British Diplomacy at a Crossroads:

...And, so long as the cold war remains the main factor in world politics, the Labor party believes that the major danger from the Communists is not military aggression in Europe, but political expansion in Asia and Africa...

...The sputnik did not present any new dangers to Europe, which has lived for years with the knowledge that it will be annihilated in any all-out war...

...It believes the main need in the military field is to provide more mobile conventional forces for limited or local war—not more strategic air power...

...Some of Defense Minister Duncan Sandys's speeches suggest that he foresees a time when America has enough intercontinental striking power to justify her in leaving Europe altogether, and in that situation Britain might be able to assume the same relationship to the Continent as America has so far held to Europe as a whole...

...After years of bitter argument, the Labor party is now more united on foreign policy than at any time in its history...

...To some extent, the problem in London, as in Washington, is lack of integration in leadership at the national level...

...Though the absolute weapon makes it impossible to impose unconditional surrender on an enemy—above all in peacetime—NATO's official diplomatic posture implies the belief that it is possible for the West to achieve so decisive a military superiority over the Communists that it will be able to force them into making one-sided concessions, at least on the European problems which are NATO's main concern...

...My own belief is that the key to Britain's present foreign policy is the desire to cut foreign and defense expenditure and the commitments which make them necessary...

...This covers the entire north German plain, the obvious axis of any attack on Western Europe...

...Stealing the other party's clothes is an old tradition in British politics...

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...But, in the last few years, something has gone terribly wrong with the vision which inspired its founders...

...While accepting the need for a balance of power between East and West, it believes that the existing balance will suffice to prevent all-out war despite tremendous fluctuations in the relative striking power of the two sides...

...In fact, NATO is now fifteen nations in search of a leader...

...These views are held by many people who are neither British nor Socialist...

...Indeed, the paralysis of British diplomacy is only a little less complete than that of the U.S...

...Yet, although these contradictions have been known for years, the NATO Council was not prepared to discuss them...

...Another example of the Government's split mind appeared in the London Times on January 10...

...Such a pipedream is too fantastic to need discussion, but after the traumatic shock of Suez many British Tories have indulged in wilder fantasies...

...Superficially, there has never been a more favorable situation for British initiative...

...It must be admitted that this sort of behavior, whatever its real explanation, appears to Europeans as both hypocritical and perfidious—¦ justifying the traditional insults of the Anglophobes...

...The only positive advantage which the West gained at Paris was due to the small powers—notably Canada and the Scandinavians—which insisted on calling a halt to the senseless rituals which have lately become a substitute for political discussion inside NATO, and asked for time to consider the implications of NATO's present course...

...The resignation of all the Treasury ministers is the beginning of the end, even though the end is long protracted...

...Indeed, there were many bitter jokes in the NATO Council meeting about U and Non-U—the United States and United Kingdom delegations sit together for alphabetical reasons...

...And he can only sell his policy to his supporters by speeches which humor their nostalgia for the past...

...Indeed, Britain's prestige has rarely stood lower on the Continent...

...As a result, the Russians have kept the diplomatic initiative throughout, winning bloodless victories every time they send a letter to the Western powers...

...Fifteen NATO nations in search of a leader British Diplomacy At a Crossroads By Denis Healey London The December meeting of the NATO Council showed the world that Western policy has reached a dead end...

...There seems to be some justification for this last suspicion...

...The President's State of the Union message did not impress the Europeans...

...If anything, it made Europeans wonder whether it might not be conceivable for America and Russia to fight it out over their heads, without involving them directly...

...But, two days later, the Foreign Office called all the correspondents together and issued the following statement: "What he was really saying was that we must continue to work for an agreement which will be followed by deeds...

...The atmosphere in those days was not just one of anxiety at the onward march of Soviet power...

...In Britain, there is a growing feeling among all political tendencies that London should fill the vacuum of leadership created by the abdication of Washington...

...In the first place, no one in Europe any longer fears the sort of Soviet aggression which the NATO military planners say they are trying to prevent...

...Whether it is in or out of office, the Labor party is now likely to exert an increasing influence on British foreign policy...

...If the Western powers went to the conference tied to their existing policies, the conference would be certain to fail and the West would take all the blame in the eyes not only of the uncommitted world but of a majority of its own peoples...

...Indeed, in these circumstances a summit conference would be a disaster...

...Europe knows, as does America, that the only effective influence on American diplomacy is John Foster Dulles, who supports paralysis as a principle of faith...

...It might do good...

