Special Section

LC

agreements about the nature of the interests involved in regions outside of Europe and the domestic priorities of most European countries, such a conclusion, however rational, is extremely improbable. 2) The group could agree that the strategic interests of the West require a full conventional defense, but that for practical and psychological reasons, Europe can undertake the required effort only if the present American ground deployment in Europe is maintained intact. 3) The group could decide that the realities of European domestic politics preclude more than the current gradualistic, marginal improvement of defense efforts.

I hope very much that Europe would choose the second option. If Europe should agree to build a full conventional defense and were prepared to express that commitment in unambiguous yearly obligations to increase its forces, the U.S. should accept the judgment that its present ground forces in Europe are an indispensable component. Such a decision might in fact invigorate the conventional arms-reduction talks and in time lead to stability at a lower level. But if Europe should opt for a perpetuation of the present ambivalence or for only a token improvement, then the U.S. will owe it to the overall requirements of global defense to draw certain conclusions. If Europe by its own decision condemns itself to permanent conventional inferiority, we will have no choice but to opt for a deployment of U.S. forces in Europe that makes strate-

gic and political sense. If nuclear weapons remain the ultimate deterrent to even conventional attack, a gradual withdrawal of a substantial portion, perhaps up to half, of our present ground forces would be a logical result. To provide time for necessary adjustments, that withdrawal could be extended over five years. To ease the transition further, we could, if Europe agreed, keep the excess ground forces in Europe for a time afterward in a new status analogous to that of the French forces, prepared for use in Europe but also available for use in emergencies outside it. Any withdrawal would make sense only if the redeployed forces were added to our strategic reserve; if they were disbanded, the effect would be to weaken the overall defense.

The proposed redeployment would leave intact air and naval forces, as well as intermediate-range missiles, so long as Europe wants them. A useful byproduct of the process would be a systematic re-evaluation of the existing inventory of very short-range tactical nuclear weapons, a legacy of three decades of ad hoc decisions; these weapons now represent at one and the same time an increment to deterrence and the greatest danger of unintended nuclear war because, being deployed so far forward, they are unusually subject to the exigencies of battle.

In this scheme, withdrawal would be not an end in itself—as it will if frustrations on both sides of the Atlantic go much further—but one component of an adaptation to new circumstances extending over some eight years that rededicates the U.S. to the alliance for the indefinite future.

Psychology is immensely important in international relations, especially when policies turn not only on cold, professional assessments of the national interest by trained political leaders, but on public opinion. I would like to believe that restructuring the alliance to give Europeans greater responsibility for their own defense, while important American forces remain in Europe, will be seen not as an abandonment but as an embrace of Europe. It is a means of enlisting Europeans as full partners in the process of decision on which their safety as well as ours depends. For a son of Europe reared on the existing NATO orthodoxy, the very idea of even a partial redeployment is painful—all the more so after Lebanon. But we will not be fulfilling our obligations to the West if we fail to put forward an initiative to forestall the crisis that will otherwise confront us in much worse circumstances.

POLITICAL OBJECTIVES

By themselves, neither organizational nor doctrinal adaptations can remedy the political incoherence rending NATO. This article has emphasized security issues. However, a few general observations on the alliance's political problems are necessary.

1) Those leaders on either side of the Atlantic who value the alliance, with all its failings, as the ultimate guardian of Western freedom must seek urgently to end political disputes over East-West relations and North-South policy, especially Western conduct in the flash points of conflict in the Third World. The tendency to grandstand before domestic audiences, the growing self-righteousness, will in time make a mockery of the key assumption of the Atlantic Alliance: that we share a common approach to security. Defense requires after all some agreed political purpose in the name of which it is conducted. The Atlantic Alliance must urgently develop a grand strategy for East-West problems and Third World relations applicable for the rest of this century. Otherwise, it will tempt constant pressures and crises.

2) The U.S. cannot lead the alliance or even contribute to its cohesion if we do not restore bipartisanship to our foreign policy. Ever since the Viet Nam War, we have disquieted our friends and confused, where we have not emboldened, our adversaries by periodic wide swings on essential elements of our policies. But the national interest does not change every four or eight years. At

some point the national interest must be accepted by our public as clearly recognizable and constant. Otherwise, we shall become a source of dangerous instability, still relevant for our power but irrelevant for our ideas. A presidential election year is probably not an ideal time to forge a bipartisan consensus. But whoever wins the presidential election faces no more important and urgent challenge than to restore the element of bipartisanship to our foreign policy.

