He finds them talking to Americans. They say: "We want to be sure that we will be so effectively protected that we will have to suffer neither invasion nor liberation." They acknowledge dependence in what constitutes the alpha and omega of foreign policy - the area of survival - and merely ask for a greater part in the definition of the mode of protection. The Europeans also say: "Twenty years have passed since the end of the holocaust, and we want to be heard on all the issues that matter." So our publicist listens. But all he hears is a strange cacophony tantamount to silence. On Europe's future relations with what used to be called the Communist Empire in Eastern Europe - on Europe's relations with the new nations - on whether Europe's future is indissolubly linked with that of the U. S. within some Atlantic community or partnership - on how Europe should be organized to find a voice with which to answer such questions, all that he can discover is some suggestions here and there, which produce sharp disagreement in other quarters and generate heat but neither light nor enthusiasm.

To this, the first reaction of our publicist is a sharp flash of familiarity: Isn't it what it has always been? Hasn't Europe always failed to speak with one voice only? But then he sees that there is something abnormal in the situation: Shouldn't the very fact, the very new fact, of dependence for survival incitethe dependents to get together and grab their destinies back? Isn't the silence of so many Europeans startling and even more the angry statement by some that any talk of a joint European policy is nonsense since salvation lies in huddling under America's umbrella? At this point, and with the help of some background briefing, a third reaction sets in: he realizes why

Hence a triple conflict. First of all, there is a conflict over the strategy of deterrence and war itself. The Europeans do not doubt the wisdom of the idea of flexible response; they question its application to Europe. They would prefer the U. S. if not to treat attack on Europe exactly as an attack on the U. S. (for there are circumstances in which even they would prefer a conventional limited response), at least to try to deter any attack on Europe by making it clear that it would treat it as if it were one on the U. S. itself. The U. S. doubts that such a deterrence strategy would be credible, i.e., would deter. The Europeans doubt that the present U. S. strategy would deter, precisely because it may be only too credible. What is at stake is not the existence of America's commitment to Europe but its nature or its scope. The Europeans would like it to be total; the U. S. prefers to leave something to chance.

Secondly, there is the problem of control. Even if the Europeans were convinced of the virtues of a flexible response, they would want to be in control of the means of making it. To leave all of one's fate into someone else's hand, when the consequences of someone else's miscalculation or failure are fatal and final is not a welcome proposition. Hence, what is at stake is not whether Europe should or not raise conventional forces for a flexible response, but whether Europe should or not have a share in the control of nuclear weapons, i.e., the weapons capable of deterring the enemy from provocation and of deterring him from pushing harder if he has already initiated a limited war.
What many Europeans desire is either a finger on the U. S. trigger or a trigger of their own. The U. S. thinks in cataclysmic terms. The perspective of the (unlikely) extreme ought to govern all policy.
Hence the U. S. argues that American nuclear weapons suffice and that

Should the Apocalypse occur, the nuclear weapons its allies could control would be irrelevant. Europeans think in different terms and gamble, so to speak, on the unlikeliness of folly. First, they believe that a modicum of control of their own would make Armageddon even less likely by complicating the would-be aggressor's calculations; secondly, they think of all those crises short of Armageddon in which he might be tempted to push, pry and provoke unless he feared to drive, thereby a European state into using (or threatening to use) its own nuclear weapons and triggering the use (or the threat of the use) of America's own. Thus each side stresses what is in its own interest as well as in its own characters. The U. S. the situation of all-out war and Europeans, the familiar situation of less than all-out crises.

Lastly, there is a conflict of interests in the realm of areas control. Europeans are afraid of a bilateral American Soviet agreement that would either freeze the present relationship of nuclear disparity within the alliance, or even worsen it by, say, some degree of U. S. nuclear disengagement. Such an agreement would perpetuate both the dominance of the U. S. in the Atlantic camp (by preventing Europeans from developing their own forces) and the fears they presently display (or conceal) about U. S. and U. S. control.

In the area of diplomatic strategy as well, common interests are somehow pushed back by divergent calculations and concerns. Obviously, all Europeans have an interest in preventing the kind of defense that leaves the settlement of Europe's affairs in the hands of the Soviets and the Americans and while removing some woes and some walls, nevertheless preserves U. S. predominance in western Europe and Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. Europe's interest in the emancipation of

Warsaw, Prague or Budapest from Soviet rule is greater than America's.

The U. S. might well be satisfied either with a "Soviet bloc" shorn
of its proselytism, or with a mere lessening of Soviet control; but a
loosening so great that the former satellites could once again behave
as European, first, i.e., a political, renaissance of the European con-
tinent as a whole is not a necessary U. S. objective. Nor do U. S. and
Europeans have an interest in preserving Europe's economic, cultural and
political influences in the newly independent areas, and in offering
them aid and understanding whenever, for any reason, those nations re-
fuse to or cannot turn to the U. S. Such a division of labor between
the Europeans and the Americans constitutes no more treason of the latter
by the former than U. S. anticolonialism was a betrayal of Europe by
America: for the only alternative to such dissociation within the
West was then and would remain tomorrow an appeal by the new nations to
the "revolutionary models" - Moscow or Peking. Yet precisely because
such dissociation is both objectively useful and subjectively presented
by those who feel repudiated or abandoned, it points to the impossibility
of identical policies on the two sides of the Atlantic.

