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longer terms solutions and developments, which might then make it
more possible to raise these difficult questions on nuclear control.
I very much don't (?) agree with Mr. Aron about the effect of Americans
suddenly appearing in Europe with marvelously sophisticated theories
and indeed with language which has a great fascination for professors,
but when translated by simple politicians like me
we were told that the threshold had been raised and now must expect
to be totally wiped out instead of mildly wiped out.

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Mr. Cleveland: A remark, really taking off from Henry's comment about the death of the European idea, or at least its moribund character--I think it is very hard, it's very hard for me and for many of us here, to think of the international system of the Atlantic world or the Atlantic world cum Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union without the notion of Europe--without the notion of a unifying Europe in some sense. Yesterday John Holmes did do some thinking about such an Atlantic world, and it seemed to rest on the premise that inspite of the fact that each nation was pursuing essentially its national objectives and its policy was not informed by any sense of direction toward unity or integration on any level, European or Atlantic, nevertheless such a world would not be too bad because some how the nation's views and behavior would be moderate. Their objectives would be carried out within a framework of recognized security, dependence, interdependence, and certainly economic interdependence. So that the system would somehow be workable, although the political consensus would be missing, there would be all sorts of ad hoc sorts of cooperation along the political level but no sort of sense of direction toward unity.

I wonder, this is really much the question that your raised too, whether we can take this view about Europe--whether it is safe for policy makers, particularly American policy makers, to take this view of the system that we're talking about...the system of international relations. The problems that are up in Europe--the problem of East-

5

[N]

West relations, or detent, the problem of German reunification, the problem, ultimate problem, of the desire of the United States to limit its burdens and commitments to some extent--at least in Europe. All these problems; it's hard to see how these national aims can be achieved in a context in which Europe has not achieved a somewhat greater degree of unity. At least how they can be achieved safely in such a way as to preserve the capacity of Western Europe to resist Soviet power and pressure, and to maintain also something which is sufficiently attractive to Eastern Europe that it would want to join. This vision of a kind of emasculated or impotent Europe, in which national goals are limited and moderate and which the American protectorate is accepted more or less docilely, doesn't seem to me to fit with the kind of feelings that I have from Europeans about what in the long run they are really interested in. And, I really am genuinely raising this as a question without an answer, although with the kind of hope that somebody would provide it--a new design or vision which one could nail to the mast.

Answer: Well yes...I would just like to point out two things which really stem from Mr. Aron's intervention before and some of the things Henry has said and some of the other interventions since. One of them is the fact of carrying on sophisticated discussion of security problems in the political area, which I think is extremely dangerous. I think the only equivalent I have ever felt to that was the patients who listened to doctors discussing what could happen to him and what the probabilities

58

are to his survival. Now the patient is not interested in having the
doctor tell him that the chances are not so bad if the liver goes then
the heart may not go, and so on and so forth, he's interested in getting
well. So the doctor's obligation, really, is (1) of telling the patient at
all times--don't worry, everything will be all right, leave everything
in my hands. The doctor taking the responsibility for the eventuality,
and I think the political leaders, speaking strictly to people who make
a living being political leaders, have that obligation of translating these
very sophisticated things. And, in this sense I think that the Kennedy
administration mobilized a tremendous amount of harm, because by
pouring all of this discussion into the public arena I think has raised
questions that obviously there are no answers to. And, all of sudden
we did find out... or the public did find out, on both sides of the Atlantic,
that these things were... that we were living in a very dangerous age.

Which
because everything
was just nice. This is the first point that I wanted to make. I am not
sure that there is any way that this can be controlled because the
ascendency of the universities and intellectuals is to continue with it,
because universities are going to expand, we are going to become more
and more busy. The papers which we used to write for each other and
have mimeographed are now being published and read by the mass
publics, and consequently I think that this is going to continue--if you
are going to project forward this is going to be a major problem.

