Renewing a Beautiful Relationship
Sestanovich, Stephen
"Renewing a Beautiful Relationship" America on War and Diplomacy
...Will our policy have to become more modest, more exclusive...
...This prospect can only worsen our conscience (making us ready to let them off the hook) and heighten German resentment (leading them to resist our wishes...
...much more than the U.S...
...They require an acceptance of the lowest common denominators that often govern coalitions, and this has had its costs...
...If Soviet leaders once told worried Americans that too great a loyalty to their allies would suck them into trouble, our concerned allies now hear from Moscow of the dangerous consequences of excessive attachment to us...
...Yet plainly their flexibility is high, if only because Soviet-American tension increases the value in Soviet eyes of ties with the Europeans...
...Accordingly, the next administration has to demonstrate to its allies that, imbalances notwithstanding, they retain, and must exploit, real freedom of action...
...Naturally the United States should resist this ploy...
...The Right must point this out, but it must also inquire into its own blindnesses...
...stake in Western Europe: ?9 . . because the cases America cares about most are also most demanding and possibly terminal, they are the ones the United States would in fact--and should in principle- -shrink from defending...
...For conservatives have a matching hostility to allies that needs to be recognized, and it too may worsen matters...
...The larger point is this: Some kinds of spending (more than the levels) increase freedom of action...
...As always in the past, disagreement between the United States and its allies is sharpest on extra-European issues...
...our allies were singled out as a target...
...Of all the causes for the fall of Third THE AMERICAN...
...A major defeat outside Europe could now split the alliance apart within Europe...
...had marked out against Soviet expansionism...
...The experience of the past year," he insisted, "has demonstrated that there is no contradiction between vigorous, organic alliances and a more positive relationship with adversaries...
...When all else fails, alliance commitments can be regretfully shrugged off as simply too difficult to meet...
...The burden of proof was on those who in the fatter years of dgtente saw immediate danger in the atrophy of the alliance...
...individual or at most by a small group...
...Certainly U.S...
...It is now widely if not Well understood that America's alliances are a problem...
...These events may slowly restore confidence among our allies, but U.S...
...If once the United States declined to negotiate with the Soviet Union so as to protect European morale, now European morale seems to leave no choice but to accept Soviet negotiating offers...
...Between this past pattern and the present, the symbolic bridge was West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel's telling remark to Henry Kissinger in 1969: His country, he said, no longer feared Soviet-American condominium...
...And so on its twentieth birthday, with the pace of East-West d~tente accelerating, NATO's leaders pledged that the Atlantic partnership would take up the common concerns of modern industrial societies--environmental pollution, alienated youth, and so forth...
...In the late sixties, now doubting German leaders, the United States relied in part on public opinion as a restraint...
...intervention whenever a regime faced trouble...
...Indeed it may be more important now to understand the temptations of the Right, for it has already acquired a kind of intellectual ascendancy, and soon perhaps an institutional one, in the rethinking of our foreign policy...
...Taking advantage of its role in the Berlin negotiations, and of the German public's commitment to a Berlin settlement before further progress in d&ente, the United States was able to set the pace of Soviet-German rapprochement...
...Hence his taunt toKennedy: Having defeated Germany in the war, was the United States now unable to control it...
...today's, about whether the peace can any longer be kept...
...And it has developed ways of ducking it...
...It was unfair to take the Europeans' endorsement at face value, as did the Administration and liberal supporters of SALT II, yet rather than urge that their view could be changed under American leadership, most opponents of the treaty simply refused to bell-eve that the allies were telling the truth...
...Not so many years ago, of course, the United States and its allies had no trouble fending off, sometimes with little explanation, Soviet negotiating probes...
...In milder form it appeared even in Walter Laquer's recent article, "Euroneutralism," which expressed indignation with Ostpolitik...
...The Germans, it was said, would be distressed...
...Its commitment to that defense seemed instead to depend on how broadly the United States defined its interests...
...While boasting of strong resistance to Soviet expansionism elsewhere, they voice hope that Europe can remain a haven of detente...