Thus an "Atlantic Europe" would suppose not only that the
Europeans have been capable of overcoming their divisions but also that
they have defined Europe's role as being America's *brilliant second* at
the expense of Europe's own interests - that they have sacrificed Europe's
identity to America's mission. This, to put it mildly, is unlikely. In
a world that was essentially bipolar - a world in which Europe was
coming up from the sea bed to which it had fallen, but still under the
surface of the ocean of international affairs, a world in which the

all participants a share in the control if not in the possession of
the European deterrent, or to a genuine merger of national forces
under a single authority endowed with the formidable power to threaten
the use and to use nuclear weapons: a power which presupposes among
the members a sense of identity and a certainty about aims and strategy
that exist no more today among the Europeans than they exist between
them and the U. S.

Finally, the task of those who would like to use U. S.-
European military divergences as a reason for reducing intra-European ones
is complicated by the perspective of the defense. For just as peril
parity leads the U. S. to revise its strategy in Europe, thus shocking
the Europeans, this same parity combines with internal Communist dissen-
sions to lessen the risk and the fear of war. Thus, on the military
side, European champions of unity are squeezed between two facts: when
the peril is highest, only the U. S. remains capable of protecting Europe,
as long as Europe is militarily weak and divided. A separate European
establishment (by contrast with a specialization of Europe's military
contribution as often suggested by the U. S.) makes no sense then. When
the peril declines, the sense of urgency declines; and the prevalence of
national calculations resumes.

The same reasoning applies in the decisive realm of foreign
policy. On the one hand, the divergences between Europe's and America's
interests mentioned above obviously suggest the need for European
political unity. Only a European organization could be strong enough
to affect American policies or maximize the chances of different policies
based on Europe's separate interests, or serve as a magnet toward the
Soviet satellites so as to awaken a European patriotism among men.
For if they should be faced with an Atlantic bloc or a divided Western

Europe in which Germany would be on her own again, they would have
little choice but to remain under Moscow's wing, even in case of a
loosening of Russia's hold. Only such an organization could fully
convince England that her role lies in Europe, rather than in trying
to cling either to lusty vestiges of power and to the hope of getting
the best of both the world inside Europe and the world outside. And
yet, on the other hand, the success of the quest for the common new
mission is far from certain. The prospect of a defense, the rise of
the third world have provoked at least three reactions in Europe -
three conflicting sets of goals and directions. Some still believe that
the changes are not such as to justify European separation; the best
Europe can hope to do is influence American policies from within the
Alliance; this is the "Atlantic Europe". Others argue for a "European
Europe" that would try to keep the defense from harming European inter-
ests, and then should act as if the Soviet threat had remained con-
stant, but so as to emancipate Europe from America's predominance in
facing the threat. Others see in the loosening of alliance ties, in
the lessening of tensions in Europe, in the decreasing importance of the
U. S. - U.S.S.R. conflict throughout the Third World, a fishing license
for the separate European nations, released from the compound of bi-
polarity. Germany here is a crucial case. As long as the world scene
was dominated by the cold war, West Germany - partitioned and placed
next to the Soviet forces - was the European state on which bipolarity
weighed most, i.e., the most dependent on the U. S. and the one on which
U. S. power could most easily be brought to bear. If the very deadlock
of the superpowers brings about a defense and "polycentrism", Germany may
switch from the direction of an "Atlantic Europe" to that of independent.

should not behave as a superpower; this can mean only either that it
ought to behave like someone else's dependent, or that it ought to
give the world the example of abnegation or of observance of the
Golden Rule (or the Rule of Law). Europe, alas, can hardly define its
identity either in subservience or in what amounts to self-sacrifice.
The alternatives to a sort of collective European nationalism are a
set of separate ones or a kind of despondency not a world government
or a world ruled by love and charity. Secondly, the European entity,
if it becomes a going concern, is likely to pursue policies closer,
say, to de Gaulle's than to those of the U. S. The precedent of the
realms of welfare indicates this, as well as the objective divergence
of interests discussed before. Moreover, any other idea of common
policies entails of necessity a deliberate distinction between the new
entity and the powerful senior ally.

Should the common determination fail to appear, there would
be no dearth of "miserable consolers". The prosperity of Europe's ports
and the opportunities for influence and maneuver would provide good
alibis. However, the business and busyness of separate European nations
is no substitute for a joint European project. Acting separately, the
European states could certainly complicate the task of the superpowers -
for although there are new rules in the game of world politics some of
the harsh old ones are still in force or in reserve. Even in a world
of nuclear deadlock the threat of force remains an essential instrument
of diplomacy and power defined as mobilizable potential remains the
ultima ratio. Separate European nations could not hope to acquire
enough of such strength. Should the defense prosper, they could make
it more difficult, but they could not hope to participate as major