Growing Pains of the Alliance

...In a Western Europe where public ownership and economic planning are taken for granted even by conservatives, arguments over whether such measures should be described as "Socialism" merely raise a yawn...

...Within" is the operative term...

...In Bonn he encountered lingering suspicions, in Paris inflexible resolve to transform the French Army into a modern nuclear force, no matter what Washington might have to say about it...

...This prosperity, and the movement toward European economic integration of which it is both cause and effect, underlie the greater selfconfidence which Europe has lately been displaying in the perennial debate over what should be done to strengthen the Atlantic Alliance...

...Such reports are invariably denied, but that does not make them less credible...

...It has taken the British and American governments four years to realize that de Gaulle can neither be dethroned nor compelled to renounce his policy of making France the equal at least of Britain...

...apparently regarded by his colleagues as something of a Left-winger—has committed himself to anything more than the kind of liberal radicalism that Lloyd George popularized in England before the First World War...

...But it would be foolish to regret that this has happened...

...Macmillan has been in the rather difficult position of having to justify his policy without giving offense either to the Americans or the French...

...Short of a change of heart in Washington, it is difficult to see what can be done to improve Franco-American relations...

...In any case, they are unlikely to accept this position for very long...

...Nor will his successors be necessarily more pliable: They will inherit a France that has become a modern country and a nuclear power...

...It was France's and Europe's tragedy, the writer went on, that this was so...

...Premier Khrushchev has recently seemed more concerned with the economic health of his empire than with plans for expanding it...

...True, de Gaulle is said to have told a visitor, "Berlin est foutu" (Berlin is lost)—but he puts the emphasis upon the folly of making concessions to the Russians for the sake of something the West has already as good as surrendered...

...There is no need to comment at length upon the various statements made by President Kennedy, Secretary McNamara, President de Gaulle, Prime Minister Macmillan and others on this familiar subject...

...In that case, the West Europeans could absorb a certain quantum of threatening noises from Russia without immediately running off to Washington for protection...

...And, if the truth be told, they are only mildly impressed by the intellectual glamor of the "New Frontier...

...In London, he had to explain away McNamara's speech inveighing against "dangerous, expensive and non-credible" national deterrents...

...One may indeed argue that Western Europe is too fragile to survive a nuclear war, but on these grounds there is not much sense in NATO: The only people likely to draw comfort from this line of reasoning are those neutralists who are also pacifists (at least where Europe is concerned...

...There are indeed good reasons for not equipping the West German Army with nuclear weapons, but this is not the same as saying that the Germans must never learn how to make such toys...

...Yet de Gaulle's remark does fit in with his evident determination to tighten the bonds between France and the West German Federal Republic...

...Yet there is also the idea of "armed neutrality," for which a minimum of nuclear capacity seems required...

...nor are these days likely to return...

...In fact, his attitude over Berlin has been remarkably rigid: too rigid for the taste of his Left-wing critics in Britain and elsewhere...

...Even the fragmented Europe of 1962 already contains two powers with nuclear equipment, or the capacity to make it, and may shortly number three—for no one expects the Germans to remain innocent bystanders...

...When one remembers the demoralized Europe of the late 1940s and early '50s—the Europe that to some hysterical men of letters seemed ripe for conquest by the new Attila—the recent change, for all the irritations it brings in its wake, should be welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic...

...To judge by many hurt expressions seen and heard in public and private these days, this is the kind of remark Americans have to come to expect and resent...

...It has long been obvious that the American and French positions are wide apart...

...Whatever the answer to this last question, it is plain that the days are gone when the European members of the Alliance were content to follow Washington's lead almost unquestioningly...

...Growing Pains of the Alliance By George Lichtheim London Some weeks ago, one of Britain's most intelligent and literate young Tory aristocrats, writing in of all places the liberal Manchester Guardian, casually referred to President Kennedy as a secondrate man in charge of the world's greatest country...

...Instead he has triumphed over all his opponents and, short of assassination, can be expected to retain and even reinforce his authority...

...The Labor and Liberal Opposition leaders and press organs then inquired how in that case the British nuclear striking force could be described as "independent...

...George Lichtheim, whose reports from London have appeared in these pages for many years, is author of the forthcoming Europe Today and Tomorrow, to be published by Praeger...

...It is also appreciated that, in order to get into Europe, the British must somehow contrive to give the impression that they are not just America's junior ally...

...All this calls for some agility, and one must appreciate the tactical problem it imposes upon a Conservative government whose supporters still cherish the notion that Britain is a Great Power...

...What is uncertain is the manner in which the Atlantic Alliance can be expected to function, once the principal West European countries have attained some degree of military independence within NATO...

...There are people in France who suspect de Gaulle of such intentions...

...But even before de Gaulle came to power, successive French governments—all of them deeply committed both to the Atlantic Alliance and to European unity—had pushed ahead with nuclear research...

...This fear has now taken the place of the former nervousness over Washington's supposed trigger-happiness...

...It is now appreciated both in London and in Washington that the French are not going to talk about "merging" their deterrent with the British in a European or NATO force until they have made more progress with their own weapons...

...In fact, French intransigence over Berlin has grown in the measure that France has come closer to making its own A-bombs and Hbombs...

...Against this background, it should cause no surprise that there has been a growth in European selfconfidence...

...General de Gaulle, in contrast, was described as "a first-rate man ruling a second-class power...

...Everything would of course be a good deal easier if France had a weaker government than it actually has...

...The partners are not merely of unequal size...

...There is reason to believe that during his recent stay in Paris, Dean Rusk was made aware of this circumstance...

...for the British must take their share of the blame...

...Secretary Rusk's tour was not in fact a very happy one...

...The United States was inevitably the leader of the Western Alliance, but it lacked the kind of statesmanship that de Gaulle symbolized in France...

