Trying to Heal the Rift

By Frederick Painton

At a TIME conference, Europeans and Americans assess NATO's problems

"Treaties are like young girls and roses: they last as long as they last."

--Charles de Gaulle, 1963

As a peacetime alliance the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is, at 34, an extraordinary survivor, perhaps even a historical aberration. It has weathered so many crises, real or imagined, that there has been a tendency to minimize periodic symptoms of decline. Today, though, that brave front is no longer possible or realistic. The vitality of the transatlantic partnership has been draining away, not so much because of specific clashes of interest but because of mounting differences between the U.S. and Western Europe over how to deal with the Soviet Union.

The situation bears enormous risks for both sides. The U.S. simply cannot be secure in a world in which Western Europe's freedom and independence are in question because of Soviet pressures; Europeans, for their part, know all too well that the fundamental guarantee of their security and survival still rests in the partnership with U.S. strategic forces through the 16-member NATO alliance. What is increasingly undermining this transatlantic pledge is European doubt, compounded by erratic U.S. diplomacy. As the Soviets continue their vast military buildup, including both nuclear and conventional forces, the U.S. security guarantee has come to be seen as less convincing and, paradoxically enough, too frightening for a new generation of skeptical Europeans. Peace movements have spread. A long recession has helped foment cynicism about the need to defend an ailing consumer society, and the allies increasingly have been quarreling over financial and trade issues.

Western Europe--with its huge economic potential, its industrious 236 million people--is critical for both Europeans and Americans. Should it slide slowly out of the alliance orbit in order to seek accommodation with Moscow, the global balance of power would change drastically.

Against this backdrop, TIME last week held an Atlantic Alliance conference to assess the differences that now separate the U.S. and its West European allies. The setting was Hamburg, which, as Helmut Schmidt, the former West German Chancellor, pointed out, is only 25 minutes by car from the frontier with the Soviet bloc and only twelve minutes more from the nearest Soviet armored division. For three days, 45 political leaders, government officials, strategists and economists from the U.S. and Western Europe diagnosed the alliance's ills, aired their grievances and sought to find remedies.

In his address, which set the tone for the debate, although it also provoked significant disagreement, Helmut Schmidt mentioned no fewer than eight times the need for a "grand strategy" by the Western allies to deal with the Soviet Union. Like other West Europeans, Schmidt is reluctant, at least for the moment, to accept the Reagan Administration's tactics as the basis for such a strategy. Said he: "The deterioration of diplomacy into shouting matches, the idea of economic warfare ... all these, I think, are characteristic of the political crisis that faces the world."

Other voices sounded equally serious alarms. Said Richard Burt, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs: 'We are in the midst of what best can be described as a grand debate over the very essence of the Atlantic Alliance--its purpose, its shape, its structure... 1983 could well turn out to be the most important year in the history of the alliance." Specifically, Burt saw the determination and credibility of the alliance at stake in the controversy over how to implement the so-called double-track decision to deploy U.S. nuclear-tipped Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe by year's end, if, as feared, no progress is made at the U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations in Geneva. "The United States," said Burt, "would be willing to risk its own territory for deployment, and I think that is not well enough understood in Europe. We do have a strategy and we do have forces and we do have people conditioned, prepared to take risks and to expose the American homeland to attack ... It is in part through the threat of escalation and full American involvement that we help to promote stability and deterrence in Europe."

A majority of the participants, in some cases reluctantly, shared Burt's view of the challenge. Said Douglas Kurd, Britain's Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: "If we fail to carry out what is still a valid decision, [the message of] weakness and incoherence . .. could be very dangerous and possibly fatal."

Former French Premier and Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, a Gaullist, noted that the conference was taking place "in the context of a crisis in the Atlantic Alliance." For Couve de Murville, 76, the fundamental problem was less the missile debate than the lack of agreement or even understanding between the superpowers on the balance of forces in the world, "which has been the basis of East-West relations for 15 years." There was a consensus that the U.S. must clarify very soon whether it is seeking to regain the nuclear superiority it enjoyed through the 1960s, as Washington's rhetoric occasionally suggests, or whether the U.S. is committed to the concept of parity with the Soviets.

