The 'Year of Europe'

...they like to discuss first," Jean Monnet, the father of the Common Market, used to tell visitors...

...has the advantage that when interagency disagreements persist, as they often do, the President can make the final decision...

...Secretary of State William Rogers later said he preferred to term it a "Year of Building" better relationships everywhere, not just in Western Europe...

...Upon meeting, the British and American Cabinet officers could then take up the remaining questions, usually political rather than technical, with a clear understanding of each other's problems and negotiating positions...

...Consensus on the broad principles of reform is targeted for September, with a comprehensive agreement hoped for by September 1974...

...2. Western Europe's monetary and trade policies create "concrete irritants translatable into domestic political issues" in the U.S...

...debt overseas, foreign investment, inflation, the energy crisis, the environment, regulation of multinational corporations, and aid for the developing countries...

...Besides having different timetables, both GATT and the IMF include Canada and Japan, the two nations that account for the bulk of the U.S...

...In addition, such nato Eurogroup members as Norway, Greece and Turkey do not belong to the Common Market...

...White House foreign policy decisions have often ignored interagency discussions and been so closely held that State Department and other officials-including Kissinger's own assistants on occasion -have not been consulted in advance or informed afterward of their full background...

...3. The once poor but now affluent Western Europeans have failed to act on their altered economic circumstances, and America's, by taking over more of their own defense load...

...This is by no means a complete list of the Nixon Administration's grievances, yet it conveys the high points and general tone of the "dialogue"-if that is the proper word for an argument that, on both sides, has been mounting in volume for two or three years...

...The Americans do not like to decide alone...

...Among the major problems are nato's defense posture, military security in Europe, other negotiations with the Communist powers, relations with Japan, instability in the Middle East, disarmament, trade, agriculture, monetary crisis-management and overall reform, funding of the $70 billion U.S...

...Some of our friends in Europe have seemed unwilling to accord America the same trust in our motives as they received from us...

...But his repetition of the criticism at other meetings since indicates that he was in deadly earnest...

...deficit in trade and payments, plus the members of the Common Market and several developing countries...

...There are other difficulties in the U.S.'s linkage approach...

...Monetary reform is already under negotiation in the International Monetary Fund's Committee of 20, made up of the 10 major industrial nations and the same number of developing countries...

...Somewhat whimsically, before his trip to Washington last February, Heath noted that he saw no possibility in the projected European-American negotiations for the kind of bargaining that goes on within the Common Market, which the British term a vue d'ensemble and the French call un package deal...

...In past Administrations, European leaders were frequently informed of interagency deliberations within the U.S...

...Indeed, the intricate negotiations getting under way at present promise to be as difficult as they are crucial for America's future role in the world...

...Negotiating with allies, the priority task for the second Nixon Administration, is something the White House finds much more difficult...

...Now an undersecretary of the Treasury, Sonnenfeldt speaks with authority, having "clocked," as he recently put it, 70 hours over the past year in face-to-face sessions with Soviet Party chief Leonid Brezhnev, and several times as many hours in discussions with U.S...

...It is a "year" that probably will last a decade...

...That's all right for dealing with Communist dictators, who operate in the same way and can't complain about being taken by surprise," said a British diplomat in Brussels recently...

...The Common Market's executive commission predicted that it would be a year of rising tensions in European-American relations...

...feels it is up to its trading partners to remove the permanent deficit in the American balance of payments (something for which the Allies perversely insist the U.S...

...Europeans are equally exasperated by their experiences with the Nixon Administration...

...The BrandtNixon communique that terminated their Florida meeting in December 1971 spoke of close cooperation "to be arranged" between the U.S...

...Western Europe, in turn, has its own catalogue of complaints about American policy...

...During his first term, the President's primary concern abroad was negotiating with adversaries-moscow, Peking, Hanoi-And he was extraordinarily successful...

...French acquiescence proved more difficult to obtain...

...clearly cannot be overcome unless consultation is improved, but that alone will not eliminate the substantive conflicts currently dividing the Atlantic Allies...

