A New & Obscure Destination

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In an alliance in which partners had become increasingly mindful of one another's sensitivities, in which victories were tactfully not crowed over, and togetherness in itself was regarded as a good thing, Charles de Gaulle last week reminded the world of what one man with a will can do.

Over the past 20 years, on his own people and on their neighbors, Charles de Gaulle has perfected his native talent for handing out rude surprises. Employing the lofty disdain that used to infuriate Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, De Gaulle succeeded in infuriating Kennedy, Macmillan and a host of others by vetoing Britain's admission to the Common Market.

He might have been gentle about it, allowing negotiations to sputter out in a confusion of details. He chose to be blunt.

And his purpose was not just to shut out Britain or merely to humiliate her. He also shook the Atlantic alliance to its roots, set out to contest its leadership and to put in question the future role of the U.S. in Europe. For the West, he created a dramatic historical turn, a new and obscure destination.

Dead Mechanism. Western Europe heard the news with anger and dismay. West Germany's Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard blamed De Gaulle for a "black day," declaring that "the Common Market is now only a mechanism and no longer a living thing." Alfred Mueller-Armack, West Germany's chief negotiator at Brussels, quit his job in disgust. Jean Monnet, the dynamic optimist who is the father of the Common Market, lamented that "there now looms disunion with its inherent dangers.'' Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told his country on TV: "What happened at Brussels was bad. Bad for us, bad for Europe, bad for the whole world."

"Brutal" was the word heard most often in Whitehall and around the White House to describe De Gaulle's behavior.

As architects or at least co-designers of the Atlantic alliance, U.S. policymakers were plunged into gloom. "Most unfortunate," said the State Department. In Congress there were revived mutterings about the inefficacy of foreign aid and the ingratitude of allies. Arkansas' Senator William Fulbright talked of the "temporary aberration" of the man. A nation that had hoped to be in a position to profit from the Communist split between Russia and Red China found a deep crevice opening at its feet. And though the Kennedy Administration did not speak of an "agonizing reappraisal" of its relations with a recalcitrant France--as John Foster Dulles once had--U.S. military and diplomatic policy toward Europe was plainly in need of one.

Community Twilight. Except for a glow of pride, tempered with nervous concern, among some Frenchmen, the only cheerful voices were being raised in Moscow, where Soviet ideologists suddenly thought they saw confirmation of the hoary Marxist-Leninist tenet that capitalist countries will inevitably be destroyed by their "inner contradictions." Cried a Russian spokesman: "This is the twilight of the so-called European Community. A difficult navigation now awaits the American ship of state."

Not just the fact of what Charles de Gaulle had already done tormented his allies: it was what he might yet do. And they searched his prescient pronouncements from the past (see box) for clues.

For 20 years the U.S. has been accustomed to lead the free world, and in that time Western Europe rose from the ashes behind a shield of U.S. men and money. France itself has received $9.5 billion in outright aid and $1.8 billion in loans since 1945. There have of course been disputes and differences of opinion, but until last week, no direct challenge of U.S. leadership. What the U.S. now faced was a proposal that Europe rally round France to create a third force in the world capable of dealing independently with both the U.S. and Russia. This had been De Gaulle's proclaimed goal for years, but everyone had counted on his own realistic appreciation of the increasing gains to France and Europe of the current course of Atlantic partnership. It was a crowning irony that De Gaulle's effort to give Europe a new voice, direction and self-assurance is precisely what the U.S. has been trying to do ever since World War II. But the U.S. hardly expected things to work out quite this way.

Pictures in the Louvre. That they did is the responsibility of one man--Charles Andre Marie Joseph de Gaulle, 72. His ability to bring a skillful influence to bear upon events should be enough to send a believer in impersonal historical determinism back to his books. Tall and ungainly, so dim-eyed that he constantly stumbles, so seldom a listener that he seems deaf, De Gaulle should be a figure of fun (and sometimes is), but the greatness in the man usually survives the mockery. His mind is like the Louvre, filled with battle pictures in which the French are always winning; his heart throbs with simple emotions labeled Patrie, Dieu, Gloire, and he has a gift for prophecy that is more Old Testament than 20th century modern. De Gaulle's faults are common to many men--he is bullheaded, arrogant, touchy, more responsive to flattery than criticism, insufferably proud of his intellect and insight. His virtues, however, are rare in any age, and are summed up in the word character.