There was also wide agreement that what Schmidt called the U.S. Administration's "loose talk" and confrontational approach to Moscow should be curbed, if only to ease the anxieties of Europeans, who are already tempted by a widespread pacifist movement that sees the U.S. as at least as great a threat to peace as the Soviet Union.

At the same time, Democrat Thomas Foley, the majority whip of the U.S House of Representatives, voiced concern over the frequent bitterness of Western European public opinion vis-`a-vis the U.S. Said he: "Europe has been a bit too quick to pick up the random follies that this Administration has perpetrated and run them up the flagpole. I have the sense that perhaps American policy is not as Dad as many of us say it sounds." Richard Perle, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt, former State Department counselor, repeatedly pointed out to their West European colleagues that the U.S. was sincerely seeking an arms agreement with the Soviets under very difficult circumstances, which were being made even worse by allied skepticism about Washington's motives.

Robert Hormats, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, noted amid a chorus of agreement that "one of the other dimensions that hold us together is the economic one--shared economic values in the sense that prosperity in Europe is beneficial to prosperity in the United States and vice versa." Said West German Social Democrat Ulrich Steger, his party's spokesman on international economic affairs: "The economic issue is a topic that affects our people and the Western alliance more than all the quarrels about missiles." According to Steger, 95% of West Europeans believe that American economic policies have pushed them deeper into the recession. But the experts also recognized that coordinating economic policies among the Western industrial nations was easier said than done. Explained former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, now deputy leader of the British Labor Party: "What is meant by convergence [of economies] is that everybody should do what I'm doing, but who moves toward whom is still not discussed."

The conference was divided into three committees. The highlights:

Political Concerns. In a prepared paper, former French Foreign Minister Jean Franc,ois-Poncet submitted that although its long-range objectives remain the same, Soviet foreign policy has shifted emphasis in recent years. "Since the invasion of Afghanistan," he explained, "the pendulum of confrontation has swung back to Europe."

Why? Franc,ois-Poncet offered several explanations. First, Soviet adventurism in the Third World turned out to be costly and disappointing. Second, Western Europe had become an attractive target because it could be intimidated by a rapid Soviet military buildup, especially of SS-20 intermediate-range missiles, of which Moscow now has 351 deployed. Intimidation was made all the easier by the arrival of a so-called successor generation ol young West Europeans ignorant of immediate post-World War II history, thus uncertain of U.S. policy and fatalistic about Soviet power. Third, the Soviets are grappling in Eastern Europe with perhaps their most intractable problem, the growth of nationalism and dissent. Said Franc,ois-Poncet: "If the Soviets could deal with a West European partner that would detach itself from the U.S., it would help them impose a solution in Eastern Europe." He wondered if the SS-20 program was simply the mechanistic reflex of the Soviet military establishment or part of a longer-term political strategy. If Moscow's aim is political blackmail, he said, then Western Europe should begin to brace for a period of high East-West tension after the deployment of NATO's own intermediate-range missiles.

Karl Kaiser, director of the Research Institute of the West German Society for Foreign Affairs and one of his country's foremost strategic thinkers, suggested an answer: "Probably at the beginning the SS-20 was just a modernization program, but now with the debate in the West, I am reasonably sure that the SS-20 program has a much wider, long-term perspective behind it." Kaiser got wholehearted support from Alois Mertes, Minister of State at the West German Foreign Office, who said that both the SS-20 and the proposed counterforce, NATO's Pershing Us and cruises, are essentially political weapons. Mertes maintained that the Soviet Union would avoid war, especially in Europe, because "the Federal Republic of Germany is a good fat cow; they will not slaughter it. They will draw it very slowly from the Western area to the Eastern area. That means that besides the risk of nuclear war, there is the risk of creeping Soviet influence in the Federal Republic."

Like many others on the panel, Mertes called for "a repoliticization" of the missile debate: putting less emphasis on military hardware and on the threat of Soviet aggression, which most West Europeans think remote, and more stress on making the public aware of the insidious political nature of Soviet military strategy and, by inference, the risk to the West of "self-Finlandization." At the same time, noted Kaiser, NATO'S missile decision, garlanded in the language of nuclear-weapons terminology, was hard to explain to people. Indeed, said Britain's Kurd, "our policies in Western Europe are formed to a large extent out of fears--that is to say they are defensive. We have had empires, we have fought about empires, we have abandoned empires, we are not any longer interested in empires. We are interested in preserving our way of life here, which is free and agreeable."

