Setting the Pace

"Where does the power lie in this alliance?" demanded a senior U.S. official last week. Firmly he answered himself: "It rests here in Washington." But the need for asking the question was as significant as the confident answer. For, to judge by the news last week, the pace, perhaps even the policy of the alliance, was being set, if anywhere, in the office of the President of France.

With supreme confidence, as if contrary views had been considered by him and then rejected, De Gaulle last week laid out his winter schedule. Nikita Khrushchev would arrive in Paris March 15 for a state visit expected to last as much as two weeks. After that, in April De Gaulle would accept the Queen's invitation to visit Britain, and perhaps follow it with a boat trip to the U.S. and Canada. Mid-May, therefore, might be appropriate for the summit. All this was a far cry from Eisenhower's original proposal for a December summit. But without expressing either irritation or regret, the U.S. and Britain accepted what they did not want but were not prepared to challenge.

More was involved than a mere jockeying over dates. The delay also reflected a dispute over what kind of summit there should be, and continuing disagreement over Western policy, as De Gaulle made clear in a remarkable press conference (see below).

The Suspicious Ones. The Western alliance was not splitting apart by any means, but it was riding off in all directions last week. Some found this a cause for handwringing. Others saw it as the result of natural rivalries once the crisis pressure for an immediate summit was off.

Either way, the European allies were hard put to conceal their current mutual distrust. On one side were what De Gaulle called the "Anglo-Saxons."* Britain's idea of its special relationship with the U.S. was keenly resented by De Gaulle and suspected by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The British, in turn, saw in the close alliance between Bonn and Paris and in the growing unity of the six Common Market nations a move to isolate Britain from the Continent.

In Bonn, there were other complaints. Foreign Office hands complained that 83-year-old Chancellor Adenauer had taken to shaping foreign policy in secret. Others resented Adenauer's insistence that the alliance with France must be the cornerstone of West Germany's international relations. Many German businessmen and politicians no longer made any bones about their belief that De Gaulle was extracting from Bonn greater political and economic concessions than his friendship was worth--and were convinced that De Gaulle was really not interested in seeing Germany become a great power.

France Alone. With the big partners at odds, the smaller among the 15 partners in NATO--bureaucratically known as "the less directly responsible powers"--were demanding the right to be heard. NATO's Secretary-General Paul-Henri Spaak, who wants a thorough re-examination of policy, is convinced that "we are at the beginning of a new phase. I believe that the Russians need a long period of peace."

One of the re-examinations is a challenge to the philosophy hitherto basic to NATO's military planning--the concept of an integrated, internationally commanded force in which each member nation would concentrate on the weapons and services that it was particularly well equipped to supply. This concept De Gaulle is openly determined to eradicate. Said he in a little noticed speech to France's Center of Advanced Military Studies fortnight ago: "If France should have to fight a war, then it must be its own war. It must defend itself by itself and in its own fashion . . . Naturally, if the case demands, French defense will be coupled to that of other countries, but . . . the system of integration which prevailed during a certain epoch has had its day."

The Sunny Season. In all the new questionings going on, the public proclamations and the private forebodings, events seemed to be under the domination of General Charles de Gaulle. In fact, he was having his way rather than showing leadership (for leadership implies an agreed and shared objective). De Gaulle's behavior proved again that one man who knows what he wants has a priceless tactical advantage over a group of men who hope through debate to forge a mutually agreeable compromise.

Irritating as De Gaulle's lordly disregard of alliance by committee might be, his partners were in no position to make the familiar argument from fear. The idea that everyone must rush to the summit lest Nikita Khrushchev grow impatient and the "momentum" of East-West efforts for peace be lost was less forceful when Khrushchev himself seems to be in no hurry for a summit. The French offered him two dates for his pre-summit visit to Paris--Feb. 20 or mid-March. Khrushchev chose the later date, blandly explaining from wintry Moscow that the weather in Paris was likely to be better then.

* In his traditional lexicon, there are also the Slavs, the Germans and the Latins--a system of categories that tends to regard as transitory such political systems as Communism.

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