3) European governments must meet head-on the disturbing trends toward pacifism and neutralism in their countries. These movements are led by people of conviction; they cannot be defused by accommodation. They can only be resisted with a compelling vision of a new future. If European governments continue to humor those who profess to see the danger to the peace in a bellicose America, not an intransigent Soviet Union, they will find themselves making concession after concession and will be-

come hostages of their critics.

The current condition of the alliance cries out for a rethinking of its structure, its doctrine and its unifying purposes. The creativity and courage with which we approach this challenge will determine whether the alliance enters a new and dynamic period or gradually withers.

I have outlined proposals to reinvigorate allied cohesion by defining clear responsibilities for each side of the Atlantic, to be implemented over a period of years. On that basis European leaders could defend cooperation with the U.S. as something they sought as a matter of their own conviction and in their own national interest. American leaders would have a rational, understandable policy to defend and would benefit from dealing with a more equal partner. A new era of allied creativity and American dedication could give inspiration to the generation that has come to maturity since World War II and since the postwar crises that infused NATO's founders with their sense of common purpose.

We must not let our future pass by default to the neutralists, pacifists and neoisolationists who systematically seek to undermine all joint efforts. The nations bordering the North Atlantic need above all faith in themselves and the will to resist the siren calls of those who use fear and panic as instruments of policy or domestic debate. In the end we must fulfill our trust: to preserve and strengthen a North Atlantic alliance that represents the hope of human dignity and decency in our world. ■

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TIME, MARCH 5, 1984

2/6/84

Wither the Atlantic Alliance? - A Program of Reform

Just as storms recur in nature, crises recur in the Atlantic Alliance. Nearly every Administration for a generation has been involved in them.

However, the present turmoil in NATO has one crucial aspect which is both unprecedented and unsettling: At a time when the governments themselves are philosophically more compatible than they have been for a long while tensions are building beneath the surface. The visible disputes about policies are surrogates for a widening incompatibility of prevailing <u>attitudes</u> on the two sides of the Atlantic. This bodes ill for the future unless those attitudes can be changed.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, Scandinavia, the Low Countries and recently even in Great Britain, though to a lesser extent, well-organized and financed "peace" movements have been pulling governments in the general direction of their policies despite the fact

2

that those governments disagree with their premises.

Because of the "peace" movements' sway over key segments of public opinion, too many European leaders--even conservative ones--have yielded to the temptation to demonstrate their peaceful intentions the easy way, by pretending to be reining in a bellicose and insensitive United States through their balancing ministrations. As a result among those who shape public attitudes--and thereby set what become the limits of the politically possible-- there is less intellectual or philosophical agreement than in any previous period.

This creates an exceedingly dangerous situation.

An alliance cannot live by arms alone. To endure it requires some basic agreement on the political aims which justify and give direction to the common defense. If military arrangements provide its only bond, it will sooner or later disintegrate--especially if there is

3

also disagreement about the nature of the threat. That
is the central issue before the Atlantic Alliance today.
It requires a fundamental, even radical--in the literal
sense, of going to the root--remedy.

* * * *

Among the problems now gnawing at the Alliance,
four in particular stand out:

1. Lack of an agreed, credible strategy. The gap between NATO's formal strategy and what the public will support has widened dangerously. The so-called "flexible response" devised in the 1960s, remains NATO's official doctrine. It contemplates a defense of Europe that begins with conventional weapons and then goes up the ladder of nuclear escalation--reaching whatever level is necessary to halt Soviet aggression. The fatal weakness of this doctrine, in today's circumstances, derives from the fact that neither the existing nor the projected NATO

4

conventional forces are adequate to repel a major Soviet conventional attack. Therefore, the doctrine would require a nuclear response at an early stage. Yet the present conditions of strategic nuclear parity deprive the threat of strategic nuclear war of much of its credibility; mutual suicide cannot be made to appear as a rational option. And no alternative nuclear strategy has been developed. Partly for this reason public opinion, essentially unopposed by the NATO governments, is moving powerfully against *any* reliance on nuclear weapons--even tactical nuclear weapons.