With the military and political momentum seemingly on their side, the Soviets have little reason to negotiate seriously at Geneva, according to most of the panel participants. Kaiser predicted that they would "let us go through the agony of decision because it provides opportunities they have not had in the past." In this situation, said Joseph Biden, a Democratic Senator from Delaware, there is a vital need to maintain the credibility of the alliance so that the Soviets will realize they must talk seriously. Said Biden: "If the Russians saw God and God said, 'They're really going to deploy,' the Russians would negotiate." But West European panelists were not convinced. They feared that just as the West German election did not settle the controversy over Pershing Us in Germany, so NATO missile deployment itself, carried out gradually over a period of tune, will not necessarily persuade the Soviets to start serious bargaining. Said Michel Duclos, French Foreign Ministry counselor: "Their logical interest is to keep the water boiling, and they will continue to do so."

The panelists returned repeatedly to the West European and U.S. peace movements, whose protests and size serve to undermine the credibility of the alliance's defense policy. Said Congressman Foley: "The critics are arguing that nuclear war is bad. That is a ridiculous argument. We know that. The discussion should be on how to avoid nuclear war." West European youth are particularly troubled by what West German Editor Werner Holzer described as "a case of disappointed love with the U.S.," a process that began with the Viet Nam experience. But, Holzer noted, disappointment with the U.S. does not equate with attraction to the Soviet Union.

In fact, said Dominique Moisi of France's Institute of International Relations, the debate over new nuclear weapons is taking place in an environment in which there is "no satanic mantle and no ideal, no evil and no angels." Said Moisi: "How do you educate people to the dubious charms of the balance of power? We are in a different world--a mixture of vague idealism and a lot of cynicism regarding power politics, a dangerous amalgam that sees the two superpowers as equally mediocre. What we have lost is the sense of what we are defending, what makes deterrence worthwhile."

The loss of such values, Moisi said, is not unique to Western Europe but a problem throughout the Western world: "The alliance is not just geography and weapons. Weapons scare people and geography does not bring us together. On the contrary, it leaves Europe in the hands of the Soviets." Foley summed up this new reality: "These issues won't be decided by an old boys' club of informed opinion. There's a whole new public out there." Sonnenfeldt rejected the image of the Reagan Administration as being ideologically opposed to dialogue and negotiation. "I find very little in your discourse about the sins of the Americans," he told the European participants, "to suggest that there is any understanding of the kinds of pressure that American Presidents and politicians of either party are under."

Defense Concerns. To a surprising degree, a large and otherwise diverse majority closed ranks behind three propositions: that there is rough overall global equivalence between the superpowers; that there is a regional imbalance in Europe favoring the Soviet Union; and that regionally and globally there are ominous trends in Soviet wherewithal and behavior. But there were also complaints that the U.S. is overrating the Soviet threat and that Washington's rhetoric is reckless, to the point where the U.S. appears unconvincing in its commitment to negotiate in Geneva. In addition, Europeans were almost unanimous in reprimanding the U.S. for conducting a "cold war" crusade in Central America and then complaining when distant NATO allies failed to support it.

Although there was general agreement on the need to deploy the new NATO missiles on schedule, Karsten Voigt, West German Social Democratic Party spokesman for foreign and security affairs, suggested the possibility of postponement, even without a deal with the Soviets in Geneva. Voigt called the deterrent value of the Pershing II "greatly exaggerated" and said its mission could soon be taken over by conventional weapons. Joining in the challenge, Healey questioned the overall U.S. assessment of superpower balance. The U.S., Healey claimed, was well ahead in the number of warheads, and in any case, he noted, "I doubt that the disparity is such that it would tempt either side to start a war." Moreover, Healey said, the U.S. armaments program, especially the cruise missile, was bound to provoke the Soviets into matching the Americans, thus actually quickening the arms race. Like Voigt, he urged less reliance on nuclear weapons and an upgrading of conventional forces, an effort Perle described as "a costly proposition."

