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THE POLITICS OF ALLIANCE: THE UNITED STATES AND WESTERN EUROPE

# I. A TIME OF TROUBLE?

It is a defensible proposition that the severest tests of statecraft come not with the passing of leaders but with the waning of great fears which have given birth and disciplined great cooperative enterprises. The present state of Atlantic affairs is a case in point. The very success of Western Europe in the terms outlined in the dark days of 1945-47 has undermined the psychological and operational underpinnings of trans-Atlantic cooperation and reduced the incentive for closer West European integration. The new Administration will inherit an almost implausible quarter century record of achievement. It will also inherit an atmosphere of apprehension and unease, a wide-spread sense of drift, and a pervasive anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic among the community of men seriously concerned about Atlantic relations. And the new Administration will certainly make, if only in the negative, choices affecting the Atlantic future as subtle as they are important -- decisions made the more difficult because the choices lack the clarity and drama which marked the great decisions of the late 1940s.

The cause of our trial is familiar enough, and far from unwelcome in its own terms. It is the wide-spread change in perceptions of the threat of Soviet domination in Western Europe, powerfully reinforced by the failure of Moscow to create a monolithic empire in Communist Eastern Europe.* The

* I suspect that over the middle and long term, recent events in Prague will accelerate the Soviet failure in Eastern Europe. We must hope that things will move slowly enough to minimize the risk of backlash. In any event, as long as there is no sharp change in Rumania and Yugoslavia, and no great internal hardening in Hungary, the statement about Eastern Europe stands.

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apprehensions of the middle forties are largely fading memories -- I do not believe that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia will reverse the trend -- yet they have not really been replaced as a vital part of the bedrock underlying the whole structure of the Atlantic cooperation and, more important, the most powerful and consistent goad to push ahead with the building of community.

Gone too are the peculiar conditions which gave shape and manageability to the Atlantic community. A partnership between one very large, very strong nation and several smaller damaged ones imposes a certain natural hierarchy. It is by no means necessarily a hierarchy of merit. But it assures that the strong nation -- in this case the United States -- will be, though hardly the last word, the preponderant force on questions of both ends and means, as well as a powerful arbiter of internecine quarrels in its own camp. With the success of European performance and American policy in the rebuilding of Western Europe, the question of leadership has become much more complicated.

The waning of a shared fear and of the semblance of hierarchy have contributed to a disturbing array of symptoms of unrest which -- in part because of the inevitable psychic pain of the former hegemon -- tend often to concern Americans to a greater degree than the more basic dilemmas they reflect. Britain, beset by economic malaise, is shedding Asian burdens and, some believe, reverting to an insular perspective. France has adopted a policy calculus which assigns positive value to divergence from the United States, as well as a concept of European integration which contradicts the traditional meaning of the term. And she seems to project for herself a solo role in Europe and the world which, while it does not seem congruent with the raw facts of power, has a divisive effect on Atlantic politics. Germany is much more independent of mind and action, and, as always when it

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is recent and groping, independence declared must be independence periodically proved. Many judge this to be all to the good, but for Americans it is certainly a change. Finally, NATO -- the most elaborate of our joint enterprises -- is showing all the signs of stale middle age.

One effect of all this has been to produce not only grist for opposition politicians in search of issues, but also a common conviction among observers of Atlantic affairs: statesmen, scholars, and practitioners, that the Alliance is now at a crossroads where hard and fundamental choices must be made on pain of imminent or eventual -- and, it is fair to say, not generally precisely specified -- disaster.* In determining the American reaction, the new Administration will have to re-examine basic questions which define the U.S. stake and the various options: What are the really essential United States interests in Western Europe? In what way are those interests threatened by the current malaise? Are there any ways to solve the basic problems or to make them liveable? What is the appropriate American role in Atlantic affairs over the next few years?

Most important, the new Administration must define and articulate an American stance toward Western Europe which recognizes the limits on American influence, but which also reflects the continued central importance of Western Europe to the American future, in terms of our own security; in terms of our need for an external environment conducive to the good health of the American body politic; and in terms of the indispensable European role

*Consider a random selection of titles of recent writings in the field: "Troubled Partnership," "End of Alliance," "Gulliver's Troubles," "Last Chance in Europe," "Is the European Dying?" "The Fading Alliance." These works reveal more than an occupational misanthropy, sensible enough among writers on international affairs. They reflect a common conviction that we are in trouble. (Cut?)

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in the world if the chances of relative peace and of a decent high civiliza-
tion are to be kept alive on a globe where we, the Europeans -- and indeed
the Russians -- constitute a very small, rich minority surrounded by an
enormous, desperately poor majority. It's a tall order -- and the subject
of the first part of this chapter. The second part examines some of the
specific issues and choices the new Administration will face in Atlantic
politics, in defense, in economics, and in our bilateral relations with Britain,
France, Germany, Italy and the other important countries of Western Europe.

What Do We Really Need From Western Europe?

Twenty years ago our objectives in Western Europe were plain: to prevent expansion of the Communist empire through military conquest or internal takeover, and to promote economic recovery as the most effective long term insurance against that expansion. With Soviet armies in the center of Europe, Stalin in the Kremlin, Western Europe in a state of collapse, and powerful Communist parties in France and Italy benefiting from the spurious legitimacy conferred on them by the brave role the Communists played in the partisan resistance to the Nazis, the danger seemed real enough. The extraordinary American response -- one forgets that less than thirty years passed between the defeat of the League and the passage of the Marshall Plan -- was informed both by the geopolitical notion that the United States cannot afford to see Europe dominated by a single hostile power and by ideological aversion to Communism. It also reflected an underlying sense of community with Western Europe, built up through our involvement in two great European wars.

Relative to the fears of the '40s, we have been enormously successful.
The prospect of a Moscow dominated Communist Western Europe is nil. Indeed,

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tight Soviet control of even established Communist governments has turned
out in several cases to be a fleeting thing, and, in any event, impossible to
sustain without periodic resort to naked force. And even our revisionist
historians have not claimed that it was Soviet policy to build up strong and
independent friends.

To an extent rare in international politics, the solutions of the late
'40s solved the priority problems of the late '40s. But these solutions have
revealed and posed a new set of problems, and it is in this context that one
must raise the question: what are American interests in Western Europe in
the late 1960s?

Though many formulations are possible, our central interests in Western
Europe appear to be as follows:

(1) A benign and constructive politics between the nations of Western
Europe. At a minimum, we do not want Germany attacking France, or France
attacking Germany.

(2) Reasonably constructive, cooperative and community-minded behavior
with respect to those many issues of Atlantic relations where interdependence
is not just a speechwriter's crutch but an economic and cultural fact. An
important adversary component in our relations is unavoidable, particularly
in economics (though even there more in the method than in the substance).
The need is for a politics which will take advantage of those possibilities
for action which confer gain to all parties concerned, and at the same time
settle distributive, "more for one means less for another" issues in ways
which will not drive any party to conclude that the game is not worth the
candle. At a minimum, Atlantic relations must not degenerate into harsh,
beggar thy neighbor, tit for tat economics and politics to match.

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(3) A wary, but open-minded and probing stance toward Moscow and Eastern Europe, with special sensitivity for those who have most at stake. This implies neither a rigid cold-war stance, nor complete relaxation. It certainly does not mean failure to insure against a lapse of sanity in the East. (At this writing it is impossible to foretell with certainty the net outcome of Czechoslovakia. My own view of the evidence so far is that it demonstrates defensive anxiety in Moscow and not offensive hubris, and that this will become clear in Western Europe and even Germany in a matter of months. If I am wrong -- if it turns out that Moscow is now ruled by militarist hard-liners ready to risk aggressive moves vis a vis Berlin and Western Europe -- then the question of alliance priorities will recede. I myself would give long odds the other way. Nevertheless, our military position must remain appropriately hedged, in part to reassure the Germans, and in part because defensive anxiety could conceivably turn into aggressive paranoia.)

(4) Last, and for the near term I think least, we would like Western Europe to fill a strong American psychic need for "company" in the world. A subtle notion, this means more than sharing the material burdens in helping India or Latin America to grow. It certainly does not mean unquestioned support for every specific American action. For balance in our own politics, and good sense in our conduct, we need not straight men nor yes-men but responsible, cooperative partners and critics who view the world in the round and have the relevance and standing to advise, help, and on occasion restrain and reprove us.

What does such _external_ conduct imply for the _domestic_ politics of the nations of West Europe? No certain generalizations follow deductively. But as a contingent, empirical matter, internal politics which are benign, open and reasonably effective in meeting people's aspirations are likely to maximize the chances of external conduct congenial to our interests. This is certainly true in relation to the first three tests above, though less certain in the case of the fourth. Tolerably effective welfare democracies -- defined more

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in terms of responsiveness to popular will and safeguards for minorities than
in terms of specific machinery -- are more likely to generate benign external
behavior than closed, less responsive, inner-directed governments. This will
be true whatever the architectural arrangements between the nations of Western
Europe themselves. At the very least, governments subject to popular will in
prosperous industrial countries are less likely to indulge in a foreign policy
of madness.*

How is one to judge the recent past in terms of these criteria?

Judgement of performance inevitably reflects the hopes and fears of the
judge, and I confess to a prejudice that it is better to judge international
politics in terms of the avoidance of nightmares than in terms of progress toward
some trouble-free golden age. (The Abbé Sieyès' report of his doings during the
French Revolution: "I survived," has always seemed to me a success story.) I
would assert that measured by benign cooperation among nation states, organiza-
tion for collective security and internal prosperity, and cooperative problem
solving, this decade of Atlantic politics looks not at all bad -- certainly as
compared with the first eight years of any preceding decade in this century.
It is a gauge of the progress we have made that it is almost irrelevant, if
not in bad taste, to point out that the probability of any West European nation
resorting to military force against its neighbors is, perhaps for the first
time in modern history, literally nil.**

*Footnote on architecture of Europe and company in the world: distinction between a uniting and a united Europe.

**In terms of the American desire for company in the world, the conventional impression is that we have done less well. But this impression stems in important part from European reluctance to support America in Vietnam -- at best an oblique test of companionship. Whatever one's view of Vietnam, (contd. next page)

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Why Then Are We Troubled?