The Alliance is thereby trapped in a precarious combination of (a) inadequate conventional forces, leading to (b) reliance on nuclear weapons, in (c) a strategic environment that makes the threat of their use, and therefore their deterrent value, less and less credible, and (d) a public climate of growing nuclear pacifism that undermines

5

what credibility otherwise remains. The lack of a cohernet
defense policy leaves the Alliance, possessing a huge
stockpile of enormously destructive weapons, disarming
itself psychologically.

2. Intermediate range weapons and arms control.

The arrival of the first American intermediate range
weapons in Europe a few weeks ago was properly hailed
as a considerable success. For if the combination of public
demonstrations and Soviet pressure had succeeded in blocking
that deployment the Soviet Union would in effect have
achieved a veto over NATO's military dispositions. But
unless the Alliance clarifies the purpose these missiles
are supposed to serve, the accomplishment is likely to
be transitory.

For the basic European attitude toward the missiles
remains that of a host toward a now unwanted guest
whose previous invitation to dinner it would be too

awkward to withdraw. Some prominent Europeans purport
to see in the missiles' presence a hidden American design
to confine a nuclear war to Europe. Others treat them
as one of those peculiar American aberrations that periodically
upset the Alliance's equilibrium. Too few recognize,
and even fewer are willing to admit, that in fact the
missiles link the strategic nuclear defense of Europe
and the United States; they are a means of emphasizing
America's commitment to the defense of Europe, not a
way to escape it.

European ambivalence makes it excruciatingly difficult
to define "progress" toward an acceptable arms control
agreement on the subject, while the nearly desperate
eagerness with which "progress" is pursued makes its
achievement less likely. The Soviets have refused even
to discuss any proposal that would balance American intermediate
range missiles in Europe against the Soviet arsenal at

7

a lower level. They insist on a total withdrawal of
American missiles while retaining a substantial number
of their own. The Soviet goal of leaving Europe vulnerable
to Soviet blackmail is obvious. Yet significant segments
of European opinion persist in blaming the United States
for the deadlock. Both in Europe and in the United States,
this attitude must in time erode the public support needed
both for the missile deployment, and for coherent arms
control.

3. East-West relations. Behind the sharp differences
over defense strategy and arms control lies a parallel
dispute over the posture the alliance should take toward
the Soviet Union--a dispute which reflects sharp differences
in assessments of the United States, as well as in attitudes
toward the Soviet Union. Too many Europeans accept the
caricature of their political cartoons to the effect
that the United States is run by belligerent cowboys

8

and that U.S. belligerence has provoked Soviet intransigence. Even the more conciliatory tone adopted recently by the United States has not changed this attitude. Many Americans, on the other hand, consider such European preconceptions naive and believe that together with the waves of pacifist and neutralist demonstrations, they reflect a trend toward appeasement which encourages Soviet intransigence.

4. **Relations with the Third World.** Most European leaders believe that they have a special opportunity to establish preferential relationships with countries in the Third World. In the flashpoints of the Middle East, Africa and Central America, they consider U.S. approaches as hopelessly tainted by an obsession with Soviet ambitions; and some, whatever their own views, perceive an opening they can exploit in the Third World by an ostentatious dissociation from the United States. More than a few Americans view such European behavior

9

either as a free ride paid for by U.S. sacrifices or
as a positive incitement to Third World radicalism.

* * * *

These differences could be healthy if out of them
emerged compatible and constructive policies for the
1980s and '90s. So far this has not happened. Mutual
recriminations have mounted, creating opportunities for
Soviet political warfare even during this period of stagnation
in the Kremlin leadership. The Politburo is obviously
convinced that the West has become so paralyzed with
respect to nuclear weapons that there is no urgency about
nuclear arms control; it can simply wait for a while
to harvest the fruits of Western anxieties. By contrast,
there may be some concern in Moscow that NATO will move
to close the gap in conventional forces; hence the willingness
to resume the talks about limiting conventional arms
which have been moribund for ten years. Does it reflect

10

a genuine interest in arms control or is it a means to
place obstacles in the way of the desperately needed
Western conventional build-up by creating the same conditions
by which public opinion was mobilized on the missile
question? One may be permitted to question Soviet devotion
to controlling conventional weapons at a moment when
Soviet arms are streaming into Third World trouble spots
everywhere from the Middle East to the Caribbean. In
short, Europe is not moderating the United States, and
the United States is not stiffening Europe's spine, as
the folklore on each side of the Atlantic would have
it. More likely, each side of the Atlantic is in danger
of paralyzing and demoralizing the other.

