582

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

So the postwar world came into being. A precarious peace was maintained, based on a nuclear equilibrium, with occasional negotiations to ease tensions temporarily, but ultimately dependent on a balance of terror. The problem of maintaining security took on an unprecedented new dimension. Technology was soon to make the United States directly vulnerable to attack; the Atlantic Alliance increasingly based its defence strategy on reliance on weapons of mass destruction that posed risks more and more difficult to reconcile with the objectives being defended.

In the nuclear age, peace became a moral imperative; and it imposed a new dilemma. The desire for peace is the mark of all civilised men and women. Yet the democracies' desire for peace, if divorced from a commitment to defend freedom, could turn into a weapon of blackmail in the hands of the most ruthless; if the desire to avoid nuclear war turns into undifferentiated hysteria, nuclear blackmail may well be encouraged. The problem of the relationship of power to peace, the balance between ends and means, has been evaded for a generation by an abdication to technology. But history tolerates no evasions. To develop a strategy that relates ends to means, to build military forces that avoid the choice between Armageddon and surrender, is a pre-eminent moral as well as political problem for our period. Of at least equal importance is to develop an Allied consensus behind proposals of arms control based on analysis, not panic, and freed of either the quest for confrontation or the tendency towards abdication.

## Third World perspectives: what is the limit of inter-allied conflict?

In a period of nuclear stalemate, ironically, conflict became more likely at the level of local, non-nuclear crisis. In an age of decolonisation, many of these clashes were bound to occur in the Third World. This was another area in which, in the immediate postwar period, American and European attitudes diverged sharply.

Americans from Franklin Roosevelt onwards believed that the United States, with its 'revolutionary' heritage, was the natural ally of peoples struggling against colonialism; we could win the allegiance of these new nations by opposing and occasionally undermining our European allies in the areas of their colonial dominance. Churchill, of course, resisted these American pressures, as did the French and some other European powers for a longer period than did Britain.

As Europe decolonised, partly under American pressure, there began a reversal of roles, the march by each side towards the philosophical positions vacated by the other—to an America focused on international security and a Europe affirming general moral precepts of conduct. On Third World issues especially, many in Europe have ended up adopting the attitude embodied in Roosevelt's anticolonialism and Eisenhower's conduct over Suez. Now Europe would seek to identify with Third World aspirations, economic and political,

REFLECTIONS ON A PARTNERSHIP

583

intensifying its efforts at conciliation the more insistent, peremptory, and
radical that Third World demands become. At the same time, the United
States, at least in some administrations, has come to a perception closer to
Eden's: that appeasement of radical challenges only multiplies radical
challenges.

Different perceptions of national interest were involved as well. Thus in the
India-Pakistan war of 1971 Britain did not share our sense of concern for the
country which had opened the first tenuous links to China; the historic
nostalgia for India was too strong. So too in the early stages of the Falkland
crisis America hesitated between its Atlantic and its Western Hemisphere
vocations. But neither of these disagreements did any lasting damage. In the
end we came together; the old friendship prevailed over other considerations.

The lesson I draw is that in the Third World we may occasionally operate
from different perspectives. But we must take care not to let these differences
reach a point where they undermine the basic self-confidence and sense of
mission of the other party, lest we threaten prospects for progress and stability
transcending the immediate issue.

In this context the experience of Suez is instructive. Our prolonged and
never-reconciled clash had lasting consequences not only for the Middle East
and the Third World but also for the long-term evolution of Western policies.

The details of that disaster are not relevant to my immediate purpose. The
British-French expedition against the Suez Canal was clearly misconceived.
The fact remains that Eden had got hold of what was intellectually the right
problem, while the American reaction, among other things, begged some
crucial questions: to what extent our 'revolutionary' historical analogy was
relevant; to what extent it was wise to humiliate one's closest ally; and what
would be the long-term consequence of such a course.

Britain and France, in my view, were acting on a strategic analysis which
may have been traditional and even self-serving but was far from frivolous.
Nasser was the first Third World leader to accept Soviet arms and to play the
radical, pro-Soviet game in an attempt to blackmail the West. Eden's
perception was that a dangerous precedent was being set: can there be any
dispute of this today? Had Nasser's course been shown a failure, a quite
different pattern of international relations would have developed, at least for a
decade or more. As it turned out, Nasser's policy was vindicated; revolutions
spread in the Middle East in the following years, and he has countless imitators
today around the world relying on Soviet arms to increase their influence and
to destabilise their neighbours.

