁿ and how to translate that vision into the appropriate institutional arrangements. Seldom in world affairs have great things been achieved without great cost. Since, for the West, the stakes are all °^r nothing, the highest price which vt^e may be forced to pay for the res­toration of Atlantic unity and >^ts consolidation in permanent ⁱⁿ" stitutions, will be cheap.