This state of affairs has proceeded too far to be
blamed on particular policies or specific actions on
either side. The trouble lies deeper. With respect
to some issues, the fact seems to be--to put it delicately--

11

that interests are no longer inevitably perceived as common. And even where the common interest is still taken for granted, as it is in the defense field, the existing structure is simply not working, either in defining the threat or arriving at methods to meet it.

Existing arrangements are unbalanced. When one country dominates the alliance on all major issues--when that one country chooses weapons and decides deployments, when it conducts the arms control negotiations, sets the tone for East-West diplomacy and creates the framework for relations with the Third World--little incentive remains for a serious joint effort to redefine the requirements of security or to coordinate foreign policies. Such joint efforts entail sacrifices and carry political costs. Leaders are not likely to make the sacrifice or pay the cost unless they fell responsible for the results.

An imbalance such as the one now existing cannot

12

be made up for by "consultation," however meticulous.

In the long run, consultation works only when those being consulted have an alternative and a capacity for independent action. Then each side takes the other seriously; then each side knows that the other's consent has to be won. Then each has an incentive to be responsible. Otherwise consultation becomes "briefing". Agreement reflects not conviction but acquiescence for want of an alternative.

It cannot be an accident that the European country least beset by pacifism and neutralism is France which has also been most insistant on making its own judgments on matters of defense. The present imbalance is not new. It has existed ever since World War II. But dependence on another nation has a cumulative impact. When the feeling of impotence no longer results from the unavoidable necessity of wartime destruction but from a policy choice, made under conditions of relative prosperity, it can

13

become destructive. Against that economic background,
Europe's continued military <u>dependence</u> on the United
States breeds a combination of guilt, self-hatred, and
a compulsion to display <u>independence</u> of the United
States wherever doing so is possible and safe, especially
with regard to some Third World issues and certain aspects
of East-West relations.

The problem has become even more acute because the
generation of leaders that built NATO has virtually disappeared.
Those who governed Europe during those early postwar
years were still psychologically of the era when Europe
bestrode the world. Global thinking came naturally.
European leaders assumed responsibility for their own
nations' security policies as a matter of tradition,
and gave it up only reluctantly because of special postwar
circumstances. But nearly forty years have passed now
since the end of World War II. The new generation of

14

leaders was reared in an era when the United States was preeminent. Sheltered by the same alliance which is under assault by their publics, they take it for granted that they can delegate the military defense of Europe to us. For the rest, too many of them seek to position themselves somewhere between the superpowers--the first step toward psychological neutralism. Thus the European schizophrenia: a fear that the United States might not be prepared to risk its own population on a nuclear defense of Europe, coupled simultaneously with the anxiety that America might drag Europe into an unwanted conflict by its clumsy handling of Third World issues or East-West relations.

The rush to condemn our actions in Grenada by so many of our European allies is a case in point. What could have been in the minds of their leaders? Even making allowance--especially in the case of Britain--

15

for totally inadequate consultation, and whatever their
view of the wisdom or necessity of our actions, they
could hardly have wanted us to fail. That would surely
have affected our willingness to run risks in defense
of other areas--ultimately including even Europe. Rather,
they must have assumed that their actions were irrelevant
and costless: that we would not be deterred, that we
would exact no penalty, and that therefore it was safe
to use the incident to score a few points with "progressive"
constituencies at home and with Third World radicals
abroad. Needless to say this attitude was deeply resented
in the United States.

The change in the nature of European leadership
has been paralleled in the United States. Our new elites
do not reject NATO any more than do their European counterparts.
But for them, too, the alliance is more a practical than
an emotional necessity, more a military arrangement than

29

march in Europe even under the present set-up. As for the
United States, without an agreed NATO strategic doctrine
and arms control position, the increasingly frequent
controversies over East-West and North-South relations will
make it hard to persuade the American public that the existing
deployment is justified. Sooner or later the issue will
be unavoidable and if the decision is framed in a political
context as a single question of whether to continue stationing
American troops in Europe and not as a rational element in
the over-all design of modernizing the Alliance, adjustments
will be arbitrarily imposed by the least effective means--
the American budgetary process. Then indeed we might see
a psychological wrench away from Europe in America and a
panicky resentment in Europe against the United States.
Withdrawal without concept, withdrawal for its own sake,
might well shock our allies into neutralism; it could mislead
our adversary and tempt aggression.