Even more important, our humiliation of Britain and France over Suez was
a shattering blow to these countries' role as world powers. It accelerated their
shedding of international responsibilities, some of the consequences of which
we saw in succeeding decades when reality forced us to step into their
shoes—in the Persian Gulf, to take one notable example.

Suez thus added enormously to America's burdens—and simultaneously

584

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

fuelled a European resentment at America's global role which continues to this day.

It is clear that a world of progress and peace requires that more than 100 new and developing nations be made part of the international system; no international order can survive unless they feel a stake in it. It is incontestable that many conflicts in the developing world arise from legitimate social, economic, or political grievances; this, however, does not exclude the possibility that these can be exploited by extremists and turned against the long-term security interests of the West. The democracies, whatever their shifting positions, have failed to relate their philosophical and moral convictions to a coherent analysis of the nature of revolution and an understanding of how best to foster moderation. Above all, disputes among the democracies over this problem should not be permitted to turn into a kind of guerrilla warfare between allies. Whatever the merit of the individual issue, the price will be a weakening of the West's overall psychological readiness to maintain the global balance.

The strategic position or self-confidence of a close ally on a matter it considers of vital concern must not be undermined. It is a principle of no little contemporary relevance. In this sense the Falkland crisis in the end will strengthen Western cohesion.

Suez, by weakening Europe's sense of its own importance as a world power, accelerated the trend of Europe's seeking refuge in the role of 'mediator' between the United States and the Soviet Union. The role that some American leaders naively saw the United States as playing between Churchill and Stalin, in the end too many Europeans seek to adopt between Washington and Moscow.

It is not a new phenomenon. It began, at least where Britain was involved, as wise advice to us that negotiation could be an element of strategy. This is a lesson of which Americans often need to be reminded. It has its antecedents in Atlee's flight to Washington for reassurance when Truman seemed to hint at using nuclear weapons in Korea; in Eden's efforts at various Geneva conferences to sponsor a dialogue in the era of Dulles's moralism; in Macmillan's appearance in an astrikhan hat in Moscow in 1959; in the strenuous Western European importunings of the Nixon administration in 1969 to join Europe in the pursuit of detente. But carried too far, it runs the risk of abdicating any share of responsibility for a cohesive Western strategy toward the Soviet Union, or toward anti-Western radicalism in the Third World.

And thus we see the ironic shift of positions reflected in some of our contemporary debates. The deprecation of the importance of power, the abstract faith in goodwill, the belief in the pacific efficacy of economic relations, the evasion of the necessities of defence and security, the attempt to escape from the sordid details of maintaining the global balance of power, the presumption of superior morality—these features, once characteristic of America, now seem

REFLECTIONS ON A PARTNERSHIP

585

to be more common in Europe. Where the United States has never quite
abandoned its earlier moralism or fully developed a concept of equilibrium as
Europe had once maintained, many in Europe paradoxically seem to have
adopted some of the illusions that Americans clung to in years of isolation from
responsibility.

The unity of the industrial democracies remains crucial to the survival of democratic values and of the global equilibrium. We must at last answer the perennial questions of all alliances: How much unity do we need? How much diversity can we stand? An insistence on unanimity can be a prescription for paralysis. But if every ally acts as it pleases, what is the meaning of alliance? There is no more important task before the Alliance than to deal with these problems concretely, seriously, and above all immediately.

The contemporary debate

I do not claim that the United States is always correct in its perceptions. But Europeans ought to take care not to generate such frustrations in America that either an embittered nationalism, or unilateralism, or a retreat from world affairs could result.

I fully acknowledge that the United States by its actions has sometimes stimulated or intensified the feelings in Europe that Europe had to strive to maintain its own interests, its own policies, its own identity. Indeed, as I said, naive American expectations that a rejuvenated Europe would follow its lead are partly responsible for the sometimes petulant reaction to Europe's assertions of its own role. In recent times the United States may have appeared unintentionally callous towards the danger of nuclear wars or insufficiently alert toward the opportunities for peace. But the United States has nevertheless been more nearly correct than its critics in warning that those who seek peace not backed by strength will sooner or later find the terms of peace dictated to them; that peace to be meaningful must be just; that nations live in history, not utopia, and thus must approach their goals in stages. To ask for perfection as a precondition of action is self-indulgence, and in the end an abdication.

Observers, including myself, have been sounding the alarm for decades
about this or that 'crisis' in the Western Alliance. But today's, I am afraid, is
more genuinely, objectively, serious than ever. It comes after decades of a
relentless Soviet military buildup, when the West, for a decade, is edging in
some areas toward a dangerous dependency on economic ties with the East;
while in Poland the Soviet Union enforces the unity of its empire, its clients
press on to undermine the security interests of the West from South-east Asia
to the Middle East to Africa to Central America. Not all our difficulties are
caused by the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union has shown little restraint in
exploiting them, and their solution—whatever their cause—has been impeded
by the lack of a unified Western response.

