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 difficulties 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 to a little above 80 million. France, Britain, and Italy have each crossed the 50-million mark. Ah the other European states are relatively densely populated. None of them could develop, within its borders, the resources and markets adequate for the development of a 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 international economic climate than are the United States and the Soviet Union.
All our European allies, except one, were defeated in World War II and even the one exception, namely Great Britain, emerged from the struggle greatly weakened economically and diminished in world political stature. The experience of foreign, military occupation, of national humiliation and of a counter revolution of various degrees of intensity has inflicted upon the psyche of these peoples a trauma which can still be easily observed in popular reactions to history and institutions, peace and war. True enough a new generation has grown up, to which World War II is only a childhood memory and which does not regard the victories and defeats, the achievement and the sins of their fathers with a personal sense of participation. Yet, in 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 many Americans the deplorable ambiguity of European attitudes— the attitudes of Europeans towards one another and the attitudes of Europeans towards the two great powers which emerged triumphantly from World War II and aggrandized their world influence at the expense of Europe.
Towards the United States, European sentiment manages to be one of gratitude and, at the same time, one of envy. There is really nothing contradictory in the fact that most Europeans have come to rely on the protective nuclear shield of the United States as if it were a natural phenomena like the celestial constellations and, at the same time, question the prudence of U. S. statesmanship and dread a nuclear war triggered, deliberately or accidentally, by American policy. Perhaps, this dilemma is but a figment of Europe’s unstaid imagination. In any case, it is this dilemma which has moved to the center of Europe’s political concern, and the French Force de Frappe must be understood as a therapeutic device applied to a deep sense of insecurity as well as a military instrument designed to produce certain political effects upon friend and foe alike.
Our European allies have shared, to varying degrees, in the development of the great ideologies which express the revolutionary ferment of our age. It has been our good fortune that from the late Forties to the early Sixties the lands of our major European allies were governed by conservative regimes, the Conservatives 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” parliamentarianism. 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 conservativisms, 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 Diisseldorf and the effect of a strategic nuclear warhead fired from the vicinity of Omaha at the vicinity of Moscow? As the Europeans see it, for the respective target populations, 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 part of NATO Europe, perhaps picayune in size when compared with Texas, yet overarchingly important to its local inhabitants? American statesmen, soldiers, and computers have given meaningful and reassuring answers to all these questions. One gnawing uncertainty remains: in the nature of things, the dialogue is confined to the thrust and counter- thrust 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 triggers have been pulled. It is this unanswered and unanswerable question which lends credibility to President de Gaulle’s force de dissuasion, perhaps the one and only credibility which it can safely claim. If the force de dissuasion cannot dissuade, exactly what is there in place of it which will under every and all circumstances? In this country, it has become the fashion, especially the official and the officially inspired fashion, to explain de Gaulle’s contemptuous rejection of the American proposal for the creation of a multilateral force; British conservatives’ determination to hang on to Britain’s residual nuclear forces; and the lively interest of NATO’s European field commander in control over nuclear weapons; as manifestations of resurgent European nationalism, bloated by miraculous economic success. This analysis is, however, far from complete.
Europe has awakened to the realities of the nuclear age. American strategic thought, steeped in the intricacies of deterrence and, far from shunning wide publicity, has done much to raise the standard of Europe’s education in nuclear strategy.
With Europe’s increasing knowledge about the inwardness of nuclear strategy have come doubts. These doubts have not been stilled by American controversy on nuclear strategy, the ambiguous message of the Cuban crisis and the far from explicit evolution of the U. S./Soviet relationship. American foreign and national security Policies might well be as logical and prudent, as adequately endowed with means and as devoted to the best interests of the Western Alliance as official spokesmen say they are. Yet Europeans could not help becoming increasingly aware of how much of the Alliance’s mutuality of interests has to be taken on faith and how inconsequential is their say about the final, the ultimate, decision.
After 15 years, NATO remains an alliance of sovereign nations: It has 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 Mendes-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 j 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.
Upon closer inspection, the national objectives of Great Britain are not so very different from those 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 same path. Incidentally, at Suez, the)' walked it together, a fact which Americans will do well to remember for another decade or two. Th buildings at Whitehall and their annexes, the clubs of St. James Street and Carlton Terrace, were not built to minister to the public need of, as world geography goes, medium-sized island. Much has been written about the purposefulness with which Britain carried out the devolution of her empire. The process, we are told, was not only necessary but also beneficial and elevating for all participants. Not all Englishmen agree. To a large number of civil servants, planters, traders, sailors and soldiers, the loss of empire signified not only the loss of career but, more painfully, the loss of status. What makes this loss of status and the loss of status of England as a whole so hard to bear is hard bought victory in World War II. The imperial nations of the continent readjusted themselves more gracefully to the change in their fortunes, for they had gone through the purgatory of defeat.
The British know that they fought well and that their searing sacrifices bought not only their own freedom but also that saving pause which allowed America to mount the counteroffensive against Nazi Tyranny. Hence the deep sense of injustice which pervades English thought about the world. America, a late comer to the War and her vast homeland unscathed by enemy action, has taken England’s place as a leading world power. The Germans and even the Italians prosper while Britain’s economic rate of growth limps behind not only the rate of economic growth of these two ex-enemies of freedom but also behind that of the rest of the continent.
In all countries, the formulation of foreign policy is but the projection abroad of the domestic consensus arrived at by toting up domestic resources, physical and moral. Strictly speaking, ever since Churchill’s withdrawal from Greece, Britain has had no foreign policy except one of a negative kind. The reason for how pallid has grown Britain’s image in the world must be sought in her social dilemma. There are two Britains: Hierarchic society, its roots in rural England with its great houses, Burke’s peerage, complex conventions, and seasoned snobbery; and the teeming, motorized, pushing, gross and raffish society of the urban masses. The popularity of ceremonial displays, which, a generation ago, were casually presented and are now self-consciously staged, provides nostalgic surcease from 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.
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 in corporation 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 for 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 or nothing, the highest price which we may be forced to pay for the restoration of Atlantic unity and its consolidation in permanent institutions, will be cheap.