Perle, one of the Reagan Administration's principal strategic planners, took on the critics stoutly. Was the Pershing II's deterrent value overrated? No, he explained. There was no great fondness for its military capability; it was appreciated for its political value as a testimony to NATO's credibility. Said Perle: "The Pershing II is a keystone in the overall deployment plan. I think the Soviets have understood, as we have, that if you remove the keystone, the arch will crumble."

Both Perle and the State Department's Burt stated flatly that the U.S. at Geneva will reject any proposal that envisions abandoning the Pershing II. The missile has been the principal target of a massive Soviet propaganda campaign, which charges that the Pershing II, with a six-minute flight time from West Germany to its Soviet target, would give the West a first-strike nuclear capability.

Nonsense, said Perle. The flight time of the Pershing, he explained, is not, as the Soviets claim, six minutes, but somewhere between twelve and 15 minutes, or about the same as that of the SS-20. Moreover, said Perle, it would be suicidal to use the Pershing II as a first-strike weapon. The NATO plan includes only 108 Pershing Us. To attack hardened targets, nuclear strategists assume two missiles per target, which would mean 54 targets for the Pershing Us--too insignificant, in superpower terms, to matter. By contrast, the 1,053 SS-20 warheads can strike virtually all high-value targets in NATO Europe. Retired Admiral Bobby Inman, the former deputy director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, also brushed aside the Soviet Union's complaints. "You would have some days of preparation and at least hours of readiness for full use of nuclear weapons," he said.

Perle countered the charge that the U.S. was exaggerating Soviet military superiority. Said he: "By whatever measure, the trend of the past dozen years is clear-it has flip-flopped in favor of the Soviet Union. The U.S. fell behind in all categories with the sole exception of the number of warheads, and if we meet again next year under these circumstances, it will be true in respect to the number of warheads as well." Perle then summed up his strategic credo. "I do believe deterrence works," he said. "Inhibiting the Soviet Union is the alliance's first priority. If we are going to err, I suppose we should err on the side of having more than may turn out to be necessary. The consequences of having a little bit too little are very severe indeed."

When the knotty question of alliance cooperation outside the NATO area was raised by U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle, polemics flared. Ikle began by noting amicably that French and Italian participation in the multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon was a gratifying example of a nascent if limited new role for NATO. But in Central America, which Ikle considered the other powder keg in the world, the European allies had not only failed to support U.S. policy but at times actively undermined it. When Ikle said that the problem was a lack of understanding about the importance of the area, Healey snapped, "We think it is very important and believe you are about to make an appalling mistake there."

Joining the fray, Pierre Hassner, of France's National Foundation of Political Science, added, "I cannot help a feeling of dej`a vu when you [Americans] talk about the dangers of leaving the region. It is what we said about Algeria and what you said about Viet Nam. You always fail to appreciate the basic problem, which is domestic change. You are in a no-win situation. It would be better to cut your losses and obtain, as you did in Cuba, a guarantee that there will be no Soviet bases there to be used against you. But you cannot prevent domestic political evolution."

U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas, a Democrat from Massachusetts, pointed out that there was no consensus behind the Administration's Central American policy in the U.S. either. Ikle nonetheless firmly warned the European panelists that "if you have a succession of 'Cubas' in Central America, then I predict that much of our resources would be diverted from the Atlantic Alliance."

Economic Concerns. Clearly mindful of the forthcoming annual Western Economic Summit to be held in Williamsburg, Va., later this month, the participants called for greater coordination of Western economic policies in order to avoid what U.S. Special Trade Representative William Brock aptly described as "international dyslexia, where we have a disconnect of various components of policy." The West, said Brock, must act to "reduce barriers to trade and reinforce growth. That requires a substantial improvement of communication and coordination of policy." Achieving that will be difficult, yet if the allies fail to do so, Hormats pointed out, "the deterioration of economic cooperation within the West will almost certainly weaken the alliance."

European complaints about the management of the U.S. economy focused on the large U.S. budget deficits that are keeping real interest rates high. West Germany's Steger summed up the European case by warning, "As long as you stick to this policy of high deficits, an overvalued dollar, capital sunk in for the health of the New York stock market but not industry, then there will be pressure for protectionism." U.S. Senator Charles Mathias, a Republican from Maryland, also took the lead in voicing concern over protectionism, referring specifically to rising U.S. public pressures for import restrictions. "Protectionism is a serious problem that needs a high degree of understanding by the American people," he said. "We need all the help we can get from other countries of the alliance not to take protectionist measures that would feed the flame [in the U.S.]."