Much of the anxiety stems from a sense that -- despite the wealth, the
relative stability, the growing web of fruitful economic and social and cul-
tural connections which distinguish today's Europe and Atlantic from yester-
day's -- none of the over-arching visions designed to heal the wounds of the
Second World War, and prevent stresses which, many fear could lead to a third,
is moving clearly and consistently toward fulfillment. Early notions of
Atlantic political integration have lost their hold. West European political
integration, the abiding faith of some of the best of our public men on both
sides of the Atlantic, is at a standstill. Nor is there any immediate prospect
of a final settlement of World War II in any structural sense which would heal
the division of Germany. Measured against hopes and expectations of rapid
movement in the direction of a Grand Design -- not to speak of peaceful libera-
tion of Eastern Europe and an East-West settlement on our terms -- the present
architecture of Europe and the Atlantic is disappointing.

It is tempting but wrong to dismiss such disappointment as the mere con-
sequence of naievete about the pace of change that is possible in the archi-
tectural relations between nations old and proud and deeply scarred. It is
wrong, too, to take refuge in the belief that American interests depend not

many if not most Europeans appear to think that the U.S. failure to provide
"company" to France in Indo-China or Algeria, and to France and Britain in
Suez is an apt parallel. But that too misses the point, which is not how
either party stands on a particular issue but that it stands at all, as distin-
guished from an insular posture of non-involvement. And there is a more power-
ful test: aid to the development-capable nations of the "third world." Here
American failure during recent years overshadows whatever blame the Europeans
deserve. We tend to forget that, while Europe is rich, it is not nearly as
rich as the U.S. Measured by the standards of the American personal income
tax, it is not clear that we have borne a disproportionate share of the burden
of common defense and aid to the poor. (arms control?)

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on structural arrangements among nation states but rather on their external
conduct -- that there is no necessary correspondence between structure and
behavior. No doubt we have at times become over committed in our enthusiasm
for particular architectures, both with respect to our vital needs and to
tactical efficacy. But to leave it at that is to dodge the hard problem:
The existing structural relations between the countries of West Europe, between
West Europe and East Europe, and between West Europe and the United States are
not in a state of long run equilibrium. The existing architecture is not stable.
Even where it appears most rigid, it may be all too brittle.

What are the sources of disequilibrium? Fundamentally, they lie in the
failure of present structures to meet important aspirations of important
constituencies:

-- The Germans are deeply dissatisfied. However one measures it, whether
by their wish for formal German unity, or their desire for a humane polity in
East Germany which would allow easy intercourse between Germans on the two
sides of the line, there is a large gap between what is and what the majority
of Germans believe ought to be. German politicians will continue to regard
this as an issue to which they must address themselves as a matter of high
priority. And the politicians of other nations will be forced to respond.*

-- Many other Western Europeans are deeply frustrated. Some in positions
of power and influence (including some Germans) believe that the existing

* This is not to say that the average German spends long hours brooding about these problems, or will soon take to the barricades if nothing is done. It is to say that this is a deep, abiding dissatisfaction which will be the most potent issue in German politics as long as there is no sense of progress toward solving it.

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structural arrangements among themselves -- and (the Gaullist view) between
the U.S. and themselves -- condemn Europe to an excessive dependence on
America for security. They believe that it is neither fully safe, nor
dignified, nor good for Europe's vitality to remain a security ward of the
United States for the indefinite future. Many are concerned about American
economic penetration, and worry that Europe's unique and ancient cultures
will be submerged in a sea of Coca Cola.* Books like M. Servan-Schreiber's
"The American Challenge" strike a responsive chord.

-- Britain is becalmed, seemingly drifting in the wake of a painful
transition from paramount world power to important and influential island
kingdom. And there is a wide-spread sense that in order to find a new role,
she must make new connections.

-- Many Americans too are dissatisfied. They regard as disproportionate
the American share of the burden of joint defense in Europe and elsewhere.
They see us stalemated in our attempts to encourage a European system which
will eventually preserve European security without major cost to us and guar-
antee an economically open West Europe. And they too find it easy to blame
the atomized architecture of Europe as the basic cause.

-- Responsible Europeans, Americans and, we can be certain, Russians
understand the intrinsic risks involved in a status quo which requires a con-
tinuing military confrontation between the United States and the Soviets in
the center of Germany, with Berlin a perpetual irritant and potential trigger

*Cut in page proof: Produced in Europe by an American-owned, Wall
Street controlled subsidiary financed with short-term European capital
(is it true?)

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point. (This concern is balanced by a vivid sense of the risks we would incur if American and Soviet troops were largely replaced in policing that line by two sets of German armies under the command of hostile governments, neither of which recognized the right of the other to exist.)

-- Last, and a matter of no small moment for Atlantic and East-West politics, the shape of Eastern Europe is in flux. The Russian action and its aftermath in Czechoslovakia proved both that the Soviets are prepared to take strong, unpopular actions to maintain the status quo, and that even those actions won't work if the subject people is sufficiently skillful and united. The resulting insecurities in the minds of Soviet and Eastern European leaders will be major factors in the stability of the entire continent.

In short, whatever the quality of Atlantic politics in the past, the many who are content with the status quo must beware of the political weight of those who are not. The more so, because there is a strong strain in the politics of modern bourgeois societies, which tends to encourage change for change's sake. I believe it was the historian R. A. Nisbet who once suggested that boredom is one of the most underrated social forces in history. In domestic affairs, bread and butter interests tend sharply to constrain choices. But foreigners don't vote and hence foreign affairs are a fertile field for politicians in search of issues, journalists in need of stories, foreign and defense ministers and their speech writers looking for "policies," and even for satisfied publics with a weakness for drama. Except perhaps in Scandinavia, there is a streak of schizophrenia even in relatively effective and prosperous and internally satisfied welfare democracies. Six days of the week we act and vote as though the best foreign policy is no foreign policy at all.

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But on the seventh, our very leisure and prosperity is likely to give rise
to a receptivity if not an outright demand for novelty, even at considerable
risk. Where such a thirst for drama reinforces and interacts with genuine
grievances about existing structures and genuine pressures for change among
important political constituencies in an open, international society, it is
foolhardy to predict that things tomorrow will be the way they are today. It
may or may not be right to despair because certain specific visions have not
turned out. But it is right to be concerned about the dangers -- as well as
the opportunities -- inherent both in incipient change and in prolonged
rigidity.*

The sense that we are not in a stable and satisfactory long-term equili-
brium explains much, but not all, of our malaise. After all, we have faced
painful and knotty problems before. The root of the trouble lies rather in
a growing sense on both sides of the Atlantic that Americans and Western
Europeans no longer share a plausible vision of the future on which we can all
agree and which would provide us with a guide to action. Lack of a shared
vision, of a concept of how to guide the forces which are at work, is at
bottom what troubles people. For those who like to think of Atlantic politi-
cal relations in terms of NATO, it is a case of an alliance in search of a
purpose -- a purpose which goes beyond what many have come to regard as mere
guard duty. In terms of the broader political relations between the Atlantic
nations, it is a matter of a search for a shared view about what to do and
what to avoid with respect to the unsolved internal and external problems
of Europe and the Atlantic.

*Whether one should worry because rigid structures in the face of desire for change will yield malignant political behavior and/or whether structures will change too quickly and abruptly, or be replaced by something worse is, at this level of abstraction, a semantic game.

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In Search of a Vision

Three grand visions of the future have at various times captured the
political imaginations of various of our leading public men: Jean Monnet's
united Western Europe; the Atlantic Community; and (least congenial to most)
a settlement of World War II through some scheme of U.S.-Soviet disengagement
in Europe which would allow the unification of Germany. Each vision touched
on the structural relations between Western Europe (ex Germany) and Britain,
West and East Germany, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
But the Monnet vision singled out as its defining theme the internal archi-
tecture of Western Europe and emphasized the search for a new European poli-
tical identity. The Atlantic view stressed the American-West European rela-
tionship and collective security. And the third vision was mainly concerned
with the relations between East and West in Europe and the unification of
Germany.

It is now clear that none of these three prescriptions is by way of
being fulfilled -- not even Monnet Europe, at least not in its strong form as
an agenda for early, cumulative movement toward political unity:*

-- Starting with the last: the idea of settlement through an East-West
bargain entailing a unified Germany on terms short of a Soviet surrender, never
really caught on, least of all in Germany. Settlement by "compellence" --
liberation and all that -- was never real (even if we sometimes acted as

*It is not my purpose to score specious points against the distinguished men who held these visions. In most cases, their hopes were balanced by a skeptical sense of reality. And enthusiasm, which in hindsight renders a man vulnerable to the charge of naivete, is an essential ingredient of the quality which, in case of success, one is wont to call genius.

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though we believed in it). And settlement by purchase, offering the Soviets neutralization of the Federal Republic in return for unity under a freely elected government, was thought by most people almost equally unsafe. Not enough people ever thought that any such arrangement could provide either security or a sufficient anchorage for a united but constrained, less-than-equal Germany. At the least, it would involve, indeed require, the indefinite active presence of the two giants in the center of Europe and their tacit cooperation as the senior guarantors and enforcers of the arrangement, a condition which has struck many people as neither credible nor desirable. The leaders of post-war Germany have shown even less interest in this plan than governments elsewhere.

The idea of a neutralization bargain has revived from time to time. The history of proposals for disengagement and settlement (proposals going beyond local arms control) shows more frequency and continuity than one remembers. And it might revive again; one can find hints of something like it in some recent speeches by senior Germans. But until now, it has not caught on in the West. (One suspects it never caught in the East either -- although at times during the past two decades there has been some elaborate dropping of handkerchiefs.)

The conception of an Atlantic Community was and still is real enough in the sense of a defensive alliance among nations increasingly mixed up with each other in their economics and in the lives of their citizens and institutions. And the Atlantic nations remain, though one of them would deny it, by and large agreed on the need for collective defense against an external danger which is much diminished but still greater than zero.* (It is likely that events in Czechoslovakia will increase people's sense of the threat in the near term, but, in my view, only in the near term. I do not believe that

*The French are not a real exception. They are simply aware that there is no feasible way in which the U.S. can withdraw nuclear protection from France while providing it to West Germany.

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Moscow's grotesque reaction in Prague suggests a new taste for offensive adventure -- on the contrary.)