...But the Polish summer has also been a reminder that such events can spill into a broader European chaos, in which Soviet restraint may ultimately break down...
...Even so simple a policy as that described here-using increased military capabilities to increase freedom of action--will prove full of problems...
...But since the French will in fact oppose such independence, what the question really shows is how the Europeans will argue against higher spending...
...That the United States might be dissuaded from the very large commitments it had assumed was not lost on the Soviet Union, which sought room for maneuver in the uncertainties of American allies...
...The more heroic, the better...
...And it may prove particularly attractive to those most eager to unshackle American power, whatever must be sacri- ficed in relationships with other countires...
...Parts have accordingly been reversed: Now it is the United States that fears its allies will let down...
...Playing on German fears, for example, Khrushchev's February 1961 letter to Adenauer warned him explicitly that the United States and Soviet Union were nations with global interests, to which the concerns of smaller powers would sometimes have to be subordinated...
...As these dangers become palpable--and they are likely to become steadily more so in this decade--there will be more agreement that the alliance needs to acquire this freedom of action...
...The fears of the earlier period, to overstate only a little, were about the terms on which peace would break out...
...Since an enlarged definition of national interests is unlikely to emerge without enlarged capabilities, the United States should foster a debate within allied countries about military projects that matter...
...More direct and even apparently exclusive ties with one state can enhance ties with others...
...In one respect after another, the patterns of past crises and disagreements are being reversed...
...Like other organizations that had outlived their original purpose, the alliance was to be recast...
...Hence, for example, the Left's enthusiasm to prune the list of our friends, on grounds that they are unworthy...
...Especially in the aftermath of Gdafisk, a counteroffensive capability will suggest thoughts of intervention, and this will inflame opposition in the alliance...
...More important, the United States should not propose increases that appear merely to shift the bills to our allies...
...The absolutism of Jesse Helms in defense of Taiwan typifies the Right's attachment to allies...
...For the spending issue is much more complicated than the charts suggest...
...America on War and Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Sestanovich RENEWING A BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP Our allies in NATO are different now...
...The most important change defining the present debate about the alliance is the growth of Soviet power, but important as this is, it only begins to describe the problem...
...Britain and France will feel this pressure still more...
...like-minded Europeans say all we want is help...
...Above all, the Germans would not understand...
...A plan that provides for more European spending on support-style costs may free American re.',ources to build up military strength where needed, but if it reduces European resm~rces for the same purpose it will defeat a larger aim...
...It was one of the most certain marks of American strength (as well as of self-confidence and, ?9 t; sometimes, of naivet$) that alhances could be sought on both sides of some of the world's great hostilities...
...Instead, the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 motives on both left and right that produce conflict with our allies spring from their view of America's proper role in the world...
...allies could be made out to be a burden...
...This, then, is a crisis created by bad times rather than good...
...This point ought at last to be sinking in...
...It may seem obvious that the European states cannot be fully independent, period?9 Yet this issue is never far from the surface of NATO politics?9 Michel Jobert, Henry Kissinger's antagonist as French Foreign Minister, recently asked whether the United States is ready to encourage its allies to develop the same independent military establishment that France has created...
...IV More than ever before, American alliances in the decade ahead will be neither what the Left nor what the Right would desire them to be...
...Far from requiring greater European caution, the American lead in confronting the Soviets opens up maneuvering room for our allies if they will but use it...
...And yet these corrective views have failed to overcome the impression that the difficulties the alliance now faces are in many ways quite oew--so new that we may not be ready for them...
...The international balance of power will hardly permit the former...
...Confronted with a situation in which conflict or the threat of conflict is endemic, where institu- tional means of succession are often lacking, and where loss of power can mean loss of life (as the recent fate of Liberia's chief of state sogruesomely reminded us), it is not surprising that Third World leaders are intensely concerned with defending their position...
...Yet we should not make these sacrifices in advance, nor underestimate what the care- ful use of American power can achieve...
...Charts illustrating the gap in per capita military expenditures have by now become quite familiar, and generally accompany a demand that the Europeans (and the lowest spenders of all, the Japanese) increase their budgets...