586

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

One of Britain's contributions to the Western Alliance has been to supply a needed global perspective: the knowledge, from centuries of experience in Europe, that peace requires some clear-eyed notion of equilibrium and a willingness to maintain it; the insight, from centuries of world leadership, that Europe's security cannot be isolated from the broader context of the global balance; the awareness, from heroic exertions in this century, that those who cherish the values of Western civilisation must be willing to defend them. In the Falkland crisis, Britain has reminded us all that certain basic principles such as honour, justice and patriotism remain valid and must be sustained by more than words.

The issue before the allies now is not to assess blame but to face our future. An alliance at odds over central issues of East-West diplomacy, economic policy, the Middle East, Central America, Africa, and relations with the Third World is in serious, and obvious, difficulty. Indeed it cannot be called an alliance if it agrees on *no* significant issue. Sooner or later such divisions *must* affect the field of security. For too long, all of us in the community of free nations have put off the uncomfortable questions; our evasions are now coming home to roost.

Thirty-five years ago, after the war, the democracies for a time overestimated the immediate dangers and underestimated their own capabilities; yet in the end they came up with a creative and effective response. Today, too, we may be underrating our own capacities and confusing long- and short-term dangers.

The strange aspect is that the disarray is taking place at the precise moment that the bankruptcy of the system that denies the human spirit seems to become clear beyond doubt. The communist world has fundamental systemic problems and has not shown any ability to solve them except by recurrent brute force, which only delays the day of reckoning. In its sixty-five-year history, the Soviet state has never managed a legitimate, regular succession of its political leadership; the country faces the demographic time-bomb of its growing non-Russian population, soon to be a majority. The system has failed to deal seriously with the desire for political participation of its intellectual and managerial elite. Or else it has sought to pre-empt their political aspirations by turning the ruling group into a careerist 'new class' bound to produce stagnation if not corruption. Its ideology is a discredited failure, without legitimacy, leaving the Communist Party a smug, privileged elite with no function in the society except its own self-perpetuation, struggling to deal with bottlenecks and crises which its own rigidity has caused. It is an historic joke that the ultimate crisis in every communist state, latent if not evident, is over the role of the Communist Party.

Soviet economic performance is a disaster. It seems impossible to run a modern economy by a system of total planning, yet it seems impossible to maintain a communist state *without* a system of total planning. How ironic that the West is tearing itself apart over how best to coordinate Western

REFLECTIONS ON A PARTNERSHIP

587

financial, technological, and agricultural *aid* to a so-called 'superpower' incapable of sustaining a modern economy.

In short, if Moscow is prevented by a co-ordinated Western policy from deflecting its internal tensions into international crises, it is likely to find only disillusionment in the boast that history is on its side. It is the communist world, not the West, that faces a profound systemic crisis. Ours are problems of coordination and policy, theirs are those of structure. And therefore it is not beyond the realm of hope that a coherent, unified Western policy could at long last bring into view the prospect of a negotiated global settlement that Churchill foresaw at Llandudno.

The solutions to the West's problems are, to a significant degree, in our own hands. One problem is that the democracies have no forum for addressing the future in a concrete way, let alone harmonising disagreements or implementing common policies. As my friend Christopher Soames has recently emphasised, the Atlantic Alliance has no institutional machinery for addressing economic or Third World issues, or any long-term political strategy; the European Community, while eminently successful in its political co-ordination, has no mechanism as yet for formulating a coherent European view on matters of defence. The economic summits of Western and Japanese leaders, begun in the mid-1970s, are an attempt to surmount this procedural impasse, but they can do little more than call key leaders' attention to key problems in an informal, unsystematic way. Procedures do not solve substantive problems. Nevertheless, creating an appropriate forum for broader and deeper consultation would be an important first step.

America has learned much in the postwar period, perhaps most of all from Britain. In the last decade we have also learned something of our limits, and in the new administration we have shaken off the trauma of perhaps excessive preoccupation with our limits. An America that has recovered its vitality and its faith in the future is as much in the interests of the West as a Europe shaping its identity.

Both Britain and America have learned that whatever their histories, their futures are part of the common destiny of freedom. Experience has taught that moral idealism and geopolitical insight are not alternatives but complementary; our civilisation may not survive unless we possess *both* in full measure. Britain and America, which have contributed so much to the free world's unity and strength, have another opportunity now, together with our allies, to show that the democratic nations are the masters of their destiny.