Yet, as a central motivating ideal in Atlantic politics, the vision of an increasingly comprehensive and institutionalized political structure -- an Atlantic Commonwealth -- was never quite plausible either. Neither we nor the Europeans have been ready for it. Though many Americans are convinced of the long term need for a delegation of power to supra-national entities, few members of Congress would today vote for any significant, irreversible grant of sovereignty to an Atlantic Council. This is not just a matter of habit and history; it also reflects a lurking concern about whether effective governance of even fifty states, all on one continent, continues to be feasible.*

The Atlantic idea has been no more plausible on the Eastern shore of the Atlantic. While a great deal of the talk about what is possible between partners of different square mileage or population is moonshine -- neither Delaware nor Maine appear to feel disadvantaged by their partnership with New York or California -- there is no doubt that close political integration between the United States and the separate nations of West Europe would violate the deep will to autonomy of too many Europeans, whether nationalist or "European." To borrow Barbara Ward's affectionate image, the idea is too much like sharing a bath with a genial elephant (check this.)**

*The fact that the boundaries of the security community explicitly defined do not coincide with the economic or the cultural community would also pose problems. Cases in point: Sweden, Japan, Portugal.

**It is a different matter that some Americans, indeed some Europeans, are attracted by the idea of an Atlantic Community precisely because of the intrinsic imbalance. Defining the American objective as maximum U.S. influence, and taking off from the minor premise that U.S. influence is an increasing function of European dependence on the U.S. strategic umbrella, (contd. next page)

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The plausibility of the third vision: Monnet Europe, is especially hard for a sympathetic American to judge in retrospect. Certainly it commanded the energy and enthusiasm of many of the great men of post-war Atlantic politics. And one wonders what might have happened if Britain had taken an early and strong lead, or if General de Gaulle had retired after extricating France from Algeria. Some might even wonder -- though I am not of this view -- whether a change in American policy, notably our preoccupation, eminently sensible as such, with centralized command and control of strategic force might have made a crucial difference. But in the end, it is not unreasonable to doubt whether rapid movement toward Monnet-Europe was in the cards, short of some prior cataclysm or highly risky American shock treatment by abandonment. This is in important part a matter of definition and tempo. Quite clearly, remarkable progress has been made in terms of some very political economics. But in the light of the very slow progress toward the strong, near term political version of "Europe," it is fair to infer that Monnet and the three other great West Europeans -- Schuman, De Gasperi, and Adenauer -- under-estimated the force of the separate European nationalisms and the difficulty of maintaining momentum

they would have us try to maximize and sustain that dependence as long as possible, and not just because of the technical case for centralized command and control. This is not a matter which can be settled by resort to logic. However, I believe that both premises are wrong. For one thing, one must distinguish between mere power and useable power. For another, what matters to us is not our influence as such, but how Europe behaves. If one cares about the position of the football on the field, one must be interested not merely in how far one's team has moved the opposition, but where the play started. For both reasons, the notion that it is dependence on American strategic defense which will yield cooperative conduct on the part of the West Europeans strikes me as a bad bet. In any event, this version of Atlantic Community could hardly be expected to serve as a unifying ideal. It would have little attraction even for most Americans, and not merely because of an inclination to be soft-headed about power. Rather, because of a hard-headed understanding that even in international politics -- and as long as the fundamental interests of the parties are congruent -- a gross asymmetry of direct power in one's favor is likely to produce either apathy on the part of the weaker partner, or hubris. In either case, irresponsible behavior is the likely result.

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in an enterprise aimed at a Carolingian Europe with its eastern borders on the Elbe. In the last few years at least, the salient fact about West European politics seems to be French resistance to any weakening of national sovereignty and a general turning of attention to the East. Even the Germans, who for a long time and with good reason were most reluctant to look over their shoulders, have sharply shifted their stance.

In any event, it is not explanation of the past which must concern us, but the search for a vision to goad and guide Atlantic politics in the future. For that, none of the three visions will quite do -- at least not today. None is sufficiently responsive to both of the two great problems of Western Europe which make current arrangements unstable: (1) the problem of European identity and autonomy; and (2) the problem of healing the division of Germany and Europe. At least, none will solve both problems on terms which will satisfy the need of Western Europe for security and, at the same time, conceivably command early Soviet agreement on points where Moscow has a veto.

Settlement by neutralization would recreate a very large Germany, discriminated against and hence twice unequal. To be acceptable to Russians and Europeans, especially Germans, such an arrangement would have to engage the United States and the Soviets in the heart of Europe, and hence preclude the kind of autonomy both West and East Europeans want.

An Atlantic Europe would give security from the East, and provide an anchor for West Germany, but at the price of a very unequal partnership and no plausible prospect either for an autonomous Europe or, except as a holding operation, for reunification.

The case of Monnet-Europe is more subtle and complicated. And, for the very long term, the answer is surely open. In partnership with the United States --

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the terms of which would be a function of practical need and would reflect an
increasingly symmetrical interdependence -- it would meet the aspiration of
"European" West Europeans for identity and autonomy, as well as for some
secondary advantages of larger scale. It would provide a safe haven for
West Germany. Where it fails -- other than in denying the nationalist ideas
of the Gaullists -- is in dealing with German unification with any degree of
concreteness, explicitness, and tempo, save after the cold war is so truly
past history that the Soviets might simply give away East Germany free, letting
it join an organized and nuclearly self-dependent Western Europe.

Ten years ago the school solution to this dilemma lay in the judgment,
shared by a great many Germans, that the adventure of building Western Europe
would provide for West Germans a sufficient psychic and political substitute
for unification. It was also judged, rightly at the time, that the closing
down of the option of unification-by-neutralization would not in any case cause
them great pain, on simple grounds of safety.

During the next few years, the dilemma may dissolve in a different way.
In the past year or so, influential West Germans have begun to redefine what
they mean by a solution to the German problem. There is underway a shift of
emphasis, from the goal of one nation-one flag, to the more modest assurance
of a decent life for East Germans and open intercourse between all Germans.
To the extent that this redefinition sinks firm roots in West German politics --
the pace must remain a matter for Germans, not a subject of outside prodding --
the basic structural flaw in the Monnet vision will disappear.* But for the

*I do not believe that the Soviets would be so frightened by the prospect of a truly united Western Europe as to try to head it off by offering a bona fida unification-by-neutralization deal. Put another way, I suspect such a bargain would scare them even more. To be sure, they might just dangle it in front of anxious German noses hoping that their bluff will never be called. But if challenged to put up, they are likely to turn hard of hearing.

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present, a blunter variant of the dilemma is still too sharp for it to serve
as a unifying guide for alliance politics. Gaullist and nationalist inertia
combine with the vivid spectacle of movement in Eastern Europe to eclipse a
vision which calls for an enormous burst of focused energy on the building of
political West Europe as the priority task. Or so it seems now. The more so,
since many Europeans believe, whatever the truth, that a speeding up of the
movement toward coalescence in Western Europe might slow that loosening in
East Europe which is important to most Europeans, and essential if the West
German's redefinition of their purposes is really to take hold.*

********

If none of the three classic visions will serve to give West Europeans
and Americans a clear sense of where we are headed and how to get there, is
there some other vision which will do? I believe not. The truth is, there
does not exist today a design drawn in comparably sharp, architectural terms
and within even a generous range of feasibility, which will resolve the under-
lying problems and hence command the allegiance of a large majority of Western
Europeans. It is important to recognize that this is not a consequence of
American requirements or preconditions. It follows, rather, from the deep
aspirations and concerns of Western Europeans -- Germans and non-Germans --
and from the fact of a Soviet veto over the fate of East Germany.**

Yet among men who care about Atlantic politics, the search for a vision
goes on. Not many believe that large moves or great choices requiring an
agreed blueprint are likely or possible in the near future. But many do believe

*If events in Prague were to produce a serious and prolonged freeze through-
out Eastern Europe, the mood in Western Europe could easily change. Then only
the Gaullists would stand in the way.

**Footnote on set-theoretic analysis

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that, precisely because no near term solutions to big problems are likely,
we must fix on some conception which will soothe frustrations and help us
hold onto each other in our workaday tasks. The fear is that in the absence
of a sense of shared goals, the adversary element in our relations will tend
to dominate internal Atlantic politics and produce a dangerous splintering in
our external affairs.

In response to this strong demand, there has emerged during the past
few years a rather different "vision" of the Atlantic future, articulated for
the United States by President Johnson in his European policy speech of October
7, 1966. It defines its goals not in terms of a concrete, architectural out-
come, but rather in terms of maximizing piecemeal movement in certain loosely
defined directions, as opportunity presents itself. It is a vision exceedingly
flexible in terms of both structural outcome and tempo. It allows for an even-
tually tight, politically integrated Western Europe, but does not require it,
and emphasizes the practical arrangements and the increasing closeness needed
for efficient problem-solving. It allows, but only at the end of a very long
process, for some sort of growing together of the two parts of Germany, but in
the meanwhile calls only for an opening of relations between West and East
Europe, and an easing in the quality of life in East Germany and in the possi-
bilities of intercourse between the two sets of Germans. It allows for
increasing Eastern European independence of the Soviet Union, but only at a
pace which keeps down the risk of a backlash. It allows for increasing Euro-
pean autonomy in Western Europe's relations with the United States, even in
defense, but only in step with the European capacity to manage a credible
deterrent of its own -- credible in the context of a prudent view of the risks.
It allows for some institutionalization of Atlantic politics, but looks mainly

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to increasingly closer ad hoc cooperation on specific problems.

The premise of this view is that an eclectic process of ad hoc procedure and movement by small steps, defined only in terms of broad directions, will gradually resolve the larger structural problems, both by changing people's goals, habits, and tolerances, and by an evolutionary change in the environment. The theory is that problems will become soluble either because they will have been redefined, or because arrangements now unacceptable become acceptable, and that the experience of solving small problems will make it easier eventually to solve big ones.*

The difference between this *process* "vision" and the structural visions lies in large part in the specificity of institutional outcomes, and -- though here the distinction is less clear -- in tempo.** The advantage of a focus on process, as against structural blueprints, is that irresolvable choices are postponed and dilemmas are bypassed. But there is a price. A picture of the future, even if it is widely shared and approved, which evokes only a blurred, romantic-abstract image of the architectural shape of Europe and the Atlantic -- a vision, moreover, which indefinitely postpones any structural solutions and provides no basis for concerted action on a grand scale -- will not generate

The three most recent short expositions of what I have called the "process vision" can be found in Theo Sommer's "Will Europe Unite?", an address made at the Banff Conference on World Affairs, Aug., '67, and reprinted in summary in *The Atlantic Community Quarterly*, Winter, '67-'68; Brzezinski, "The Framework of East-West Reconciliation," *Foreign Affairs*, Jan., '68; and, from a still different prospective, a brilliant essay by Miriam Camps, "Is 'Europe' Obsolete," *International*, July, '68, which, if it had reached me before completion of the first half of this paper, would have saved me a lot of work.