...This too was a kind of crisis--"identity crisis" was the popular term--but it was made more bearable by events...
...It is ironic (and a little pathetic) that what was once the expression of American policy in retreat is now treated as the symbol of American assertiveness, a way to restore alliance discipline...
...Essentially, however, the problem is a good deal simpler...
...Possessing great power, one can forget what others' insecurity is all about...
...But unlike the errors of the Left, those of the Right are too little noted...
...this one is created instead by SovietAmerican tension and fears of war...
...The demand for scarce resources, the growth of Soviet military capabilities, an d instability in the Third World itself will all contribute to greater superpower confrontations and threats to American interests...
...Alliances stand between the Left and the achievement of a more isolationist, or at least less assertive, America...
...The point has of late been so tirelessly expounded that those with a little historical perspective have had to explain that something called "disarray" is the usual condition of the Western bloc...
...The stakes of extra-European conflict are now just as important (one could argue they are more so) for the future of the alliance as specifically European issues...
...As U.S...
...Americans of both left and right will be uncomfortable, and more, with the independence of strong allies, but the independence of weak allies will be something else again...
...With freedom to fight the war out on others' soil, with more confidence that they could deny any conceivable Soviet objectives, NATO governments would be less likely to fold under political pressure and war threats...
...If East-West conflicts are now less divisible, they will also be more expensive to deter or (if it comes to that) to win...
...When one speaks of a Third World state aligned with a superpower, one is really referring to the chosen orientation of a certain individual or group of individuals...
...But even if this were not in doubt (and let us be honest: it is), American policy must aim at more than an increase of allied aggregate resources...
...A stronger Gei'many may be the best lure, in fact, for revived French partic- ipation in NATO--particularly for the Four Power Directorate already said to be functioning informally...
...NATO will have to give consideration to a new posture based on taking the military cmanteroffensive in response to an attack from the East...
...and allied outlays seem to speak for themselves: American spending per capita is approximately 25 percent higher than West German, and the rest of NATO is still further back...
...Unfortunately, our commitments cannot be met on the cheap in the future, f0r during an acute crisis in the Persian Gulf the vulnerability of our European allies to Soviet intimidation would also increase sharpiy...
...the domestic and regional considerations that guide our allies' course are too diverse to permit the latter...
...In Berlin, Germany asked the United States to forgo d&ente with the Soviet Union...
...Freedom of action, to be sure, is also freedom to oppose us...
...A recent article in Foreign Policy magazine made this point about the U.S...
...Analyzing this, DeGaulle complained that the United States "brings to great affairs elementary feelings and a complicated policy...
...But if the disagreement is not new, its significance is...
...Even critiques of American alliance policy, like the Democrats' of 1976, treated the problem as how to maintain solidarity THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 13 against the background of Soviet-American rapprochement...
...If spending is linked to the scale and shape of a nation's interests, it is also inseparable from its strategy...
...policy need not wait on events...
...Against the background of such anxieties, the United States will--in a sense, for the first time--have to practice serious coalition management...
...Where the Left prefers that allies not call on "us because we don't have the power, the Right recommends that they be cooperative because we do...
...for the Right, they would demonstrate it...
...If one measures just investment of operational costs, the difference between U.S...
...It cannot be permanently bashful about seeking higher German military spending just because the Bundeswehr has no nuclear arms...
...Given the fact that it took the West several centuries to develop such governments, we have no reason to aban- don our hopes for the Third World--in the long run...
...By contrast, events elsewhere in the world could now break down the fundamental alliance structure of East-West politics...
...In the campaign to recast our foreign policy, our allies have unquestionably slowed us...
...The tenor of K~rushchev's approaches to American leaders was similar...
...Yet to preoc- cupy ourselves with this problem, however much the behavior of our allies may urge it on us, is to miss the real problem we confront...
...This, even though that strength (in the shape of a new fleet, or of B-52s in the Sinai) bore no discernible relation to the difficulties that a Palestinian state would create for Israel...
