European Document t Surviving Together
Wajsman, Patrick
SURVIVING TOGETHER by Patrick Wajsman For four years, many Europeans criticized the diplomatic blunders of the White House, its chronic inability to follow a firm coherent course, its reversals,...
...Patrick Wajsman is editor of the French quarterly, Politique Internationale, anda regular editorial writerfor the daily, Le Figaro, from which this essay is reprinted...
...The incoherence of Jimmy Carter gave the Europeans a wonderful pretext to do nothing that might make the Kremlin unhappy...
...This rule, unfortunately, is seldom followed, as can be seen by an example which hardly is to our credit: In the Arab-Israeli conflict the European community, for many months, has been trying to cut the ground from under the Americans by criticizing the Camp David process while loudly demanding an illusory "global solution...
...For in the hour of the Soviet danger, calls of etiquette, conflicts of rank, and thinskinned sensitivities are simply not appropriate in relations between the old and the new world...
...To win favors from the oil-producing states...
...To please the terrorists of the PLO...
...For too long the nations of the free world have behaved like members of a club...
...We could also make it clear to the masters of the Kremlin that we will not hesitate in the future to play the China card, and that if Moscow continues to send its tanks and its MiGs all over the world, we will explore the possibility of true military cooperation with Peking...
...A true trans-Atlantic partnership would also require that we define, with Washington, a strategy of containment and counterattack against Soviet expansion...
...So unhealthy that, disappointed by our sacred egoism, a number of American senators may well decide to revive the Mansfield amendment which recommended ten years ago that the number of GIs stationed in Europe be reduced...
...For thirty years the Europeans have showed themselves to be totally incapable of advancing the cause of peace in the Middle East...
...But why in heaven must we oppose ourselves systematically to our friends overseas...
...Is it necessary to indicate that neither Germany nor France, nor certainly the smaller countries, would leap for joy if such an event took place...
...How, they said in Paris and Bonn, can one follow a man whose strategy changes as quickly as the weather...
...sed to hearing the European political class carry on with words of appeasement and accomodation, a reader may judge such a suggestion Utopian...
...Conclusion: The choice is ours...
...We could, first of all, decide to bring massive aid (especially in the form of arms) to all who courageously resist the Soviets or their Cuban mercenaries: the guerrillas of Jonas Savimbi in Angola or the partisans of Allah in Afghanistan...
...Is it so inconceivable that our interests and their should coincide...
...Today this pretext no longer exists...
...The time for playing valet is over (except in the East, of course...
...Next, we could make more systematic use of the green weapon and not hesitate to decree a general embargo on the technological equipment which the lords of the Kremlin require for their development plans...
...And vice-versa...
...It is time they form a team...
...This division of labor (for you the stick, for us the carrot) is fundamentally unhealthy...
...And, if possible, reconquer some of the lost ground...
...General de Gaulle himself-the great scourge of hegemony-had understood that it is not enough to say no to the Americans to be independent...
...It is simply a matter of surviving together...
...Had he not inscribed this profound conviction in history by supporting without conditions our friends and allies during the crises in Berlin and Cuba...
...And that deserves, without doubt, a slight effort...
...We could threaten to destabilize the Soviet Moslem republics by increasing what is known as psychological warfare...
...Simply put, this means that every time Washington is in a better position than Europe to advance the cause of peace, the community should either discreetly retire or support the American initiative...
...With Ronald Reagan's strong leadership, they say, the European community will be "taken in hand" and will no longer, as in the past, be able to "make itself heard" and "oppose itself collectively to Washington...
...This means that we must try to contain the imperial activities of the Soviet Union from one end of the world to the other...
...To bring the USSR back into the process...
...Again: This is not the way we should practice solidarity...
...Once again I am not arguing here for alignment, servility, or allegiance towards Washington...
...To have the satisfaction of being present at the great banquet of reconciliation...
...And yet there are such . ambitious action we could undertake with our American friends...
...In the first place, such an enterprise demands that we stop balking every time Washington asks us to increase our defense spending...
...SURVIVING TOGETHER by Patrick Wajsman For four years, many Europeans criticized the diplomatic blunders of the White House, its chronic inability to follow a firm coherent course, its reversals, its improvisations, and-in a word-its weakness...
...And these critics were correct to criticize the first democracy on the planet and our most faithful ally: We have the right to demand of the United States more talent and more conviction in its defense of the free world...
...These secret Americanophobes, indeed, have a very curious way of thinking...
...One can, if I am not mistaken, be a good European, a good German, a good Frenchman, without thinking that it is essential to dissociate oneself from the United States on every problem which concerns the future of the Atlantic world...
...For too long we have been living with a comfortable idea: "Let the United States pay most of the costs of the common defense, let Europe profit from the charms of d&tente...
...What is even odder, however, is that some of the very men who even yesterday were castigating the weak Carter, already are beginning to criticize the strong Reagan...
...Let the reader understand me...
...Why...
...To conclude, the trans-Atlantic partnership will really know its hour of glory only if Americans and Europeans agree to join together, without second thoughts, behind the principle of non-competition in politics...
...But the leaders of the Old World are still going to have to make choices...
...I am not saying that all means of pressure should be used at once...
...Finally, we could reinforce, at whatever cost, the more exposed links of the non-Marxist world (Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand) and thus demonstrate to the Soviets the full extent of our commitments...
...But it seems to me that the election of a man as determined as Ronald Reagan offers Europeans a historical opportunity: the chance to establish with the United States a clear understanding founded on the sheer perception of a common future and unshackled by superficial pains of pride...
...I am not even saying that they are the only ones available, but simply that there ought to exist on both sides of the Atlantic a consensus on the soundness of such methods...
...Beyond the President of the United States, could it therefore be America itself which troubles their elegant serenity...
...Was it clever to choose to give lessons in diplomacy to Cairo, or to Jerusalem, or especially, to Washington, at the very moment when the hope of peace was finally returning...
Vol. 14 • February 1981 • No. 2