**In one respect, the process vision is more demanding than the others; it implies a greater synchronization, for instance between progress toward West European integration and East European autonomy.

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that sense of shared purposes, of elan and camaraderie and mutual relevance
which would make the divisive strains intrinsic in Atlantic relations easy
to bear.

This, in my judgment, defines the central problem and central task of
contemporary Atlantic politics: how to hold together and manage a constructive
internal and external politics at a time when there exists no great shared
conception of dominating and powerful purposes and when no such conception
seems possible within the practical constraints which prevail.

Prospects and Tasks, and the American Role

Prospects and tasks depend on problems and opportunities. If large choices
and movement were necessary or possible, the lack of a map with a clearly marked
destination would be serious indeed. But the fact that our search for a shared
vision of structural solutions has produced, in the language of the "new"
mathematics, an empty set, implies -- almost in the strict sense of that word --
that for the near term no major moves are in sight.* The world could change,
and quickly: one cannot discount the possibility of radical, and wholly unexpec-
ted movement in international affairs.** But for the present, it would appear

*For the proposition to be strictly true one must rule out large, unilateral
moves by one or another of the participants not on the basis of agreement. More
on this later. Suffice it here to assert only that the French couldn't pull it
off; the Germans wouldn't and couldn't; and the United States wouldn't. The
notion of a U.S.-Soviet condominium bargain over Europe is grotesque. It would
be deeply damaging in terms of the most selfish American interests. And it is
inconceivable in terms of our politics.

**For instance, it is not totally inconceivable, though in my judgment it
is exceedingly unlikely in the near future, that developments in Eastern Europe
will produce an agonizing reappraisal in Moscow about what is and is not tol-
erable. The outcome could be good or bad. Either way, it would force the pace
of soul-searching among West Germans, and might require all of us, particularly
the West Europeans, to face some of the large choices that a rapid telescoping
of one variant or another of the process vision would require.

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that the time is not ripe for significant structural change: for major move-
ment toward settlement in Europe, or in the political organization of Western
Europe, or in the institutional arrangements between Western Europe and the
United States.

What then are the tasks facing Atlantic politics -- leaving aside for the
moment the two great and special global problems: strategic arms control and
the relations between the poor and the rich?

There is still defense. Guard duty it may be, in the absence of a revival
of a taste for West European adventure in the Kremlin; but it is an exceedingly
serious and sophisticated and expensive kind of guard duty. There is East-
West "bridge-building," and all the questions it raises about the proper balance
between individual enterprise and harmonious orchestration. Third, there is the
political management of our internal economic affairs, both European and Atlantic.

Each set of tasks offers opportunities for constructive and cooperative
action. And each presents dangers. The second part of this chapter attemps to
explore these opportunities and dangers in concrete terms. But there is a prior,
general question about the proper role of the United States. If we are to avoid
both imprudence and rigidity in defense, immobility and splintering in Atlantic
external relations -- and if we are to manage our internal political economics
sensibly -- much will depend on how the United States plays its part.

* * * * * * * * * *

Much of the recent writing on Atlantic politics has laid the blame for the
prevailing mood of anxiety on an alleged lack of American leadership. On the
face of it, there is a puzzle here: the list of recent practical achievements
in Atlantic affairs is long. For instance, neither the Kennedy Round nor the
intense and fruitful negotiations involving international money should be

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dismissed as mere economics. They reflect political progress of a major sort,
and American initiative has played a central role.

The puzzle turns on the definition of "leadership." We are faulted not
for being laggard in pulling our weight on a host of knotty practical problems
in Atlantic relations. (If anything, some of our friends in Europe feel that
the United States has pulled rather too hard in its own preferred directions.)
Rather, the charge is that we have failed to generate that sense of momentum,
of movement in pursuit of joint purposes, which the alliance must have to avoid
falling apart. On this view, the only way the United States can demonstrate
leadership is to take the lead in generating a new, agreed, and unifying vision
which is addressed to the large problems of Atlantic politics.

In my judgment, both the charge and the prescription miss the point.
As we have seen, there exists no unifying vision which would provide the
basis for movement and action, or even for agreement in principle on how the
great architectural dilemmas might best be resolved. Nor, in my judgment --
and this is a controversial minority view among writers on Atlantic affairs --
would it serve the balance and cohesion of Atlantic politics if the United
States took the lead in stimulating and leading a great debate on what we are
about, an attempt at group therapy designed to clarify and blueprint the issues
and the trade-offs. A debate which will not lead to action, and yet
is bound to dramatize in an abstract and wholly non-operational way a host
of painful dilemmas for Germans, postponements for "Europeans," and frustra-
tions for Europe-minded Englishmen and nationalist Frenchmen, is not likely
to produce a healthy catharsis.*

*The case for a debate is sometimes made in the hope that it will lead to agreement in the Alliance to put a proposal to the Russians (contd. next page)

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The truth is, there is no occasion for immediate definitive choice with respect to such questions as how fast to get on with West European political integration and in what form, in the light of the possible effects in Eastern Europe and the question of prospective British-Norwegian-Danish membership in the European Economic Community; how (if it should come to that) the West Germans might want to trade-off tying themselves irreversibly into a political and self-defending Western Europe, as against keeping open some options for unity which would be closed if unity meant a complete East German switch from East to West; or even how fast it is right for Germans to redefine their purposes in the East. There is no way to act on the conclusions if the choices are made. As of now, no major cross-roads are in sight. And when and if we do get to any cross-roads, neither our relatively secondary stake in many of these questions nor our limited margin of influence would justify our trying to play a paramount role.

The point is not that the United States has no interest in how these issues may eventually be resolved. We have a stake, a large stake. And on those questions which really touch us directly -- for instance, the military arrangements surrounding any change in the status of the two Germanies -- we also have ample power to protect that stake. But in general, our interest is at once congruent with that of the large majority of the Western Europeans, and not of the same consequence. Cheer leading and bullying -- and proposing non-solutions to problems which are insoluble in the near term and, in any event, more West Europe's

involving early self-determination for East Germans and agreement now on unification in a decade or two or three. The purpose would be to demonstrate on whose back the monkey sits. The notion that an American initiative in support of so transparent a ploy could unify the Alliance strikes me as implausible on its face. We couldn't possibly get an agreed position out of Bonn, London, and Rome, never mind Paris. Serious governments are not willing to expose themselves to the charge that they are playing games.

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business than ours -- is not likely to advance American interests. When
over-sized mothers-in-law try to become relevant where they are not, the most
likely product is poison.*

What then is the appropriate American role in Atlantic affairs for the
near term? Should we retire from center stage? The truth is we cannot. But
we should resign ourselves to a role short on drama and heroics. To be sure,
we must continue to associate ourselves with the aspirations of our friends in
Western Europe on the large issues, if only to damp as best we can the natural
fears about any unilateral American bargain with Moscow which would damage the
chances for German unity or European autonomy. But at bottom our performance
should be measured by progress on the many narrow issues where, in accord with
the "process vision," movement is possible, and by success in striking compo-
mise solutions which will strengthen the fabric of Atlantic politics.**

Much of this is a matter of style. In an environment of stalemate and
frustration on the large issues, we must count on a considerable internal sensi-
tivity to positions and actions on secondary external issues. It follows that --
apart from our associating ourselves with Western Europe's larger purposes --

*At the level of conceptual thought about foreign policy (of the analytic variety), it is important to distinguish between preferred outcomes, less-than-preferred but still tolerable outcomes, and feasible outcomes in the light of the limits of one's power or influence. Going for broke is not generally the best way to minimize regret.

**On the first point, Americans should remember that the minor anxieties we may suffer about independent French initiatives toward the East are bound to be larger by an order of magnitude when it comes to European worries about exclusive Washington-Moscow dealings. The more so, since the United States must retain a relatively free hand to carry on separate business with the Soviets on strategic arms control and third world questions -- questions on which Europe is not yet in a position to play a leading role. As a corollary we must make every effort to inform our friends, and to expose ourselves to their influence, always recognizing that since both they and we know that we cannot on those special issues give them a veto, no amount of consultation will still their fears. It is painful to have no place at the table where the action is.

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we should maintain a flexible, light-footed target of opportunity posture on
the many fronts of Atlantic relations. The name of the game is to avoid over-
loading the internal politics of any member of the alliance to the point where
serious politicians are tempted or forced to question the basic articles of
the trans-Atlantic connection as a first order domestic issue.

This is not a prescription for standing still. It is a prescription for
keeping a healthy tension between tranquility and advance. On many problems --
this part of the theory about the need for American leadership is right -- there
will be no movement at all in the absence of a strong American lead. Internal
political strain among our friends will often be a necessary cost. But we
should always calculate how hard we push which government on which issues, and
avoid becoming prisoners of our own blueprints. We should pick our spots care-
fully and plunge only rarely, always keeping a hedge for retreat. The accent
should be on the political *process* by which issues are faced and compromises
reached without threatening references to first principles. Atlantic politics
should be seen not as a series of discrete separate one-shot bargains, but as
a permanent multi-party negotiation in which progress may often be indirect,
but the ball is kept in play and the game goes on.

This may sound abstract, but I think it cuts right to the heart of the
matter. The central premise of American foreign policy since the war has been
that -- on the large issues of peace and war and sensible international organi-
zation -- our fundamental interests are congruent with those of the nations of
Western Europe. If so, it follows that our concern must be with nuturing a
political environment which will reflect that commonality of interest, and hence
help us get on with the workaday business of community.