...The end of a crisis, it seemed: D&ente resolved the anxiety that had been part of alliance politics since its inception...
...By the same token, journalists and government officials of the small European states will say privately that a stronger Germany actually increases their stake in NATO, and their incentives to keep pace...
...And still the allies seem tempted by the notion of "divisibility...
...It will be said, first, that this policy ignores the uneasy relations our allies often have with one another...
...Past alliance ' crises were activated, curiously enough, by the prospect of Soviet-American relaxation...
...No longer, and this change is perhaps more important than any other...
...Still less should the ?9 United States be daunted by the thought that in enhancing their power the United States will also enhance their indepen- dence...
...military spending climbs, the rich economies of our allies will seem an ever more inviting source of funds for a broad alliance effort...
...In this sense, East-West conflict was once truly divisible...
...How well the United States does in this struggle will depend greatly on its success in convincing Third World regimes to adopt a pro-Western or--at the very least--a non-aligned posture...
...They do mean that simple compromise between the outlooks of left and right is not adequate...
...Moreover, in most cases, it would be unrealistic to expect American support to require direct U.S...
...The French neutron bomb test, revealed last June, in particular taught a salutary lesson...
...After all, he wrote, "Germany needs the U.S...
...Alliances involve both an exercise of power and a test of honor: Both of these gratify the Right...
...III Bad instincts about allies do not doom American alliance policy to failure...
...This does not mean that the United States should simply back any anti-Soviet or pro-Western leadership, without first considering the character of the regime, its importance to American interests, and the type of support demanded...
...In fact, our allies are in some ways more helpful on NATO affairs, where, after all, only incremental change is at stake, than in extra-European affairs, where an honest break with their isolation is required...
...Similarly, last December's NATO decision on medium-range missiles has shown that, even in the face of Soviet propaganda barrages, Western unilateralism can bring results: in this case, the first hint of Soviet interest in serious negotiations...
...For these elites no need is greater or more pressing than the need to stay in power...
...But it only seemed to raise more acutely the question, what would become of NATO itself...
...The tone of most alliance writing on the subject is a danger sign: Our commentators commonly express exasperation, anger, even contempt for our allies...
...That the United States defends allies is treated as a measure of American greatness...
...These forces confer a special status and independence...
...Alliances imply that the great problem of world politics is still security, and that it is eased by choosing up sides...
...The seriousness of Soviet negotiating offers could not be known with certainty, but it was usually a decisive argument against them that they might limit the West's freedom of action, and unravel its new political unity...
...The United States must, how-ever, demonstrate that it will act effec- tively within the limits of its commitment to make certain that the leadership it chooses to support remains in power, Aclmittedly this appears to be a short-term solution, but it must be remembered that such "short-term leaders" as President Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan are still with us...
...Cooler heads have so far prevailed against what may have been mere electionyear heat...
...The uneasiness of the Left with alliances is clearly the more straightforward...
...Connally has made a career of cracking allies' heads, but this impulse is "no exception on the Right...
...In every case, the active and nagging question was, would we let them down...
...allies, in other words, need not stymie a policy designed to strengthen them...
...Israel or Saudi Arabia, India or Pakistan, Greece or Turkey...
...And if one calculates NATO budgets using American manpower costs, the spending gap between the United States and its allies ?9 disappears altogether...
...Suez and Vietnam were major crises for each side, but the divisions they engendered did not decisively affect East-West relations...
...There are, in fact, already the seeds of such resignation in the Administration's inclination to build our capabiliti~:s in the Persian Gulf at the expense of forces elsewhere: carriers from the Mediterranean and Pacific, plans for wartime redeployment of forces...
...Steven R. David WIELDING ALIGNMENTS S Adjusting to the reality of the Third World...
...Above all, earlier conflicts within the alliance over extra-European issues did not impair unity against the Soviets...
...American policy will have to adjust to both of these realities...
...It is not mere absentmindedness, innocence, or malice that governs here, but conservative and liberal thinking about world politics...
...The direction of a war effort, after all, would be largely out of German hands, and even its success would destroy a great deal of Germany...