...Meanwhile, all sense of NATO's political purpose has been lost...

...For the most striking feature of the NATO meeting was the public demonstration that America's allies no longer have confidence in or respect for the ability of the United States to lead them...

...there was also a feeling of ardent idealism, a buoyant sense that the peoples of the West were embarking on a new experiment in international cooperation, whose success would do more than any purely military measures to halt the advance of Communism and expose Russia as the citadel of an old-fashioned imperialism incapable of meeting the challenge of the modern world...

...A drastic change in the priorities of Western diplomatic and economic effort is urgently required to support such policies...

...As he said: "It will do no harm...

...This danger can only be countered by political and economic policies which take account of the real needs and aspirations of the uncommitted world...

...It will take years for America to recover the position she once held...

...After years of disappointment, they want "deeds, not words...

...On the other hand, by reinforcing doubts about America's readiness to blow up the world for the sake of her allies, the sputnik has exposed some of the contradictions in NATO's present military policy...

...Indeed, the Government itself is obviously conscious of the opportunities before it...

...It is almost ten years since the Western alliance was created...

...And it is doubtful whether the proposed meeting of NATO's military chiefs in March will do much to dissipate this confusion...

...The strength at which NATO aimed was not to be measured solely in divisions and atomic bombs—it included economic prosperity and social justice, bread and freedom...

...Despite all the revolutionary changes in the world since NATO was created, this conception of its role remains the only valid one...

...In any case, his is a government which, in Aneurin Bevan's words, now has death in its heart...

...From this point of view, President Eisenhower's attendance in Paris was as disastrous as his later appearance on U.S...

...Much of the equivocation in current British policy is most easily explained on the assumption that Britain is going all out to establish herself as a major thermonuclear power and is prepared to follow America's diplomatic lead so long as she obtains physical assistance from America in building up her atomic armory...

...But, worst of all, the Continent has come to believe that Britain has now finally decided to be a junior partner to America in the nuclear club rather than senior partner to Europe in the non-nuclear club...

...It is difficult to see any other basis on which Britain can exert a real influence in world affairs...

...The Paris meeting made it possible to discern the nature of the malady which is sapping NATO's strength and, even more, its sense of purpose...

...Even more important than the military capacity to smother such a conflict without global war is a diplomacy which aims at minimizing the chances of a conflict breaking out...

...this simultaneously reported Britain's Ambassador to NATO as saying in Paris that the maintenance of large British forces in Europe was necessary, and the British Ambassador to Germany as saying in Bonn that, if the Federal Republic failed to pay the ?50 million demanded by Britain, the British forces in Germany would have to be reduced to such an extent that they would be "incapable of defending the area assigned to them...

...The Labor party sees the main danger to peace in the uncontrolled expansion of a local conflict which might well begin against the will of both Washington and Moscow...

...Yet for some reason it has so far fumbled all its chances...

...In its basic assessment of the world situation, it takes much the same view as the Canadian and Norwegian Governments expressed in Paris—a view which is widely held by influential people throughout the alliance, for example by George Ken-nan and Walter Lippmann in the United States...

...Macmillan really models himself on Pierre Mendes-France and not on Charles de Gaulle...

...NATO's aim was to create a unity and strength in the Western community which would not only provide military security against Soviet aggression but also establish the basis for negotiating a more stable settlement in the postwar world...

...That is why the Labor party wishes the West to negotiate with the Soviet Union to establish mutual control of the areas which are most unstable and most dangerous—particularly Central Europe and the Middle East...

...No doubt he had looked through all the tangle of proposals in the Bulganin letters and decided that this was the one which could be accepted with least damage...

...It made visible the nature of the paralysis which will continue to afflict American policy until either the Constitution or the President is changed...

...In France, the calculated insult to a recent ally by the arms delivery to Tunisia hurt worse because it came on top of what Paris sees as a British attempt to rob France through a Free Trade Area of all the benefits she hopes to receive from the European Common Market—the French Government has now put forward a counter-plan for a Free Trade Area...

...If it would assist in arriving at such agreements to have a non-aggression pact, then the British Government would feel that such a pact, to complete the agreements, might do some good...

...Consequently, he is forced into a mixture of opportunism and improvisation for his diplomacy...

...For example, on January 4 the Prime Minister made a feeble attempt to break new ground by suggesting that when we next negotiate with Russia we should "start by a solemn pact of non-aggression...

...That is why I believe that if the Conservative Government survives in Britain for the next two years, it may find that the facts compel it to take over many of the Labor party's views on foreign policy...