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## II. ISSUES AND CHOICES

### Defense

Atlantic defense will present the new Administration with frequent and important choices. The number of American troops in Germany is only the most visible issue. Decisions will also be needed on alliance nuclear arrangements (tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, nuclear relations with Britain, France, Germany et.al., the role of the Nuclear Planning Group, etc.); and on the future role and shape of NATO. All such decisions will be replete with traps, particularly if the question is viewed in terms of narrow military criteria alone. To stay out of them we will need to keep sharply in mind what the problem of Atlantic defense in the late 1960's is all about:

(1) The threat of a premeditated Soviet invasion of Western Europe is no longer real to most Europeans, and -- unless there is powerful new evidence that Moscow is about to go mad -- it cannot be made to seem real. An American attempt to give NATO a boost by rekindling the old fears, citing the Soviet performance in Czechoslovakia, will only make us look foolish.

(2) Nevertheless, defense is still necessary. Even a prudent, risk-avoiding Soviet policy in Western Europe (a good but less than sure bet: we must remain hedged against sudden changes of mind and men in the Kremlin), must have some risk to avoid. And it must be risk sufficient to dominate any conceivable gain, as well as to outweigh the pain of a Western roll-back of any East German move to alter the status quo. Both the Soviets and our

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friends will measure that risk in important part by the West's military
capacity for a credible response.

(3) The danger lies not in a Soviet invasion in cold blood but in a sequence of escalation triggered by events in and around Berlin, where there is a direct U.S.-Soviet confrontation and where each country is likely to risk nuclear war to prevent a shift in the status quo in favor of the other. Our defense decisions must reflect both the generally low probability of serious military trouble, and the generally disastrous consequences if serious trouble were to occur. We should also take into account indirect effects on the arms race. Throughout, we should remember that in the real world, there exist no zero-risk options.*

(4) An American role is still necessary. The truth that Western Europe is rich and populous enough to take care of itself would have more force if there existed a politically coherent United States of Europe. But it would miss the point even then. The most hard-headed definition of American interests, as reflected and reinforced by our commitment to the

* Much of the conversation in these matters is confounded by ambiguity in defining "risk". Doves have in mind the low probability of trouble; sensible hawks, the disastrous consequences. Both are relevant to any judgment about how much to spend on defense. Since most people who emphasize low probability have in mind an invasion and/or an open-ended arms race; while those who worry about consequences are thinking, if they are sensible, about complicated situations triggered by risings in East Germany and troubles around Berlin, it is no wonder that conversations fail to converge. Yet it is important that they do converge. There are enough real uncertainties and perplexities: e.g., what to do when extra "insurance" moves the probability and the disutility of trouble in opposite directions (many of the arguments about defense versus deterrence raise just that issue); how to account for the intrinsic uncertainty even about the direction in which a change in doctrine or force levels will move the probability and the disutility of trouble in a world of response and counter response, where most of the future is at best only dimly forseeable and it is the better part of wisdom to count on being surprised.

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safety of West Berlin and West Germany, establishes that Americans and West Europeans share (in Thomas Schelling's formulation) a common frontier. With respect to the security of Western Europe, we and the West Europeans are in the same boat. Arguments about burden sharing, or who should man which oars, are necessarily secondary. Since we cannot jump overboard without certain capsize, our safety demands that the oars be adequately manned.* The more so, since the American nuclear force is at present the only strategic force on our side capable of a "second strike" sufficient in certainty and scale to assure Americans and West Europeans that, as long as American intentions are credible, the Soviets will be deterred from any offensive venture in Western Europe.

(5) A substantial American conventional force in Germany is still necessary. Without it, the NATO order of battle is likely to become too thin to provide for the kind of graduated response necessary if strategic deterrence is to remain both credible and tolerably safe. But even if it were not so -- it is a matter of political judgment what the West Europeans would do if the U.S. pulled out -- a large American contingent is still needed for other important reasons: (i) To make credible to Russians and West Europeans that any trouble on the frontier or in Berlin would inextricably engage the United States; (ii) To assure in advance that such American entanglement would be on a large enough scale to make the U.S.

* Which is not to assert that if the boat should sink everyone's survivability would be the same.

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strategic force a vividly credible counter in everyone's calculations despite
the vulnerability of American cities; (iii) To give the United States
sufficient direct power in the management of any crisis; (iv) To provide,
together with British, French and other allied forces, sufficiently close
company for German forces to avoid burdening the Germans with the possi-
bility of single handed management of a crisis in the middle of their
country, and to render harmless any charges from the East, and allay
atavistic fears in the West, that the Federal Republic is in a position to
play a solo military role.

(6) The central proposition is this: as long as there is no stable
settlement (and, it may be, as a necessary aspect of any such settlement)
the military situation in the center of Europe must remain a matter of in-
ternational politics and multi-national management. And the American nuclear
force must remain palpably relevant.

(7) It is evident from the above that the North Atlantic Treaty is
still necessary. It follows, also -- despite the French -- that it must
continue to be embodied in some kind of living institution. A conventional
pact of mutual defense would not provide a viable political frame for the
continued presence of American, British and other allied forces in Germany:
it would smack too much of an occupation, or a Washington-Bonn axis.*
It would not meet the need, vital to the political health of Europe, for the
institutionalized company the rest of us must provide for the dozen German
divisions. It would fail to provide the smaller allied countries with a
----------

* Happily it works with the French alone (we can be grateful, among others,
to President Johnson for that), but the rather fuzzy arrangement between
Paris and Bonn simply could not support the full weight of close to 300,000
British and American troops for any length of time.

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locus and a procedure of consultation and a vehicle for their necessarily small
but politically important military contributions. Last, it would foreclose a
great many opportunities for efficient coordination in planning and management.

Yet none of the above propositions answer the tough operational questions:
how much defense, tailored to what kind of strategic doctrine, requiring how
many American troops? Nor do they suggest answers to questions about the future
shape of NATO, and, in particular, about the European role in nuclear matters.
Carl Kaysen's chapter addresses some of these questions in detail. Suffice it
here only to say that:

-- There is nothing sacrosanct about the current level of American forces
in Europe, but decisions on changes should reflect careful weighing of their
considerable political as well as military implications. Obviously, much
depends on the Warsaw Pact order of battle post-Czechoslovakia. If after things
settle down it reverts to the pattern of 1965-67, then, on the basis of personal
involvement with the problem at that time, I think our security position, _narrowly
defined_, could stand an appreciable reduction even if, as is likely, it would be
followed by some reductions by others. But a judgment in terms of deterrence
alone (and the kind of bargain-basement but still tolerable conventional war-
fighting capacity which is politically feasible here and in Europe), cannot
settle the matter. Changes in American deployments -- and American proposals
pertaining to strategy -- cast long shadows on European perceptions of American
intentions and dependability. Ideally, we should be able to adjust the NATO
order of battle, and the American contribution, on the basis of a shared assess-
ment of the effects on deterrence, insurance, arms control and burden sharing.
But that is easier said than done. And whatever the rights and wrongs of the
present distribution of the burden, the dollar cost to the United States of

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reducing forces later rather than sooner -- of temporarily foregoing money
savings that may be militarily justified -- is exceedingly small when measured
against the American defense budget (not to speak of GNP), and negligible when
measured against the importance to the United States of confidence in the Ameri-
can commitment to the defense of Europe. In the absence of such confidence,
the chances for a benign and cooperative Atlantic politics are slim. In any
event, whatever we do, much will depend on how we do it: on style and procedure.*

*That is not to say that we must not cut ever, or -- if Eastern Europe is
quiet and there is no increase in the Warsaw Pact order-of-battle (net of the
appropriate discount it is now safe to apply to Czech divisions) -- to cut
even quite soon. But before doing so, we should apply at least three tests which
go beyond the military calculus: How can we maximize the chances for a mutual
reduction on both sides of the line? How can we assure the Europeans (especially
the Germans, who are on the firing line) that we are moving to a new and safe
plateau which will then be held, subject to agreed changes in the military situa-
tion? Any serious doubt about the credibility of the U.S. deterrent, which is a
sensitive function of the U.S. conventional presence, is bound to stimulate a
deadly serious argument in Germany about their commitment to remain dependent for
nuclear defense on NATO, and hence on the U.S. Third, is the timing right in
terms of all the issues on the table between ourselves and the Federal Republic,
or are we taking a risk with so overloading German internal politics that an
issue of military management turns into an internal argument about the American
connection? I think, for example, that we made a mistake in the spring of 1966
in linking the question of troop levels to a rigid, restrictive balance-of-
payments offset arrangement. It was a mistake not only because there were avail-
able more flexible schemes more palatable to the Germans and sufficient for the
protection of our balance-of-payments. It was a mistake mainly because 1966 was
the year of the NATO crisis, and of predictable internal strain in German poli-
tics; the year in which we needed German support on international money and the
Kennedy Round; and the year in which we were going to administer a severe jolt
to German politics in any case by going ahead (rightly, in my judgment) with the
non-proliferation treaty. The fact that we managed to extricate ourselves from
a very deep hole by a precarious but on the whole successful diplomatic exercise
(the so-called Trilateral Negotiations during 1966-67) is no defense for the
initial mistake. Nor is there much defense, although there is explanation, in the
fact that Germans among other continentals have played an active role in lecturing
the United States about living in balance-of-payments sin.