...In a sense, then, the success of the United States in the Third World will depend on how well we can manipulate and satisfy two of the most basic human desires--the drive for power and the fear of death...
...In the fifties, although American leaders doubted the firmness of German public opinion, they had boundless confidence in German leaders...
...Yet it is also foolish to pretend that it is easy to call for higher German spending to support existing defense strategy...
...And as a result the fear arose that in a pinch the United States would treat its allies as a nuisance, a source of risk without compensating benefit...
...The House Appropriations Committee, for example, recently recommended that "several projects in Europe be funded by host nations as a cost offset program for our expenditures in the Middle East...
...With the United States and our allies so increasingly dependent on raw materials such as oil, however, we can no longer afford to wait for the Saudi Arabias of the world to transform themselves into functioning democracies...
...Past analyses of the politics of the alliance often asked, in one way or another, whether it could survive if this happened...
...Some of the margin between American and alliance spending is made up by strategic nuclear forces and by a worldwide navy...
...The United States spends more than its allies in part because it aims at a different capability...
...Competition among U.S...
...Its politicopsychological effect will be to preserve a limited European sense of freedom of action, based on shrunken capabilities and parochial vision...
...The United States will be able to earn the confidence of its allies only by increasing their confidence in themselves...
...Soviet silence on it showed reluctance to take on the Europeans, and implied that the earlier campaign against an American neutron bomb was just so much talk, whose target was alliance unity...
...Where once the Europeans feared that the United States would let them down, now the United States angrily detects appeasement in them...
...Spending is just one example...
...II How will the United States respond to its alliance problems...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 17 A new exclusivity will appear to free an alliance policy that is otherwise paralyzed by the competing claims of America's friends...
...Both left and right charge that our allies do not bear a fair share of the common defense...
...True, both left and right have strong loyalties for those whom they see as their counterparts in other countries, but these ideological affinities and antipathies are least in evidence in dealing with our closest allies...
...other don't...
...The United States, feeling relatively weaker, will sometimes see an urgent advantage in choosing one side or the other...
...While overcoming the Left's unhappiness with power, it cannot rely too much on the Right's overconfidence in it, on the thought that "in the end" (after all, an ominous phrase) our allies will have to be with us...
...If the Left dislikes alliances because they require power, the Right will, ironically, as often find that they inhibit the exercise of our power...
...In the past decade, although Europe's stake in events beyond its own boundaries has grown, neither its own power nor its support of American power has expanded in like measure...
...states the Left's dislike of allies: They ask too much?9 And the more likely it seems that the United States may actually have to defend Western Europe, the more we will hear this argument...
...If others squeal about German power, many Americans .will say, so much the worse for them...
...If the United States can demon-strate an ability and willingness to protect the leadership of those regimes it hopes to attract, it will enhance its ~nfluence in the Third World...
...Unlike the Left, the Right sees the unavoidable tasks before us in the world, but is for this very reason impatient with' allies who seem to deflect American policy from them...
...The anxiety was sharp even when hypothetical, for its premise seemed undeniable: The direct physical security of the United States did not require defense of the perimeter that it Stephen Sestanovich is legislative assistant for foreTgn policy to Senator Daniel Pat~qck Moynihan...
...feeling impotent, they will also feel that their interests diverge from ours...
...as Soviet power grew everywhere, the allies asked for always more risky commitments...
...Still more striking is the lack of confidence with which the United States approaches the question...
...Therefore, to secure a pro-American align- ment it is reasonable that the United States meet the needs of this narrow but critical elite...
...And since disenchantment with allies is likely to be the rule on both left and right, it will be a major task mercly to keep these difficulties in perspective...
...Measures now before the Congress would require increased European support to maintain American forces in Europe and to construct Indian Ocean bases...
...When a friend's needs cannot be challenged, nor its worthiness impugned, the Left may profess strong support, while ignoring the connection between American power and the ability to meet our alliance commitments...
...Even the rearmament of Germany could have been much more explosive than it was, and more destructive of Western unity, had'not the United States been so much more powerful than the other members of the alliance and so deeply engaged in European affairs...