...For all that, thinking people in London, Paris, Bonn and Rome are aware that the United States is quite capable of dragging them all into an economic depression...

...After all, few people doubt the truth of McNamara's observation that independent nuclear deterrents are unlikely to deter anyone, and may even be more dangerous to their owners than to a putative enemy...

...if it were seriously supposed that the French intend to break up NATO, it would be a different matter altogether...

...Whether it is justified need not be discussed here, the less so since after all it is still possible for Kennedy to disprove it...

...Perhaps that is why Khrushchev has seemed to play down threats of using force over Berlin...

...More recently it has also become evident that the Americans are in fact resigned to the French nuclear program, and that the British will persist in treating it as a justification of their own effort...

...There are two possible answers: First, the military argument against duplication can be met by coordination at the Atlantic level, without affecting the political case for national ownership...

...Second, aside from being a status symbol, the nuclear deterrent could in certain circumstances become a means of giving Western Europe a minimum of defensive capacity that was not controlled by the United States...

...By British standards, the current argument over Medicare, to take one example, sounds distinctly Edwardian...

...It is beginning to look more likely that the Americans will fumble their monetary arrangements, and that as a result Western Europe's remarkable prosperity may suffer a temporary setback...

...There may be something rather archaic about possession of an independent national deterrent, but are McNamara and his supporters going to be so much happier if Europe obtains an integrated supranational nuclear force of its own...

...So far, no public figure in the United States—not even Senator Hubert Humphrey (D.-Minn...

...But even so, he is unlikely to do more than match the kind of radicalism that was considered advanced in Britain around 1910...

...diplomacy...

...At a recent rally of Rightwing conservative opponents to his Algerian policy, one of the speakers publicly charged him with leading France toward neutralism, and even suggested that the General had come to regard the global triumph of Communism as (1) probable and (2) unimportant...

...Even quite pro-American people in and around NATO headquarters in Paris—among them Germans, Frenchmen and Dutchmen who do not share de Gaulle's reservations about the U.S.—have been rather emphatic about stressing that Rusk has been the first Secretary of State to visit postwar Europe not as boss of the Alliance, but as representative of his country...

...It was their persistent attempt to retain a privileged status— and the equally persistent misreporting of French affairs in influential British journals—that set Washington off on the mistaken course of waiting for de Gaulle to fall or fail...

...He is probably good for two terms, and if he can break the stranglehold of the business community and its sages over American public life, he may be able to chalk up some impressive achievements before he leaves the White House...

...Again, there is no point in going into semantics...

...The fact is that the British deterrent is partly a status symbol and partly a bargaining counter in Britain's attempt to get into the Common Market, but no government can say such things in public...

...There was perhaps never much cause for serious worry on that score, and by now most people in Europe—setting aside the soft core of pacifists and the hard core of fellow-travelers — feel reasonably certain that the United States is not in fact going to plunge the world into nuclear war over the Formosa Straits...

...The dangerous heresies of Professors Heller, Rostow and Schlesinger have been tame orthodoxy to the British, and most other Europeans, for too long to evoke more than casual assent...

...This is not an easy matter, and he deserves some sympathy...

...Most of the political and intellectual issues relative to it had already been debated to death by the Fabians and their opponents before 1914, when so renowned a radical as Winston Churchill helped Lloyd George to take the first steps on the path leading to the future "welfare state.' I mention these well-known facts because they help to account for the mutual irritation which seems to dog the partnership vaguely known as the Atlantic Alliance...

...De Gaulle is perhaps sufficiently philosophical to dismiss Communism as a passing aberration, in comparison with the enduring interests of Russia and China, but I know of no evidence that he underrates the Soviet threat...

...Of course, Moscow's relative quiescence has also helped...

...Fate, or the Europeans, having willed otherwise, London now has to take the plunge into Europe without any assurance that Britain will continue to be regarded as America's principal partner, with a special status denied to mere Europeans...

...Quite naturally the French are suspected— possibly with reason—of toying with such notions...

...It is also evident that the two decisive changes were the formation of the Common Market and France's success in breaking the Anglo-American monopoly of nuclear power...

...Any revival of nuclear threats and bullying on his part would soon produce a stampede in the direction of NATO and SAC...

...The same inspired press leakages which stressed the French government's determination to go ahead with its nuclear program also emphasized that Paris was beginning to share its nuclear know-how with the Germans...

...The United States is now at most primus inter pares and if a politically unified Europe should emerge by 1970, America will be quite simply one-half of the Atlantic Alliance...

...There is now some danger that, while the British have seen the folly of exasperating him still further, Washington will aggravate the quarrel...

...That they have been allowed to deteriorate so far reflects no great credit on Anglo-U.S...

...On the other hand, it could be argued that Western Europe is approaching the point where it may be able to stand on its own feet militarily as well economically...

...This does not sound like "softness on Communism," in any case a ludicrous charge to bring against the General...

...This, the British public was hastily assured by its Government, did not refer to Britain's nuclear program, since it was closely integrated with that of the U.S...

...In the last analysis this is what the whole argument is about, and why it is so difficult to reduce it to military terms...

...Europeans do not, as a rule, find American domestic politics very exciting...

...A believer in coordinated Atlantic strategy might be forgiven for asking what is the purpose of all this duplication...

...IT is at this point that the recent public and private bickering over the British and French "nuclear deterrents" becomes relevant...

...one of them—the most important—is also afflicted with domestic problems that sound distinctly old-fashioned to the others...

...If this occurs, not only will the French become even more obstructive in NATO, they may even be tempted to use their newfound financial strength to make serious trouble for the dollar...

...If this was so, the British could go on patronizing the French, while offering to police Europe on behalf of the United States...