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-- There is nothing sacrosanct about the present structure of NATO (the organization). Indeed, it is certain that the new Administration will have to deal with a host of suggestions for reform. There will also arise the larger question of role and purposes: Should NATO enlarge its political role? Should Atlantic external relations be coordinated and managed through the NATO machinery? If, as I believe, the answer must be in the negative, even with respect to regional European affairs central to NATO's agreed purposes, what reforms will keep it viable for its vital defense tasks? I would judge potential answers in the light of five rules of thumb: (1) No reform will work which fails to take into account that by the test of political sex appeal, NATO is middle-aged: necessary, important, but no longer right for the ingenue role in Europe (assuming no sharp change in Soviet behavior). (2) No reform is likely to entice General DeGaulle to rejoin the fold. (3) Changes in defense arrangements should be judged in precise, operational terms; we should beware of slogans ("integration," "independence"). (4) No reform will work unless it reflects genuine European wants and needs, as revealed by their national politics without prodding from Washington. (5) Any change likely to command a consensus in Western Europe is not likely to damage the United States. On the contrary, we should be sympathetic and responsive to European ideas for a greater European role in NATO, whether it be through a European caucus in the Council, or evolution toward a full-fledged European Defense Community. We must not let secondary American interests stand in the way (e.g., procurement from the United States: there are better ways for us to protect our balance-of payments.) Responsible European behavior in matters of Atlantic affairs is likely to

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increase with Europe's sense that she is in command of her own fate.*

*Two specific questions are likely to come up, one relatively small and one very large: (1) Should the next NATO commander be a European, with an American deputy for nuclear forces: this would give Europe a greater voice; the price would be the loss of the implicit but direct link between the principal military agent of the alliance and the American President who disposes of the paramount nuclear force. My prejudice would be to respond to any consensus in Europe. (2) What should be the U.S. stance toward the British and French nuclear forces? There are no easy answers. My own view would be that we should continue to provide Britain with the technical help which she needs to maintain the existing force of Polaris A-s, but to be pleased with London's present decision against trying for Poseidon with its MIRV-s. As to France, it would be a mistake (as well as politically infeasible given the present French stance on NATO) to offer General DeGaulle comparable technical help at this stage -- at best, it would look like a bribe. On the other hand, if Britain and France should ever decide to get together and then to come to us for technical help, we would face some very tough choices. In terms of internal command and control, a small but hard, tightly controlled joint force, benefitting from American technical help, would be far better than any separate national force -- although there would remain a question about coordination with SAC. But the problem would be complicated by American politics and the McMahon Act. And it would raise with sharp force the question of discrimination against Germany. The right response, in my judgment, would be to tell London and Paris that we would be prepared to provide a joint force with technical assistance as long as they can somehow engage the Germans, the Italians, and perhaps others, in a way which would not violate the non-proliferation treaty and would reflect a careful German decision to associate themselves with such a force despite the cross-cutting effect on their Eastern policy and the general nervousness on both sides of the line about any German role in nuclear defense. It seems to me the U.S. should be prepared, if asked, to provide support for any European nuclear force which is consistent with the treaty, is technically sound, has built into it the right sorts of command and control (on the technical side our help can be most useful), and which is judged by a responsible German Government as a good thing for them without any prior pushing and pulling by the United States. We should not try to dream up new solutions to the problem of nuclear management in the alliance; there are no good solutions. The right role for the United States is neither to propose that the Europeans get together, nor to resist if they, including the Germans, decide that that is the way they want to go.

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Economics

Economic issues comprise much of the agenda of Atlantic politics. Much more than ever before, the economics of each touches on the prosperity of all. And because people's jobs and pocketbooks are directly at risk, it is both important and difficult for governments to put first things first.

The paramount task is to press on with the post-war effort to develop and strengthen practices and procedures, habits and institutions, which are both efficient in serving compatible economic goals and politically viable in resolving conflict. The important empirical truth which should inform each nation's conduct is that coordinated policies will generally do much better by everyone's goals than any process of devil take the hindmost. Every unilateral action with consequences abroad (whether a change in interest rates, or in customs procedures), and every international bargain (whether a new trans-Atlantic air route or a tariff) must be judged, especially by the biggest player of the lot, not merely in terms of the particular outcome, but also in terms of the likely effect on the strength and efficiency of rules and practices for the long term. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is far more important to us than any particular set of tariffs as such, or any marginal change in the GATT rules themselves. The creation of a new reserve asset, internationally managed through the IMF, is far more important than whether that asset is called a new "unit" or a "drawing right." Some brinksmanship is unavoidable in negotiating bread-and-butter issues. But it should be kept within safe limits except where absolutely essential rules and structures are at issue.*

*To argue that the U.S., because it is the biggest player, can afford the jungle, is to miss the point. Jungle economics breeds jungle politics and that we cannot afford.

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What is the near term economic agenda?

First, the central problem of international money and balance-of-payments, the subject of Richard Cooper's chapter. It is central not because it should matter as such. It shouldn't; it is mere machinery. It is central because the post-war Bretton Woods system has developed serious flaws which -- save for the "liquidity" provided to the rest of the world by the American payments deficit -- would already have exerted severe deflationary pressures throughout the world, with protectionist warfare the likely international result.

We have made great progress since 1965 in reforming the international money rules. The United States Government has played a distinguished role at every step, particularly in getting agreement on the new Special Drawing Rights (SDR-s) and in helping to introduce the two tier system for gold. But more needs to be done. The only real long term answer is more intensive and binding coordination in the management of international finance, based on rules and practices less biased against deficit countries, and better suited to our shared stake in prosperity and trade. "Money is a good servant but a bad master." The linkage between the management of international money on the one hand, and policies with respect to trade and capital movements and the domestic economy on the other, should more clearly reflect which is which.

If we wish to promote benign politics, as well as sensible economics, we must also sustain the momentum toward world-wide free trade. Protectionist pressures are as powerful as ever, and as pernicious in their results. The danger over the medium term lies in the hardening of two large trading blocs, one centered on the United States and the other on the European Economic Community, each relatively free within itself but in a state of economic warfare with the other. Whatever the economic costs, the politics would be poisonous.

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Thus, as the EEC expands, with its common external tariff and internal free trade, we shall have to keep up to speed in achieving mutual tariff cuts, or slip backwards toward the jungle we all should want to avoid. The need is for cutting all tariffs (on an accelerated, non-reciprocal schedule vis a vis the poor countries) and -- increasingly important as tariffs go down -- the thick underbrush of non-tariff barriers as well. The implication is another ambitious round of trade negotiations starting in 1970 at the latest.*

*Three special comments are in order:

(1) Some people are tempted by an allegedly benign version of the two-bloc world. If the Europeans won't go along with the financial reforms needed to allow adequate internal growth and increasingly free trade on a worldwide basis, we should -- or so the argument goes -- settle for a dollar bloc to include anyone who cares to join, letting those who don't organize a gold bloc and float their currencies against the dollar. In terms of economics, this would not be too bad. In terms of Atlantic politics, and the American political interest, it would be terrible, except as a short-lived transitional arrangement designed to bring the gold-minded to their senses. For one view of this entire range of issues, see "The Political Economics of International Money," *Foreign Affairs*, Oct., 1968.

(2) Trade policy should be responsive to the demands of the poor countries for some help in their exports of manufactures. We have an enormous stake in the economic growth of the development-capable poor; their export earnings will play a critical role. At the same time, we must avoid bloc economics and politics. Letting each advanced industrial country give trade preferences only to its own less developed clients would be a great mistake. The recently developed American policy of support for temporary tariff preferences on the manufactures and semi-manufactures of all less developed countries by all industrial countries is, I think, just right. But we should beware of the notion that such a system, designed to stimulate poor country exports, can substitute for any significant quantity of aid "Trade-not-aid" is an appropriate objective for the long term: once a low-income country has reached per capita income levels of a few hundred dollars per year, it can manage adequate growth without extraordinary outside help. But as a strategy to speed the growth of countries whose incomes run at $80-200 per head, "trade-not-aid" is a mirage.

(3) The toughest nut to crack in Atlantic trade relations will be agriculture. The United States will have to exercise great patience. Europe is at a stage of its agricultural revolution where supply is bound to outrun demand at any price tolerable in terms of domestic politics, even while people are leaving agricultural employment in droves. The U.S. will constantly be tempted to cut off its nose to spite its face by slowing down trade liberalization in industry in the forlorn hope of getting Europeans to build still more warehouses and (contd. next page)

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A final large item on the agenda is the so-called "technological gap" and the political problem of American investment in Europe. Here the United States must tread lightly. On the one hand -- in terms of risks for people's livelihoods -- this is strictly second order business. Measured in terms of income, jobs, and productivity, West Europe has shown superb economic performance during the past two decades. Whatever technological inferiority she may suffer relative to the United States does not impinge on those rock-bottom conditions which distinguish the political prospects of the late 1960's and early 70's from those of, say, the 1930's. These questions are just not in the same class in terms of the future of Atlantic politics, as, for instance, the issue of international monetary reform which directly affects the prospects for domestic prosperity and for movement toward an open world.

Nevertheless, the advantage of the United States in the new, science-based industries is a significant political issue. So is American ownership and control of industry in Europe. Americans, with economists in the lead, tend often to forget that Europeans no less than Americans want circuses as well as bread -- especially circuses widely regarded as symbols of status and prestige and power.

It is a different matter to know what to do. On the "technological gap" -- a question of management and social mobility, of general education and economic scale much more than of science as such -- there is not much the United States

pay still more tax money in order to add some of our agricultural surpluses to their own. We should certainly push them to grant food to the needy poor, but that won't ease the pressure much, particularly as the poor get better at growing their own food. Happily, prospects will change in time. The United States does have a long-term comparative advantage in highly capitalized, land-intensive high-protein agriculture. And in terms of nutrition, that is the wave of the future -- at least until the chemical industry takes over.

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can do. In general, we should be sympathetic and reasonable in responding to
sensible non-protectionist European attempts better to organize for exploiting
economies of scale.

On American investment in Europe, there is more room for action, if only
because direct investment in Europe has been our Achilles heel in the interna-
tional politics of balance-of-payments. There is some truth to the European
charge that, in a fit of absent mindedness, the U.S. has been using short term
money borrowed in Europe to buy up Europe. There are no easy answers. To
emphasize the case for multi-national corporations, or for giving market forces
free reign, only begs the problem of national control and influence. The near
term answer lies again in procedure: we and our European friends should get
together to sort out our partly conflicting and partly compatible interests:
their desire for long-term money, advanced American technology and management;
our need for balance of payments protection and for fair treatment of past
investments made in good faith; and their legitimate concern about the ownership
and control of their advanced industries.

Britain

Britain faces two critical questions: Can she at long last get her economics
right? Should she remain committed to. joining the EEC or seek some other connec-
tions? The United States has a major stake in the answers. An unsure, frustrated
and footloose Britain will do no one any good. In contrast, a prosperous and
vigorous Britain, playing an active role in Europe and a limited but satisfying
role in the outside world, would be an enormous asset to the United States --
and not because she would play Trojan Horse.

On the economic side there are strong grounds for optimism. Theories of
what ails the British economy abound. Most of them make the mistake Karl Marx

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made in his labor theory of value: they assign exclusive influence to a
single cause, be it the old school tie, the unions, not enough taste for risk
or too much for a civilized life, or merely poor fiscal management. The truth
is that a great many factors are at work. The right question is whether skill-
ful economic engineering -- effective use of the fiscal and regulatory instru-
ments available to a modern government in a mixed enterprise economy -- is
sufficient to shift the British economy from the roller coaster of stop-and-go
to a track of reasonably steady 3.5-5% growth, with the balance of payments in
good order.