...In America both the Left a-nd the Right, though they view the' problem very differently, have no special liking for allies and, not knowing how to treat them, tend to treat them badly...
...Lack of confiderice that they can have an impact outside Europe assures our allies' impotence in Practice...
...Although Europeans wondered how the United States would behave in wartime, their fear was equally political: What would the United States do if it found that the allies' political goals could be pursued only at the expense of its own...
...Issues of ideology, trade, aid, and image can all affect the choices Third World countries make...
...In short, although the Right may value alliances as an expression of power, it is uncomfortable with them when they are an obstacle to American power or freedom of action...
...Didn't they see that issues like Berlin should not be allowed to obstruct the search for better relations...
...needs Germany...
...a new policy must reject key features of each...
...And this will be possible only if the United States can convince these select individuals that political alignment with the West is in their best personal interest...
...This works: The unattractiveness of the Park regime in South Korea broadened the acceptance of an otherwise absurd proposal for American withdrawal...
...the moment does not allow such delicacy...
...indeed they aro mutually reinforcing...
...The need to provide for survival follows from the nature of the Third World, where nearly all countries are run by dictatorial regimes in which the significant foreign policy questions are decided by a single Steven R. David is a research fellow in the National Security Studies Program at Harvard University...
...They block our shortcuts to clarity and action...
...Little remains, in short, of the time when the most terrifying prospect the alliance had to face was that someday the antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States might disappear...
...Only, perhaps, when American support for Pakistan is beyond America on War and Diplomacy...
...This is what conservatives mean when they joke abput reintroducing the Mansfield Amendment...
...As conservatives.have led in pointing out, the West's military position is precarious, and the Europeans understandably fear policies that may bring an ultimate test closer...
...And in Central Europe the endless dithering of the small states on the big issues may push the United States toward an ever more direct bilateral tie with Germany...
...For the first time it must earn its allies every day...
...All the same, responsible or not, the United States may not react comprehendingly to the European view...
...Today the United States feels unable to protect an emergent Western consensus with straightforward rebuffs...
...Today's alliance crisis is, by contrast, sharpened and made more dangerous by events, since it revolves around the question of what role other countries are to take in growing Soviet-American hostility...
...The temptation to treat our allies badly goes beyond confusion about who our friends are...
...The coming decade is virtuallycertain to bring increased American-Soviet competi- tion for influence in the Third World...
...Only an America with an extended role in the world and ready to deploy its power can do so...
...However extreme this view, it unashamedly (and by appealing to principle...
...Nothing short of a new strategy may fully resolve some of the tensions of the spending issue...
...In most cases, at any rate, the long-term alternative of a stable, liberal government simply does not exist...
...The proponents of these schemes commonly insist that they have no thought of using European contributions to cut overall American efforts...
...They will be A neither a simple substitute for, nor a simple tool of, American power...
...The cooperation of allies and others is often needed to achieve American purposes, but if they resist our wishes, the Right is likely to feel that the reason is an inadequate respect for American power, or perhaps simply inadequate power...
...And although conservatives were THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 15 able to t r a c e - - c o r r e c t l y - - t h e trends in world politics that had produced the allies' view, their approach to changing it seemed to forget these trends...
...And naturally Soviet opportunities have been transformed...
...A very small straw in the wind was Senator Bayh's recent proposal to empower the President to impose tariff penalties on all goods from countries not fully supporting American policy toward Iran and Afghanistan...
...For the Left, of course, such increases would substitute for American power...
...Here the United States will repeatedly have to consider a break with one of the most ambitious and distinctive aspects of the alliance policy pursued since 1945...
...Since it obviously refers to Germany, the question is startling when posed by France...
...This power, if we do not ignore the possibility, can moderate the hostility of allies...
...While urging a greater effort, however, the United States should not make a fetish of its allies' military spending as such, and Congress should be kept from forcing the question on its own...
...This process seems in one respect to be very complex...
...This is not because Third World leaders are any more ambitious or megalo- maniac than their Western counterparts, but because the threats they face carry much graver consequences...