What happened last week in Brussels was a head-on collision between Charles de Gaulle's design for Europe and the wider, world-embracing Atlantic policy followed by the last three American Presidents and by most of the parliamentarians of Europe.

Lofted Umbrella. The U.S. attitude, on which one presidential speechwriter hung the ambitious phrase "grand design," is to accept and work for the concept of a strong, united Europe linked in partnership with North America, both acting together to raise the living standards and secure the independence of the nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America. To make this design enduring, the U.S. insisted that Britain become a member of the Common Market, followed by the Scandinavian and other NATO countries. The defense of this grand design would be twofold: conventional arms and armies supplied by Europe, and the nuclear umbrella held aloft by the U.S.

De Gaulle's European design is introverted, smaller, and dependent more on audacity and cleverness than on sheer power. In effect, it represents another of the historic efforts to create a unified Europe under French leadership--an ambition that was pursued in the past by Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon III. To De Gaulle, Europe's rivers and mountains are not barriers, but the oceans are. Since 1940 he has dreamed of persuading the "states along the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees to form a political, economic and strategic bloc; to establish this organization as one of the three world powers, and. should it become necessary, as the arbiter between the Soviet and the Anglo-American camps."

Gargantuan Stocks. Conceivably, De Gaulle at one point might have been weaned away from his dream. When he returned to power in 1958 to lead a France still riven by the Algerian war, he demanded admission to a three-power directorate of NATO, but the idea was blackballed by Eisenhower and Macmillan. He probably would have been as intransigent as a co-director as he has been without becoming one. Since then, he has progressively withdrawn French ground and naval forces from NATO commands, banished U.S. nuclear warheads from French soil, and sunk billions of francs into a crash program to create a nuclear force de frappe of his own.

As of last week the force de frappe consisted of a handful of atom bombs and a delivery system of exactly four Mirage IV jets, extremely fast (Mach 2), high-altitude, two-seat light bombers. The Mirage IV's radius is only 1,000 miles.

Admittedly the force de frappe is a modest operation and one that could swiftly be knocked out of the air, even when, by 1965, the French hope to have 350 planes capable of carrying atomic weapons. De Gaulle concedes that his nuclear weaponry will never match the gargantuan and lethal stockpiles of Russia and the U.S. But he thinks that it is big enough and murderous enough to give any potential aggressor pause--and besides, it is his own.

Unfit Islanders. In De Gaulle's Europe, France is first, Germany second, and the rest nowhere--they can tag along respectfully as camp followers, with little more weight or voice than tiny Luxembourg. Britain is rejected as unfit economically or politically to join this band of continental brothers because it 1) is an offshore island, and 2) has "special ties" with the U.S. and the Commonwealth. To De Gaulle's jaundiced eye. the British attempt to enter the Common Market was simply a Trojan horse maneuver (an expression used with suspicious frequency in Parisian editorials and salons last week) staged by Washington to make sure that the U.S. domination of Europe would not be frustrated.

Britain did much to arrange her own fate. In 1950, London was offered membership in the European Coal and Steel

Community and refused. Seven years later, London was invited to join in the founding of the Common Market, and again refused. As the Common Market got under way, Britain tried to cripple it by setting up its own ragtag rival bloc, the seven-nation European Free Trade Association (with Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland). But the runaway economic success of the Common Market caused Britain's Conservative government to reverse itself, and, in August 1961, Britain penitently applied for the membership it had once spurned. It asked for full, not associate membership, with all that this implied in declaring itself European. The application might have been received in Brussels; De Gaulle insisted that Britain bring it to Paris instead.

"Matter of Days." During the slow first year of the Brussels negotiations, De Gaulle was not actively in opposition. But he soon made it clear he considered the British as suppliants, not equals: they could not hope to change the rules as a condition of joining the club. The technical discussions ranged from such obscure items as the tariff on kips and pig-meat to important ones concerning future trade with Australia and New Zealand.