My own view is that, despite the drag exerted by some of the underlying
social parameters, reasonably skillful economic policy will do the job. The
requirements are plain: Demand must be kept in balance with capacity, with
enough slack to give wages policy a chance to keep British prices from running
ahead of prices in Europe and America, but not so much slack as to produce
intolerable numbers of unemployed or to kill off incentives to invest; the
investment component of demand must be both allowed and stimulated to rise from
10-15% of GNP to 20-25%, with priority for exports and import substitutes and
for activities with a potential for fast productivity growth; redistribution
of income through the budget and other means must meet the tests both of incen-
tive and of tolerable fairness as judged by the electorate; and, above all,
the exchange rate must be right.

Following the devaluation of last November, none of this is impossible,
or even unlikely. With sterling at the old rate of $2.80, no amount of defla-
tion could be expected to do the job, short of years of waiting for foreign
prices to catch up with British prices. With the pound at $2.40 -- and suffi-
cient restraint on domestic demand to release the resources needed to meet the

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new, price-induced demand for British goods abroad and for import substitutes at home -- the prospects are bright. It will take a while until speculators get used to the idea that sterling is not a dirty word. In the meanwhile, the major central banks may have some work to do in holding the line (as well as in dealing with sterling balances as a part of longer term monetary reform, and in stretching out some short term British debt). But barring any major continental devaluations (which would open up the entire structure of exchange rates for negotiation, though not the dollar price of gold), the $2.40 rate is likely to work fine in terms of Britain's basic payments position. Britain may well be on the threshold of her own economic "miracle." Miracle it would not be, only skillful economic management and a slightly undervalued currency.*

*I do not mean to suggest that it is all clear sailing. It never is, and at best it will take another year or two before the returns are in. Incomes policy is a very tough nut to crack. It is not certain that, with labor and product markets organized as at present, a semi-voluntary wage-price policy can contain the rise in unit labor costs without intolerable levels of unemployment. If there is reason for being optimistic about the British case, it is in good part because the rest of us are not likely to do well either; and here it is relative performance that counts. For a full-fledged miracle, progress will also be necessary in market organization, in the training and mobility of skilled labor and of management, and the like. But there is no need for "fundamental" changes in British society or in the British character simply in order to permit a comfortably adequate economic performance. (It is hard to exaggerate the enormous burden imposed by an overvalued currency. Both the German and the French "miracles" were preceded by their getting their exchange rates right. Once again, it was Keynes who put the point most sharply, in his 1925 essay "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill," about the then Chancellor of the Exchequer's decision to back the Bank of England in restoring the pre-war parity of the pound. It is a measure of Churchill's quality that much later in life, when he was even less interested in economics, he acknowledged that it was one of the greatest mistakes of his public life.)

For a first-rate analysis of the British economic situation, see the new *Brookings volume, Richard E. Caves and Associates, Britain's Economic Prospects, 1968.*

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What about Britain and Europe? Here the story is more complicated. For the
time being, the DeGaulle veto is a fact of life, and it is not clear whether
time will make it easier or harder for Britain to become a full-fledged
member of the EEC. In any event, there is bound to be a lot of talk in the
interim about an alternative: perhaps a North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA),
joining the Old Commonwealth and the United States as the founding members.

The search for an alternative -- already underway -- reflects a wide-
spread sense that Britain must make some new connection in order to cure her
economic ills, and that an overseas, Anglo-Saxon arrangement might well be
more attractive than joining up with the Old Continent.

Neither proposition seems to me defensible. The notion that a new connec-
tion is essential to make the economics work is sheer nonsense. It is not
necessary and it would not be sufficient. Indeed, it's an open question which
way it would move the odds.*

What about the case for NAFTA on its own terms? If it could be divorced
from the larger question of Britain's political future -- if it were merely an
open ended commercial venture, designed to enlarge the area of free trade and
to put maximum pressure on the more protectionist remainder to join the rest of
us in a move toward world wide free trade -- it would represent a dangerous
but thinkable strategy: dangerous because we would risk getting stuck enroute
in a two-bloc world. But short of a major change in the political environment,
or clear prior evidence that the European option is really out, the economics

* The only reservation I would make concerns the future course of tariffs.
If the world should go protectionist, then being a member of some relatively
large free-trade club would become important.

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cannot be divorced from the larger questions of politics. And as a new poli-
tical entity, NAFTA would be badly askew. Few Englishmen want their country to
become just another large American state. And we, on our part, need no new
states, and cannot afford to lose Britain as an independent source of vitality
and influence in Europe. The fact that a close American political connection
would soon produce either frustration or lethargy in London, or both, should
be sufficient to rule it out. But there is more to it: Europe without Britain
playing an active role is much less likely to produce the kind of external and
internal politics which is a paramount American interest.

Diagnosis is easy; prescription is harder. Playing a waiting game will
take considerable internal restraint on the part of London. No outsider can
really judge, but my guess would be that it is a hand that is politically
playable *if* the internal economics is right (there is no contradiction: investors
are perfectly capable of living with uncertainty), and if it encompasses an
activist policy of functional involvement in Europe.

What about the American role? On the economics, in the short run we must
join in helping to hold the $2.40 rate. Even more important, we must avoid --
for Britain's sake, as well as our own and that of the rest of the world --
allowing the American economy to go slack. That in turn implies pressing on
fast with international monetary reform.

On the political side we should politely discourage the people in London
who will be drawing up schemes for an alternative to Europe, and to continue
associating ourselves, quietly with no cheerleading, with Britain's view of
herself as a European power, albeit one which looks at the world in the round.
This will require restraint in Washington. We must expect London to generate

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a fair amount of anti-American rhetoric, and that she will line up with the
other Europeans on a variety of bread-and-butter issues. Here too, it will
be important for us to put first things first.*

## France

American thought and policy making toward France must avoid two major traps. The first, shallow and not very dangerous, is to underestimate General De Gaulle's resolve and delude ourselves that if we are nice to him he will be nice to us. The other, much more hazardous, is to overestimate how much damage he can do and react with hostility toward France and all her works.

The first fallacy may be largely behind us. Most Americans have learned that De Gaulle's commitment to his own special vision of France's needs and proper due is as fixed as any of Euclid's theorems. But the second is both more important and harder to learn. It comes in several parts:

(1) France's capacity for damage to fundamental Atlantic security is exceedingly limited. Whatever the General may do -- even if he should denounce the North Atlantic Treaty in 1969 -- NATO can and will survive for as long as most Europeans feel the need for American help in maintaining their defense -- unless, that is, we lose our heads and withdraw. (It is a reasonable conjecture that if the other Western Europeans were suddently to take a Gaullist line on

* That is not to say that we must not take advantage of any political openings in Britain for a change in, for instance, her decision to abandon Singapore in the early 70s. But American pressure for continued British involvement East of Suez and elsewhere outside of Europe should be carefully tailored to British economic and political possibilities, and balanced by our priority stake in British solvency and her management of her relations on the continent. At the margin, a British soldier is more valuable to us in the Far East than an American soldier, even if we foot the bill. But in my judgment British soldiers in Germany are even more important.

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NATO and American troops Frenchmen would be among the most dismayed.)

(2) As long as Washington and London refuse to play, the French simply do not have the chips to deliver on any bargain with Moscow touching on the status of Berlin or the future of Germany. It is no insult to France to say that it is not in her power to act for the West either in legitimizing the division of Germany or in trying to negotiate German unity. It is not merely that American and British troops are in Germany by law. It is simply a fact of life that, until the cold war is really past history, neither the West Europeans nor the East Europeans nor the Soviets would join in a settlement which would recreate a unified German state without very close ties with its neighbors and/or the United States. Unless such a state were politically and militarily integrated with West Europe, the Europeans would bend every effort to keep us from opting out even if we wanted to. A Paris-Moscow hegemony in Europe is not in the cards.*

(3) That is not to say that French policy has been harmless in its effects on the tone and shape of Western European and Atlantic politics. One can hope that the Germans have developed sufficient antibodies to remain relatively immune to the nationalist contagion. But even so, De Gaulle has effectively put a stop to progress toward Western European political integration. Perhaps even more important, he has long delayed, if not stunted, that growth in close working relations between Paris, Bonn, London and Rome on which, absent a Monnet Europe,

*That is why we should be relaxed about the talk of a European security conference without the United States. The Europeans would almost certainly not let it happen; and if they did, nothing much would come of it.

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a healthy European and Atlantic polity ultimately depends.

(4) Nothing will more greatly multiply the price exacted by present French policy than American over reaction. The more we cooperate with De Gaulle in forcing Bonn, London, Rome and the others to make a sharp choice between Washington and Paris on broad issues of "principle" -- as against concrete and narrow questions where their interests and ours coincide -- the greater the risk that we will end up with a balkanized Western Europe, an isolated Germany neurotically dependent on the United States, and a Britain with no place to turn. It will be of small comfort then that more often than not Gaullist manners and U.S. power will have caused our friends to side with us.

(5) It does not follow that we should simply appease Paris and let her have her way. But we must choose our ground with the greatest of care. We should fight only on concrete, specific issues where France does not have a veto by right of law or possession, and where we have a good chance of winning because: (i) we can win without help, or damage to other Europeans; (ii) the others are likely to see things our way in terms of their own domestic politics (in the absence of heavy U.S. pressure); or (iii) -- and a rare case -- where the stakes are so great, and the gain to us of winning is so large, that they justify strong use of American leverage even at the risk of turning the American connection into a serious internal issue in Britain, Germany, Italy, or elsewhere.

(6) Applying these tests, I think we were right to force a choice on international money and gold last year, and right also in pressing for large industrial tariff cuts in the Kennedy Round. In terms of the internal politics in the rest of Europe, and indeed in France -- a closed politics in the case of money, and open politics in trade -- the bread-and-butter interests of the

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majority made those winning issues. On the other hand, we were also dead
right not to respond to the French defection from NATO by trying to line up
support for reading France out of the treaty proper and threatening to deny
her the protection her geography guarantees her as long as we are committed
to defend Germany. And we were right again to avoid pushing the Germans to
set conditions unacceptable to De Gaulle on the continued stationing of French
troops in Germany thereby risking a painful fight in Bonn about whether to
thwart the U.S. or eject French soldiers from German soil, thereby fatally damaging
that reconciliation with France which is one of Germany's great psychic needs.
Last, we have been right in restricting ourselves to soft and hopeful words
about Britain's entry in the EEC. Here, sad but true, the French veto is
absolute. We would do no one any good, and we could do considerable harm, by
trying to bully the others into challenging it.*

(7) Here again, style is almost as important as substance. We must
always remain polite. Where possible, we must let the Europeans take the
lead in fact as well as in appearance. And we must keep in mind the capacity
of the present French government to overplay its hand and isolate itself with-
out exertion on our part. On the positive side, we should keep making it clear
that we will always keep an empty chair waiting for France.

