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credit for the easing of tension. Meanwhile Soviet emissaries are crisscrossing Europe preaching the virtues of what they call the House of Europe--a structure from the Urals to the Atlantic whose practical consequence is the expulsion of the United States from the Continent and to make European security depend on Moscow.

All this is no doubt disconcerting to the Western Alliance. And in all likelihood Gorbachev presents his foreign policy to his colleagues in the Politburo as one of his great achievements. But it remains to be seen whether Soviet foreign policy is as farsighted as it is daring.

As the Federal Republic and to a lesser extent the other European countries increase their activities and investments in Eastern Europe the centrifugal tendencies in the Soviet empire will be accelerated--especially if there is not some political understanding of how this process might evolve. After all the most logical and historically most valid arrangement for a House of Europe would return the

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favor to ourselves, even less to foreign nations. Preserving
the balance of power is essential for our security; it
requires us to distinguish three types of situations: (1) where
the superpowers are directly involved; (2) where the superpowers
are indirectly involved such as in Asia or the Persian Gulf;
(3) where the security interests of the superpowers are not
homogeneous, such as for example in Central America.

The first situation of direct involvement of the nuclear
superpowers applies primarily to Europe. But analysis of it
is nearly obscured by a preoccupation with arms control. If
wars are caused not by geopolitical causes then their origin
must be evil men or the accumulation of arms. We take care of
the former by the exaltation of Gorbachev and of the latter by
abstruse agreements increasingly divorced from strategic reality.

I have on many occasions expressed my technical concerns
about agreements in the process of being negotiated. But many
of these concerns could be met if a major bipartisan effort were

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Czechoslovakia, or even a token withdrawal from Eastern Germany. What will the West's response be then? How will it affect nuclear modernization in the Federal Republic in the light of the statement by the Federal government that modernization would not take place if there were progress towards conventional arms control? What will be the defense strategy of NATO after nuclear weapons have been stigmatized and conventional weapons frozen or reduced in a strategically irrelevant manner. Historically conventional deterrence has never worked. What then is the Western concept of conventional arms control?

That question is almost impossible to answer in the absence of some understanding about the future of Europe. As I have indicated above, Soviet policy can embarrass the Atlantic Alliance but the long-range dilemma is on the Soviet side. To weaken NATO Moscow must pursue a policy of moderation both internationally and domestically. But such a policy encourages