By last month, of more than 2,500 big and small questions, all but 26 had been amicably resolved. Britain's chief negotiator, Edward Heath, was so optimistic that on Jan. 21 he confidently told a U.S. official: "It is only a matter of days before the question is settled in our favor.'7

This was brave but foolhardy disregard of the imperious non uttered just a week before in De Gaulle's celebrated press conference, the theatrical shocker in which the "insular, maritime" British were haughtily told to transform themselves into "Europeans'" before joining the Common Market. De Gaulle has long been suspicious of Britain's close ties with the U.S., and suspects that secrets can be exchanged in the common English language. But De Gaulle's determination to veto

Britain's membership apparently came just before Christmas, when the news arrived of the Kennedy-Macmillan meeting at Nassau. At Nassau. Britain got formal word that the U.S. would not supply it with Skybolt. the airborne missile on which the British had pinned all their hopes for delivering their nuclear deterrent. Skybolt shattered the British, and disquieted the French as well, since it was regarded as proof that nuclear dependence on another power was risky. If the U.S. could treat in that fashion an ally to whom it was tied by blood, language and tradition, what could France expect? De Gaulle was further angered by Macmillan's agreement to share Polaris with the U.S. instead of moving to share nuclear knowledge with France. That was when the phrase ''Trojan horse" first began to be used in Paris.

Overnight Case. Brussels, the scene of Britain's dashed hopes last week, is a dour, neon-lit old maid of a city. On Monday, the cobbled streets were slimy with black slush and blanketed with chilling fog as Britain's chief negotiator. Edward Heath, arrived with his aides. Minister for Commonwealth Affairs Duncan Sandys and Agriculture Minister Christopher Soames. The French, with a fine sense of economy, traveled light; only Luxembourg's four-man delegation was smaller. French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville brought only an overnight case, for he knew that he would not be staying long.

Couve arrived an hour late for the start of the meeting at Quatre Bras, the modern Foreign Ministry building. Newsmen's questions to him died in the air at the grim set of the Frenchman's face. A path two feet wide miraculously parted the crowd and like an apparition--or a leper--Couve moved unmolested to the elevator.

When the delegates emerged from the meeting at midnight. West Germany's Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, a staunch supporter of Britain, grunted. "We made only linguistic progress.'' A French delegate lightly added. "If we reach an agreement, it will be based on a misunderstanding.'' On Tuesday morning. U.S. Ambassador John Tuthill hurried around to the delegations to deliver a last-minute warning from President Kennedy, pointing out the grave consequences of a breakdown in the negotiations. The Six reconvened at noon to hear the West German proposal that was intended to save face for everyone by postponing a decision for two months. A stormy discussion followed, and Couve de Murville icily professed astonishment that a plan could even be proposed in such bad parliamentary form.

"Monstrous Thing." In turn, the delegates of the other five warned of the consequences of a rupture, but France's Couve de Murville was adamant. Walter Hallstein. chairman of the Common Market Commission, tried to change the wording of the proposal to make it more acceptable to the French. He failed. There was nothing to do but summon Heath to hear the final verdict. Each head of delegation read a prepared statement. Belgium's Spaak called the rupture "a monstrous thing.'' Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns was equally bitter, while Germany's Schroder pointedly told the French that "the Bundestag had only ratified the Treaty of Rome in the first place on the assumption that it would be widened to embrace new members."

Then at last it was Couve de Murville's turn. Couve, a brilliant, civilized, highly trained diplomatist, who among his colleagues would usually be seeking any new avenue of compromise, was now plainly little more than a messenger boy for le grand Charles. "It is being said that we broke off the negotiations." he declared. "In reality, our responsibility has been that of making clear that the negotiations have been taking place in a vacuum since October, and of having said that it is preferable to face the facts." Then he echoed the boss again: "When Britain can accept all the requirements of the Treaty of Rome, nothing can stop her from entering the Common Market. But it is upon her and not on us that the burden of proof lies."

It would have been a little late in the day. but many at the table thought that it would have been wonderful had Heath given in entirely at this point and taken Couve up on his offer with no more haggling. But the Briton limited himself to a dispassionate rebuttal. "It has been contended." he said, "that Britain is not European enough. There are many millions in Europe who know perfectly well how European Britain has been in the past and are grateful for it." Added Heath: "The truth is that some people regarded the negotiations as being too close to success, though they gave other reasons for breaking them off." When he stopped speaking, all the delegates crowded around to shake his hand--all but France's men. who left unsmiling.

Stateless Ones. The Common Market as it now exists offers a superb instrument for De Gaulle's strong hand to wield, even though he was contemptuous of it at the start, and dismisses the Eurocrats who work for it as les apatrides, the stateless ones. After five years of operation, its gross national product stands at $210 billion, and industrial production has soared 40%. The Common Market poured almost 80 million tons of steel last year (compared with the U.S.'s 98 million tons), and is the world's second largest automobile maker. As the world's biggest trader, the Common Market is first in imports, second only to the U.S. in exports. Since 1958, imports from the rest of the world have risen 39%. those from the U.S. a giant 59%, thus aiding Washington's desperate balance-of-payment problems.