30

The urgent need is therefore for a high level group
to conduct a serious, frank and rapid reexamination of NATO
doctrine as an integral part of the comprehensive NATO
redesign described earlier. This must avoid the pedantry
of previous efforts that drown in unread memoranda and set
abstract percentage goals which are either irrelevant or
unachievable. A deadline for completion should be set-
certainly no longer than two years. If that study should
set clear goals to be reached in yearly increments by which
a full conventional defense of Europe can be achieved, only
by means of the present American deployment, we would have
no reason to tinker with it.

But experience, good sense and the political realities
of European domestic priorities, make such a conclusion
unlikely. In that case we should begin a gradual withdrawal
of up to half of our present ground forces over a period
of five years, leaving intact the air and naval forces

31

as well as the deployment of intermediate range missiles.

A useful byproduct would be a systematic reevaluation of
the existing highly miscellaneous inventory of the very
short-range tactical nuclear weapons--a legacy of three
decades of ad hoc decisions--which now represent both an
increment to deterrence and the greatest danger of unintended
nuclear war.

In this scheme withdrawal would not be an end in itself
but a means to commit the United States for the indefinite
future to a rational, hence sustainable, strategy. To ease
the transition we could, if Europe agreed, keep the excess
forces in Europe for an interim period in a status analogous
to that of the French forces, prepared for use in Europe
in support of European defense but also available for use
in emergencies outside of Europe. At the same time we would
commit ourselves to maintain the remaining forces under
the NATO command indefinitely.

bipartisanship to our foreign policy. Ever since the
Vietnam war shattered our unity in foreign policy we have
disquieted our friends and confused, where we have not emboldened,
our adversaries by periodic reassessments of policy. But
the national interest does not change every four or eight
years; Great Britain helped maintain the general peace for
over a century because other nations could count on the
steadiness of its policies through all changes of administration.
At some point the national interest must be seen as a sacrifice
in the public mind. Or else we shall become an element
of instability and irrelevance. A Presidential election
year is probably not an ideal year for such an effort. But
whoever is the victor in November has no more important
and urgent challenge before him than to restore bipartisanship
to our foreign policy.

C. In the long run European governments will be
able to avoid meeting head-on the trends towards pacifism,
and neutralism. It is hopeless to seek to defuse them

34

by accommodation as too many of them do. This can be done
best by putting forward the vision of a new future for the
Alliance and not simply the momentum of existing institutions.

If European governments feel obliged to defend what are
perceived as largely American decisions, they will sooner
or later be engulfed by a wave of abdication; they will
make concession after concession, progressively becoming
hostages of their critics. If they are either unable or
unwilling to do so, stumbling along in the status quo will
nurture a gradual withering of the Western will.

The proposals outlined here are intended to reinvigorate
Western ties. It could promote allied cohesion by relying
less on machinery and more on creating incentives to think
about common interests and strategic perceptions. It would
do this by defining a clear set of responsibilities for
each side of the Atlantic. European leaders could defend
the usefulness of cooperation with the United States as

35

their own conviction autonomously achieved. American leaders
would be able to defend an explicable doctrine and would
benefit from dealing with a more equal partner. If the
new arrangements are developed gradually and with sensitivity,
confidence in them can grow at each step. A new era of
allied creativity and American dedication could give
inspiration to a new generation that has come to maturity
since World War II, lacking a memory of how NATO came to
be or what purposes it is designed to serve.

## Conclusion

I have thought a long time about whether it is
appropriate for a former Secretary of State to put forward
such drastic proposals. In the end--appalled by the tone
and nature of the transatlantic controversy--I came to the
view that it would be better if a son of Europe committed
to Western unity advanced a new approach rather than have
the issue brought into public debate out of erosion

36

and exhaustion under the auspices of neo-isolationists
fundamentally opposed to joint efforts. The current condition
cries out for a rethinking of the Alliance. Our only choice
is whether the inevitable restructuring will come about
by acts of creative leadership or whether we are driven
to it in response to a series of crises and defeats. It
seems to me better to launch a debate which will become
inevitable as the decade proceeds and which otherwise will
take place under worse circumstances.

The nations bordering the North Atlantic possess the
inherent creativity and the resources not only to survive
but to prevail. What they need is faith in themselves and
the will to resist the siren calls of those who use fear
and panic as instruments of policy or of domestic debate.
In the end we must fulfill our trust: that the North Atlantic
Alliance incarnates the hope of human dignity and decency
in our world.