...If anything, conservatives generally pride themselves on keeping our commitments (solemn commitments, one says...
...The European members of NATO seem to doubt this, as though detente had increased only their stake in good EastWest relations, without any reciprocity...
...Worse, our allies are the world's insecure...
...Often, left and right may have embarked on different paths...
...Senator Helms notwithstanding, the Right's record is as problematic as the Left's...
...As a result, the cost of defending our allies may be much !ligher than even the world-weary I.eft has charged...
...After a decade in which Germany's real military outlays increased 30 percent while ours dropped, spending hardly entitles us to blame the Europeans for lack of political will...
...Comparisons between U.S...
...When they show little comprehension of this, or of the part they must play, the worst American responses--and perhaps a final alliance crisis--are invited...
...This outlook was much in evidence last year during the ratification debate on SALT II...
...Yet there are obstacles within our own policies to a revival of the alliance...
...In addressing the issues on the alliance agenda, a new administration should in every case seek out the path that increases our allies' sense of their own freedom of action...
...Is the United States to propose that its allies spend at a comparable level, without acquiring either its status or its independence...
...SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 18...
...There is a curious alignment here: Americans who resist higher spending say our allies don't help enough...
...Because alliances are hard to manage at a time when conservatives want to make a clean break with past policies, the ascendancy of the Right may not be able to head off a deeper alliance crisis...
...doubt will India take seriously the impor- tance of good relations with the United States...
...The Left knows that its dislike of a large American role in the world opens it to the charge of neglecting our friends...
...Even the figures are in doubt: Because U.S...
...It was too common to hear the view that the allies could be brought around by--again!--a few threats to withdraw American troops...
...Thus, John Connally's proposals on the Middle East took for granted that Israel could be made to yield its resistance to a Palestinian state by the increase of American strength in the region...
...For it is not irrelevant who within the alliance acquires 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 the real military capabilities and who acts as the bankroller or subcontractor...
...For it still considers--however exaggeratedlythat in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the world, it is defending others even more than itself...
...at Suez, Britain and France asked that we pass up openings among non-aligned states...
...This remains a noble idea...
...The task will not be easy, for too many of our allies have become habituated to paralysis...
...They do fear one another, and arms will increase their fears (of one another and us...
...manpower costs are those of a volunteer army, our military budget overstates our military effort...
...They may well be, but now is a peculiarly inappropriate moment to invoke "the end" as a basis for alliance unity...
...Past discord on such issues rarely undermined the ability of either the United States or its allies to conduct a coherent policy toward the Soviet Union...
...A new strategy may, admittedly, be even more contentious than spending alone...
...Israel is the most conspicuous case of an American ally many of whose eager defenders otherwise oppose a large American international role...
...In the eighties, mistrustful of both German leadership and opinion, the United States will feel it lacks any instruments of alliance unity...
...they want" s9mething from us and want us to use our power to get it for them...
...Quite the contrary, the allies were eager to make the most of d&ente...
...The Administration's fixation on the Persian Gulf at the expense of the American role in Europe has, of course, helped to strengthen this divisibility in the minds of many Europe~fns...
...When Europeans explain this idea, they often get their true policy strangely backwards...
...and German spending narrows...
...To paraphrase Khrushchev, minor powers have their parochial concerns, to which the global interests of the superpowers will sometimes have to be subordinated...
...Having argued for several years that the treaty would make restoration of a military balance in Central Europe more costly and difficult, the treaty's opponents somewhat sheepishly discovered that the Adminstration had mustered the unanimous support Of NATO for ratification...
...Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the United States promoted long-term political and economic development that would lead to the establishment of liberal democracies as the best way to insure the survival of pro-Western regimes...
...Better then to be cooperative...
...And American policy has begun to show some of the same marks--displeasure bordering on punitiveness, disgust bordering on disengagement...
...Similarly, when Henry Kissinger reported to Congress on the state of d&ente in 1974, his observations on American alliances implicitly assumed that their main problem was obsolescence...
Vol. 13 • November 1980 • No. 11