The question most asked last week was whether the other five--West Germany.

Italy and the Benelux countries--would permit le grand Charles to make the Market his device for power. What De Gaulle has demonstrated is that he can blackball any nation he does not want in the Common Market ("French shoulders are broad enough to bear the burden," said a spokesman). But De Gaulle has yet to show that he can remake Europe in France's image. Britain and the U.S. are betting that he never will. Indeed, the unanimous outcry from the other five Common Market nations last week was ample testimony that they are currently determined to resist France's grasp for leadership. Last week the five abruptly forced postponement of a special meeting of the Common Market finance ministers called by the French to investigate the extent of U.S. investment in Europe, a pet hate of De Gaulle's these days. This rebuff disturbed French Minister of Finance Valery Giscard d'Estaing not at all. He reportedly remarked that the five had merely deprived him of his dessert--meaning, presumably, that France had already enjoyed the British lion for breakfast. The five have also shown signs of blocking other French projects, e.g., Algeria's association with the Six.

Sharp Divisions. But as the initial and genuine anger diminished, there was a question whether the smaller countries, in their anxiety to bring Britain in as a political counterbalance to France and Germany, would be willing to endanger the Common Market itself. Their economies are so dependent on the Market as a trading partner that it is inconceivable that any of them would be able to separate out their own marbles to take them home.

It is West Germany's support that Charles de Gaulle needs to win the whip hand over Europe. He had a stalwart partner in 87-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Rhinelander whose lifelong dream has been Franco-German rapprochement. As it happened, Adenauer arrived in the Elysee Palace last month to sign the treaty of friendship and co operation with France at the very time when De Gaulle had sprung his large scheme on Europe. By all accounts, Adenauer did not fully realize that the document he had signed was the reinforcing seal of doom for Britain's membership in Europe--and that he was now put at odds with the U.S. scheme of things. At the ceremony in Paris. Adenauer gently asked De Gaulle not to force the Germans into the awkward position of choosing between the U.S. and France. Tut, tut, replied De Gaulle reassuringly, "France has no intention of putting Germany into a position where such a choice would be necessary."

Deserved Whippings. Whatever Konrad Adenauer desires, he is no longer undisputed master at home. With Economics Minister (and possible next Chancellor) Ludwig Erhard threatening to resign if the Adenauer-De Gaulle Treaty is ratified before concessions are granted in the Common Market, West Germany's support for le grand Charles is in jeopardy indeed. Already leaders of opposition factions in the Bundestag have warned that they would block ratification of the Franco-German treaty. It was a measure of De Gaulle's rapid rise of prestige that all the German papers posed the matter as a question of choosing between the U.S. and France. Most, understandably, chose the U.S. The influential Protestant weekly Christ und Welt warned: "Bonn's strong position in Washington rests on its firm loyalty to an American-led NATO. The Americans will sooner or later withdraw from the Continent if they get the impression that the Federal Republic failed to oppose De Gaulle's intention to undermine NATO from within."

Sibylline Delights. Le Figaro's gifted commentator Raymond Aron, whose admiration for De Gaulle is qualified, remarked last week that he is convinced that the general takes "lonely pleasure in the spectacle of the arguments he causes." What disturbs many Americans is not De Gaulle's effort to assert a reviving continent's strength, but his future plans for

Europe. And what disturbs many continentals is De Gaulle's readiness to be far more disregarding of their sensibilities than the U.S. has been. A De Gaulle agreement to consult, as Adenauer and others have found out, means his willingness to give the other partner an audience to hear De Gaulle's intentions. De Gaulle accepts the commitments France entered into while he was not in power, but distorts them to France's advantage. After vetoing Britain, De Gaulle last week invited Danish Premier Jens Otto Krag to join the Common Market either as full member or as associate--an invitation that the other five members indignantly thought was the responsibility of all six to extend. Krag's own surprised reaction was to say that Denmark's hopes were "based on the assumption that Britain would join the Common Market." Similarly, the other partners were suspicious of De Gaulle's intense side cultivation of Spain last week, and his long private talks with Soviet Ambassador Sergei Vinogradov, who in the years De Gaulle was not in power kept up his close contacts with him. Last week France signed a bilateral trade agreement with Russia, calling for a 10% increase in trade between the two powers.

