Evening star., 1963-01-30
France and the Realities

In connection with Frances torpe-
doing Of the Brussels talks on Britain
and the Common Market, a distressed
negotiator has been quoted as saying
that free Europe is now desperately
hanging from a cliff, with nothing to
hold on to but tuft of grass.
This figure of speech, of course, adds
up to an excessively gloomy commentary
on what has just happened in Brussels.
Nevertheless, although the situation can
hardly be quite so bad as some Cassan-
dras suggest, there can be no doubt that
President de Gaulle'S veto of the proposal
for full British membership in the Market
(the European Economic Community
constitutes divisive act that leaves the
Western alliance in serious disarray.
The disarray exists, first of all,
within the six-nation EEC itself. For
Frances thumbs down decision is openly
resented, in varying degrees of diSmay
and bitterness, by the five other mem
bers-Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxem-
bourg, Italy and West Germany And it is
resented also by 1.-THE Outer Seven" This
grouping-made up of Britain, Portugal,
Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden
and Denmark-has long been striving
for integration with the EEC. Now, how
ever, as result of General de Gaulle's
negativism, its competition with the
Common Market could generate trade
warfare fierce enough to lead to the
economic, political and military diSrup-
ton of free Europe.
1t is for this and kindred reasons
that the entire membership of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization has reason
to feel deeply concerned over what is
likely to flow from the Brussels break
down and over what 1.-THE Economist" of
London has described as the brilliant,
crazy system of ideas" that is General de
Gaulle's long-range objective - namely,
"a restored Europe of 1910, self-Suffi-
cient, Francocentric, its door shut tight
against the nation of shopkeepers, its
back turned upon the New World" And
to quote further:
II this is a challenge to the British and
to the Americans, it is, even more, a chal-
lenge to Frances European associates.
They have invested their political hopes heav-
lily in the European Community; now they
are being forced to gaze on a design for
Europe that is emphatically not the one they
want =. . If General de Gaulle's view is to
prevail why did Article 237 of the Treaty of
Rome provide that "any European state may
apply to become a member of the Commu-
nifty; and what is the meaning of the phrase
in the preamble, calling upon the other peo-
Piles of Europe who share their ideal to join
in their efforts? The five are told, in effect,
that France will decide what is a European
state and what is not.
What must be hoped for in the cir
cumstances is that General de Gaulle's
view will not prevail, but will instead-in
due course-be vastly modified, or aban-
doned altogether, as the French, If not
the General himself, stop yearning for
the grandeur and glory of their past and
recognize fully the ineScapable realities
of the nuclear age. Not the least of these
realities is that their nation is not strong
enough to go it alone as leader of a sort
Of exclusive little European club-not
strong enough, that is, to preserve either
itself or the club against possible Com
munist aggression. The simple fact is
that the Atlantic Community, If it is to
be reasonably secure, must be unity
whose members include such lands as
Britain and whose greatest single source
of power is the United States.
That is the central reality of our
time. And that is why our Government
still confident that NATO will endure
and that the Common Market will sur
vive and eventually embrace the British
and other ElrOpeanS-haS good cause To
do everything it can, exerting whatever
preSsures may be necessary, to persuade
President de Gaulle's France TO come
back from 1910 to this present interde-
pendent era Of space and the atom.