East-West trade provided less divergence than expected--though it is likely to lead to sharp disputes at Williamsburg if President Ronald Reagan persists in trying to force Western Europe to curb trade with the East bloc for political reasons. Louis Kawan, the European Commission's director for foreign affairs, reported that European governments agreed that nothing should be done to reinforce the military capacity of the Soviet Union. At the same time, he pointed out that the European Community conducts 60% of the industrialized world's East-West commerce and that such trade "provides stability for European economies and thus strengthens the alliance." There was no proof, he argued, that East-West trade had "any impact" on Soviet decision making. That assertion was contested by Sonnenfeldt, who defended the U.S. Administration's position that "the Western industrialized countries who also happen to be allies in the security sense cannot give up at least trying to think about the implications of economic relations with the Soviet Union."

On the question of international debt, Healey feared that the "Western banking system can only survive in the recession by lending ever more money to bad debtors, and is bullied into doing so by central banks and international institutions, whose function was supposed to guarantee their prudence, not their profligacy. The scale of the debt problem looks bigger than we anticipated." Healey proposed what he called "the first law of holes, [which] is that if you're in one, stop digging." It was a general metaphorical recommendation for the West to move away from the monetarist policies of the past few years, which Healey blamed for "putting us in a very deep hole indeed."

Conclusions. In its closing meeting, the conference came together in a joint session. If there was unanimity on any point--beyond somewhat reluctant agreement that NATO's missile deployment should go ahead--it was that the alliance signally has failed to explain, much less convince a skeptical public of the wisdom of its defense policies. Sir Nicholas Henderson, the former British Ambassador to the U.S., called this "one of the most urgent needs in the transatlantic arrangement." Said he: "If you are to defeat neutralism, anti-Americanism, pacifism in Europe, you must try to explain in what way you think that the Soviets can use their nuclear superiority in Europe. Public opinion does not believe that the Soviets now are going to even threaten to use nuclear weapons to achieve political purposes."

As a corollary to the public relations problem, there were wistful calls for what Franc,ois-Poncet called "inspired leadership": opinion polls on both sides of the Atlantic show public support that could be mobilized for the Atlantic Alliance. As the alliance's leader, it was widely agreed, the U.S. must be more sensitive to the gusts of anxiety that shake Western Europe, and the Reagan Administration must moderate its language on East-West issues. At one point during the conference, Senator Tsongas told Richard Burt, "If you assume that the next battlefield is the European heart and mind, to coin an old Viet Nam expression, if that is where the fight is now, how does one rationalize the rhetoric which is giving the Soviets an advantage in that battle? What assurance can we give the Europeans that between today and the day of deployment the President will be advised to be sensitive to the European perceptions?" Burt shot back, "We have a problem in Washington and it is the lack of consensus ... we do not have on these issues a bipartisan approach any more."

Beyond that, said Henderson, the U.S. must explain to the world "whether it is seeking superiority over the Soviets or whether it is prepared to have balance"--a point that goes to the heart of the split between Washington and Western Europe. For the Reagan Administration and some U.S. strategists like Sonnenfeldt, the balance already has tilted "dangerously against the West." Many Europeans, and many conference participants, remain unconvinced. Said Sonnenfeldt: "This tilt [hi the military balance] does not only concern the defense of Europe but also the defense of common European and American interests in such areas as the Persian Gulf. It is most unfortunate that this discussion gets carried out in terms of superiority and inferiority. It ought to be carried out in terms of whether we have the military capability to do what we have to do in case of need."

It is in the fundamental difference between U.S. and European perceptions of the Soviet threat that the alliance must bridge its deepest split. Several military experts at the conference noted that the Soviets are already deploying a new generation of shorter-range mobile missiles, which could be used for European warfare. Their psychological impact on Western Europe could be almost as great as that of the SS-20s today. It is not too early for NATO to prepare for the shock of that fresh crisis. The alliance can hardly do so if it cannot develop a stronger consensus today on how to go about its fundamental purpose--dealing with Soviet power in Europe.

--By Frederick Painton.

Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof and Jordan Bonfante/Hamburg

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Jordan Bonfante/Hamburg This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.