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[4]

Now, the second thing--it is my impression from the discussion, generally, that the major patterns in Europe and in the Atlantic world really were foreseeable. The fundamental social, economic changes that have occurred in Europe have been foreseeable. There is the position of France relative to England and Germany, this is something that we have been discussing for 25 years and many economists and many sociologists have

The problem is the psychological adjustment to reality. And here, I think, to some extent political leadership is extremely threatened, because one of the major expressions of political leadership is the ability of the political leader to make you accept what, in reality, everybody is going to accept anyhow--eventually. And, in some way, Henry I don't know whether you want to comment on this, with all the arrangements we have made--all the structures that we have created, NATO included--has tried to freeze situations that were really quite unrealistic into times when it has become increasingly clear that they are unrealistic and people are less to accept it. This is all I have to say.

Comment: That is a pretty wide range.

Answer: I see the housekeeper beckoning. I can say that I can agree with everything that Mr. Grimond said and there's really no comment I want to make on that. I agree with the problem as stated

60

by Van, but I think it's a European problem, not an American problem, and the notion that the United States must come up with a recipe for every ill in the world is one of our failings. By insisting that there is only one solution, as developed by Washington, and then becoming a passionate defender of one particular form of European unity we have done as much damage as by any other single thing we've done. So, I would agree with you that this is the way I would like to see it come about. I would encourage it in so far as we can, but the essential leadership for European unity cannot come from us--it must come from the Europeans.

Now, the first point--I would say this also about the technological gap, I think that's a European problem. I don't see why the Europeans can come to us and ask us to solve the problems produced by their failure to cooperate. There are other resources--I mean there are many areas in which we can exercise more restraint. Now, (noise) back to the first intervention--I am not so sure that interdependence necessarily produces political cooperation. No foreseeable world could be more interdependent that it was before 1914. And, it didn't produce... it didn't prevent World War I. I recognize the facts of interdependence but to translate that into cooperative effort requires an act of political leaders.

On the issue of nuclear weapons for Germany, I have a brutal point of view, which I would have stated equally brutally if

61

Mr. Schmidt had been here--which is that the international system
as I foresee it, will not tolerate nuclear weapons for Germany. And,
any discussion of it has to start out from that. I know no country in
the world, certainly no country in Europe, that would go to war if the
Soviet Union created a Cuban type crisis over the issue of German
possession of nuclear weapons. I do not believe this will be a casus
belli for anybody, probably not even the United States. And, any other
sophisticated approach to this problem only confuses the German
leadership about the ranges of choice that they have in front of them.
The more clearly and brutally this can be said, the more easily we can
go on to other problems. Now, I foresee--what bothers me about the
German situation is that it is not that the scope of German action is so
wide, but that the frustrations, the insecurity of the leadership groups
of a generation which has seen so many transformations and which has
this lack of continuity, coupled with the tendency to go to extremes,
may undermine the domestic cohesiveness of Germany and create a
profound malaise with unforeseeable consequences. Not so much of a
resurgence of Nazism but a kind of nihilistic attitude which would make
it very difficult to conduct constructive policy.

Now, again I agreed with everything that Mr. Organski
said. I'd just like to elaborate the last point about the role of political
leaders to say that this is really in a way our tragedy, because no one
can question American good will or American idealism. But, we are

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the products of a stable society. We can't conceive irrevocable mis-
takes. When there's a passion for novelty, which is in itself under-
mining--whenever I'm asked to consult in Washington the most frequent
single question one is asked is, have you had any new ideas lately. Now,
when you look at the great statesmen in history, not that I am one of
them, you ask yourself how many new ideas did they have. Also the
passion for the organizational devices, constitutional formula, techno-
logical solutions, all of these may be the American tragedy of this
period. The inability to see things in the dimension of time and of
historical evolution...

Chairman: All of the potential chairmen seem to develop administra-
tive duties, which put me into this role. We have a slight change in
format. With your permission and unless there are violent objections,
I think we can dispense with the coffee break and go straight through.

Mrs. has told us that we absolutely have to evacuate
the room to have cocktails at five. So we've got to (cough)
at that time, if not before. My function, I think, is mainly to keep the
list of speakers.