Will De Gaulle take it upon himself to negotiate separately with the Soviet Union? His anti-Communist bona fides has been amply proved by his stands on Berlin and Cuba, when he firmly backed Kennedy. There is a story that, in 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, De Gaulle told an aide, "Now we must begin thinking of stopping the Communist push in Europe." The aide protested that the prospect seemed remote, and De Gaulle replied, "Remember these hours. I often make mistakes in what I do, but never in what I predict."

Acts, Not Words. In talking to his friends, De Gaulle makes it plain that he thinks the situation behind the Iron Curtain offers an opportunity for the West. He argues that the Sino-Soviet split, the economic pull of Western Europe, the gradual "bourgeoisation" of Russia all contribute to turning the Communists, and especially the Eastern European satellites, westward. And out of this he conceives of some kind of European arrangement, never fully defined, "stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals." Holding this vision, De Gaulle has never ruled out negotiation with Moscow--he merely sets the condition that the Russians must first prove themselves in acts, not words. Those who fear De Gaulle's intentions wonder whether he will at some future moment consider a disengagement in Europe in which the 400,000 U.S. troops would go home in return for a Russian pull-out of Eastern Europe. This may be one reason why he wants his own nuclear force.

"No one in the world, particularly no one in America, can say whether, where, when, how and to what extent American nuclear weapons will be used in defense of Europe." And, he argues, "It is intolerable for a great state that her fate be left to the decisions and action of another state, however friendly she may be." It is a powerful point, and is not fully met by offering U.S. nuclear weapons to a European NATO group, since the final decision to launch any bombs would still presumably be in U.S. hands.

Purged Britain. Time was when the U.S. called the tune on such crucial questions. De Gaulle's dramatic action raises the question whether the U.S. can, or should, continue to do so indefinitely.

In his final words to his Common Market partners, France's Couve de Murville somberly expressed De Gaulle's thoughts on the matter. "I will say once again that we are not seeking to maintain a large or small Europe, but to know if the Europe we are creating is a European Europe." In effect, he seemed to be saying: If Britain one day truly purged itself of its close American connection, it might prove itself eligible at last, in Charles de Gaulle's eyes, for Common Market membership.

Irritating as it might be, it was an idea with some force. So sympathetic a transatlantic figure as Britain's Viscount Hailsham, speaking in Manhattan fortnight ago, gently warned President Kennedy not to think that he is the "commander in chief of the forces of the free world."

In fact, said Lord Hailsham. "this is precisely what he is not if the allies to which he is bound are not to be deprived of the very independence for which they are prepared to unite.

"The superiority in numbers, wealth and strength, and therefore in influence and initiative, of the U.S., is not in question. Nor is its integrity . . . [But] have the Americans paused to reflect that an alliance in which all the advanced and sophisticated technologies were left to one of the partners, and the rest were relegated to supply a complement of conventional arms in war, and in commerce a modest contribution of Scotch whisky and compact cars . . . would not ul timately succeed in retaining the loyalty of European electors?"

Curt Dismissal. The policymakers in Washington clearly face a dichotomy that has perhaps too long encumbered U.S. policy: the demand that Europe assume greater responsibility for its own defense, yet accept final U.S. decisions as to its own weapons, policies, even its leadership. But even if it was time for a change, was France's way the right way for Europe?

Whatever their frustrations or ambi tions, the governments and peoples of the rest of the Continent seemed unready to accept a narrow little Europe as the pattern for their future. The mold for some thing bigger had been formed in the Rome Treaty in 1957. and would neither lightly nor happily be broken. A struggle for the loyalty of Western Europe has now begun.

Oddly, the British, who have found it hard to abandon their other ties and their ancient insularity, took great umbrage at De Gaulle's questioning of their European sincerity. Said Tory Party Chairman Iain Macleod: "We do not accept any curt dismissal from the European stage. The days when we might retire into proud isolation from the Continent are finished, and Britain is irrevocably part of Europe and the Western Alliance."

Charles de Gaulle regards himself, too. as a devoted European and a member in good standing of the Western Alliance. But he has never hesitated to put his partners to hard tests, and is no man to subdue his feelings for the sake of the appearance of unity. His European partners and his British and U.S. allies are increasingly in the mood to treat him in the same way. Britain's Macleod expressed a widespread sentiment: "De Gaulle's vision of a self-contained inde pendent Europe led by France is no mean or petty thing. It is indeed a formidable concept, but it is inflexibly opposed to our own vision of Europe's future."

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