The 7,601st Day

Europe passed a milestone of sorts last week. As of Sunday, June 5, the 7,601st day since V-J Day, the Continent had managed to live in peace for as long as it had between its two world wars. True enough, it was divided between West and East, and each side's bristles of missiles were unneeded evidence that the peace was still troubled. But the rigid structures of Europe are rapidly changing, and so are the dogmas of decades past. The cold opposing currents are growing warmer and the hard opposing truths growing softer. As the 7,601st day passed into the 7,602nd, World War III did not seem in the offing. It had seldom, in fact, seemed farther away.

Quite by coincidence, the 15 NATO nations chose the day to begin their semiannual foreign ministers meeting. On the agenda of the Allies, who formed their pact in fear in 1949 to face the deadly challenge of Soviet expansion, was not one single grim item of cold war business. Indeed, when they sat down in the modernistic Palais des Congres on a hilltop in Brussels, their principal problem was France, not Russia, and most of the rest of the discussion was concerned with devising some sort of rapprochement with Eastern Europe.

Charley Horse. As they deliberated, six foreign ministers of the Warsaw Pact nations--once known as Russia and its satellites--met in the gothic Spiridonovka Palace near the banks of the Moskva River. And what seemed to be on their minds? How to keep Rumania's nationalist-minded government from bolting, for one thing. Some sort of rapprochement with the West, for another. And what to tell Charles de Gaulle next week when he arrives in Moscow to talk about European unity.

From NATO's viewpoint, De Gaulle could hardly be considered the great European unifier. If anything, he was the grand Charley horse in the Western alliance. What preoccupied last week's Brussels conference, in fact, was his abrupt decision to separate French troops from NATO control and expel NATO troops from France. He had even given SHAPE its eviction notice.

It took the ministers scarcely any time at all to agree upon Brussels as the new military headquarters--despite the objection of a minority of middle-class Belgians that the influx of 2,600 SHAPE staffers would drive up rents in their capital city. More difficult was the question of whether France intended to remain as an active partner in NATO, and De Gaulle's Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville proved difficult to pin down. France would be happy to allow NATO's political council to remain in Paris, he said, and would continue its membership in the organization. But whether the 72,000 French troops now stationed in West Germany would cooperate with NATO--or, at the other extreme, be pulled back to France--were questions that Couve would not answer.

Passive Partnership. In the hope that De Gaulle did not really intend to desert NATO, the Allies refrained from forcing a showdown. After all, from a purely military point of view, even a passive partnership was preferable to French neutrality--which would cut the Western alliance in two, isolate each of its three Mediterranean members from West Germany, Britain, Benelux and Scandinavia.

After long debate, the conference vetoed a Danish proposal to use NATO as a springboard for an East-West conference on basic issues that divide Europe. Not that the ministers were opposed to a settlement: they encouraged all "initiatives" of any NATO nation to improve East-West relationships. At the same time, however, even Couve de Murville agreed with Secretary of State Rusk that it is still too early for outright accommodation between the two opposing blocs. There is an obvious interest in moving toward peace with Russia, said Rusk, but "the main ingredient is our own solidarity." For one thing, the West itself was not yet united on the terms for a settlement in Europe. For another, NATO's defense machinery must be kept oiled and ready, both to meet any sudden stiffening within the Communist bloc and to impress upon the Soviets that the West, although eager to pursue rapprochement, can be invited, but not shoved to the conference table.

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