In the end, Americans must remind themselves that a stable, confident
France is likely to be better for us over the long haul than a weak, turbulent
France, even if she keeps stepping on our toes. We should be self-confident
enough to ignore the anti-American rhetoric, particularly where it serves a

*In both instances involving NATO the credit for American good sense belongs personally to the President. In these as in other matters of European policy, both East and West, President Johnson has not received the credit which he deserves.

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therapeutic purpose in reviving the French spirit after a most painful century. We should be ready to acknowledge the elements of truth and validity in any French position. We should never forget the wide-spread support in France and in Europe for many Gaullist policies -- support which will outlast the General. Last, we should show not condescension, but genuine understanding for the enormous pain caused to proud and great nations by the brutal facts of scale in defense and technology; it is not easy to give up the nation state game. In sum, except where our vital and specific interests are at stake, we should show the grace and forbearance which behoove a great power.

## Germany

The reasons why the central focus of this paper is on Germany are self-evident. Internal German politics, alone, might distinguish the Federal Republic from the rest of us at least in degree, though not perhaps in kind (although in 1968 not too many nations are in a position to crow about the internal stability and good sense of their own body politic.) The roots of liberal democracy in the Federal Republic are young and her party politics appear to be more rigid than, for instance, our own. But the central point lies elsewhere. Germany is the one major country in the West with an external grievance of the first magnitude, and she is on the frontier.

The danger is not that history will repeat itself; neither 1914 nor 1939 will happen again. The danger is rather that external frustration will combine with a rise in activity by the small but vocal right-wing minority. This may not be so serious as it looks; we will all have our right-problems in the next decade. But it runs a greater risk of provoking over reaction because German right-wingism is harder to tolerate both for Germans and for others.

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The external risk is a level of neurosis about Germany among Germans and others which would make useless one of the great nations of West Europe in the sensible management of constructive Atlantic politics, and would make much more difficult a sensible evolution in East Europe.

Beyond the general arguments already advanced, I would offer the following guidelines for U.S. policy vis a vis Germany:

(1) We must avoid actions which would dilute German faith in American defense capacity and intent. We cannot and should not give in to every German whim. But we should think twice before encouraging irresponsible politicians and journalists in Europe who would try to profit by preying on deep German fears. And we should scrupulously apply the rules set out in the preceding section concerning issues where we force Bonn to choose between Paris and Washington. Overly exclusive German dependence on Washington is a very mixed blessing. In nuclear defense, there is no alternative. But, in terms of a healthy German politics, and necessary freedom of American maneuver on questions of strategic arms which do not touch on German safety or unity, it is in our interest that Paris and London should play an increasing role.

(2) It is not our role to take the lead in formulating strategy and tactics toward East Germany on matters which do not involve defense. We should make clear in Bonn that we stand prepared to play a strong supportive second: to help and counsel, and, if the Germans wish, even to take the diplomatic lead. We should ask that they keep us and the others sufficiently informed. But the prime burden of deciding how to deal with East Germany should rest on Bonn.

(3) Conversely, we should keep the lead on questions of strategic arms. We should always make a point of consulting on the large questions, especially

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those which could be thought by Germans to affect the prospects for German settlement. But we simply must retain full management of tactics vis a vis Moscow (and that includes precisely when it is and when it is not safe to consult, given the danger of leaks). Responsible Germans will understand this. They will be anxious; it would not be human if they are not. But it is an anxiety that both we and they must learn to live with.

(4) At points where arms control and the German future intersect, the particulars of the case must govern how we and Bonn and others play the hand. There are no dependable general rules except a presumption that anything which significantly reduces the danger of nuclear war must be assigned a very high value indeed. Happily, I do not believe that there are now any plausible options which would force a choice of one option to the exclusion of the other -- there are not many "either/or-s".*

Above all, the central rule: We should beware of so overloading German internal politics as to turn the American connection into a first order of domestic contention. We have a great stake in sensible and balanced German conduct in internal Atlantic affairs, and in the Federal Republic's explorations

*Both the two specific instances often cited to the contrary simply do not stand scrutiny. (1) The notion that an open nuclear option for Germany, of the sort ruled out by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, would constitute material for negotiating German unity or change in East Europe is dangerously silly. Few things would so impede the prospects for any easing in East Europe, or any prospects on the German problem, than even a hint that Bonn was considering that particular ploy. (2) The notion that Europeans would be differently affected than the U.S. by strategic weapons limitation which would reduce American nuclear "superiority," flies directly in the face of the elementary logic of deterrence. No feasible amount of American strategic superiority would render American cities safe from a Soviet second strike. A prime purpose of the large American force in the center of Europe is to make the American strategic force credible in relation to Europe despite that fact.

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toward the East. Steady and sensitive American policy on matters of concern
to Germany cannot guarantee such conduct; but it will sharply improve the odds.
The watchwords for American policy are sensitivity, restraint, patience and
great steadiness. We must not seem either too far or too near.

********

It is not lack of interest, or even lack of space alone, which explains
the lack of a full discussion of Italy. Ten-fifteen years ago, she would
have required full treatment. But in the interim, more than any of the other
large countries of Western Europe, Italy has been a model friend and partner,
both to us and to her neighbors in Europe. By putting first things first, and
behaving the way a sensible welfare democracy should behave, she has managed
to pull off a truly difficult economic and indeed political miracle. Neverthe-
less, it is important that the United States exercise great care to accord Rome
the attention and weight she deserves.

Much the same could be said about many of the other distinguished nations
of Western Europe. The old rule about the squeaky wheel getting the grease is
not inappropriate for a paper of limited length. But it is not a good rule
for American policy. The new Administration should take care that it does not
come to regard European policy as exclusively a matter of London, Paris, and
Bonn.*

*There are two countries of special significance on which I have not
touched at all. American relations with Canada would really require a separate
chapter. They demand careful attention by Washington. And it might be far-
sighted for the first time in years for us to take a hard look at Spain. It is
a fair bet that within the next five years she will come to play an increasing
role.

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### III. GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM

Where does all this leave us? What are the prospects in the Atlantic world? Clearly, there is no shortage of problems and troubles. Yet I think, in broad terms, there are powerful grounds for optimism -- assuming sensible American conduct:

> The central truth is that the United States and Western Europe will for the foreseeable future enjoy an overriding congruence of interests on the really large issues of peace and war. All of us share a commitment to avoid nuclear war which far surpasses simple Darwinian instinct. In cultural and economic terms, as in terms of sheer survival, violence against any of us would be enormously painful to all. For this reason, on top of many others, we share a common interest in helping each other (and the Soviets and East Europeans) grow out of the cold war. And, we share a deep long-term interest in ground rules for an international community which will provide for safe but reasonable progress towards various international objectives, while leaving the bulk of our energies and resources for urgent tasks at home.

One cannot of course count on objective interest to govern the behavior of governments. The modern world has known only too well the possibility of political madness, but there exist powerful safeguards in Western Europe today which did not exist twenty or thirty or forty years ago. Each of us has evolved into a welfare democracy of one description or another. We all exhibit in varying degrees a political and economic system which is more or less open and is popularly responsive if not always popularly directed.

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These simply are not friendly surroundings for madmen, for grand schemes of domination, or even for the traditional man on horseback. Evidently, not all hates and fears and distrusts are gone. But we have so organized our societies that it is very much less likely now than ever before that a narrowly hostile view of interest or ambition can take over the machinery of any major state and undo the progress of the past two decades.

Underlying that judgment are some large qualitative changes in the economic facts of life in Western Europe and the United States. Again, it is wise to hedge one's bets. None of us have solved the problems of affluence and some, particularly the most affluent of all, have failed even to solve the problems of primitive poverty. But it is a fair conjecture that life is by now simply too good for most people in Western Europe for serious trouble. Although per capita incomes are still well below our own, they are several times the pre-war level and, I think, well above the threshold at which concern for their preservation and growth begins to exert very strong pressure against political actions which could threaten them. And the distribution of income in Western Europe is sufficiently uniform so that the calculation of large interest does not turn around as one moves up and down the economic scale. This is in sharp contrast with the situation in the United States.

Finally, we now have the technical capacity and the institutional machinery in most of the countries of the Atlantic to avoid catastrophic economic fluctuations of the sort that nourished extremist politics so often in the past. This is important to the political future not only because it removes one large source of ferment, but also because the operation of this machine has resulted in an increasingly institutionalized process of multi-lateral control and cooperation. The result has been a development of

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international institutions and habits and experience over the past twenty years
which is itself a built-in stabilizer.

In short, even if one is not (and I am not) an economic determinist, the
conclusion is that whatever impact economics has on political behavior will --
despite the adversary components -- weigh heavily against any kind of nightmare
politics. When combined with the political and cultural facts of current
Atlantic life, it seems to me that the probability of real trouble, internally
generated, is as low as human variables permit.

The dangers from within lie not in madness. They consist, rather
in frustration, irritation and mistrust, in short-sighted moralizing, recrimina-
tion, and estrangement. In avoiding this, much will depend on American behavior,
and, indeed, on the image cast by our internal politics. A stable, dependable,
reasonable line of American policy can go very far to minimize internal tur-
bulence in Atlantic affairs.

It does not follow that we and the West Europeans do not have our troubles.
There are two great problems which transcend the difficulties of internal Atlantic
relations: growing out of the cold war and effectively controlling nuclear arms,
and ensuring the economic and political advance of the poor countries. We
must face them together. The real nightmare, for all of us -- not over the next
few years but over the next twenty-five, -- consists in a world deeply split
between a rich minority and an enormous majority of semi-industrialized poor,
colored, angry, and fully equipped with modern nuclear arms. But that problem
lies outside the domain of this chapter.

September 6, 1968

Cambridge, Massachusetts

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