...The procedure has pretty much broken down under the Nixon-Kissinger system...

...nuclear guarantee) unless granted unilateral trade and monetary concessions, Europeans began to view the linkage of economic and defense issues as a demand for "protection money" and even a form of "nuclear blackmail...

...Trade liberalization is to be hammered out, meanwhile, at the 80-nation GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) talks in Geneva, scheduled to start in the fall and last at least until the end of 1975...

...President Georges Pompidou had reversed Charles de Gaulle's veto of British entry into the Common Market, but he was not then prepared to challenge Gaullist dogma on "independence" from the U.S...

...Washington deals bilaterally with Bonn in biannual agreements, now up for renewal again, to offset the bulk of the dollar outflow caused by the stationing of American troops in West Germany...

...Conversely, the available forums for defense questions in Europe are not appropriate for economic issues...

...Until the White House makes a decision, the State Department cannot discuss the American position with us or even inform us authoritatively of the key factois that are being weighed...

...world for the remainder of this century...

...But it is evident that despite confused initial reactions, Henry Kissinger's proposal for a "new Atlantic Charter" has accomplished its primary purpose: It has thrown a very large pebble into the European pond, commanding the kind of attention within the Common Market and its nine member governments that transatlantic relations have not received since the clash of Gaullist and Kennedy "Grand Designs" in the early '60s...

...Cabinet members, they expected lower echelon officials on both sides to have reached substantial agreement on the facts, to have informed each other of their respective ministerial views, and to have resolved most issues in advance through formulas jointly devised and separately cleared with or "sold" to superiors...

...Proposals for a multilateral EEC summit conference with President Nixon this year encounter much the same objection, particularly in France...

...If Washington is negotiating with Moscow on European defense, it is not through choice, he said, but because "it has not proved possible" to negotiate about it with the Allies, a course he would prefer...

...The Europeans fear that such a link would enable Washington to employ its vital military contribution to the Continent's defense as leverage in economic bargaining...

...In part, Sonnenfeldt was expressing the exasperation American officials have felt in attempting to cope with a European Economic Community composed of nine independent nations (Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, West Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands...

...In this process, British ministers, being generalists for the most part, depended heavily on their nonpo-litical civil servants for expert analysis and advice...

...decision at the mutual force reduction talks with the Soviets in Vienna, a key British official exploded: "We've never been heard...

...Not that divided counsels are a new phenomenon in Washington...

...And the long-ignored issues that increasingly divide Washington from its chief nato Allies will not be easily resolved...

...If 15 or 20 or 30 groups, each with a few million dollars, think they are suffering disadvantages," Son-nenfeldt said, Congressional coalitions of such disaffected groups could prove formidable for the Administration...

...treaties" among a half-dozen government agencies have sometimes had to be worked out before an American position could be presented abroad...

...Nixon's call for a carrot-and-stick Trade Reform Act -To enable him to raise or lower import barriers to extract concessions from America's closest allies -led London's Sunday Times to comment, "The 'Year of Europe' begins with a shock treatment...

...The "new Atlantic Charter," if it can be drafted at a summit conference by December, will only be a declaration of intent to seek solutions in common...

...Before meeting with U.S...

...allies...

...Consequently, the absence of an institutional forum and an economic-defense link-both sought by the U.S...

...Even before the Watergate disclosures, President Nixon was forced to postpone his planned visit with Western European leaders from February to July to autumn, and it is now scheduled for "toward the end of the year...

...Though Kissinger touched on some of these in his April speech, Sonnenfeldt's earlier private comments are considered here to be more revealing of the Administration's attitude...

...was watered down to a "constructive dialogue...

...Yet no other forum could be more suitable for the discussion of these issues in tandem, for it is at the top in every government that they inevitably must be considered together...

...The most important-And the most emotional since the bombing of North Vietnam and the bullying tactics of former Treasury Secretary John Connally-is Washington's insistence, recently reiterated by Kissinger, on the "linkage" of European defense issues to negotiations on trade and monetary reform...

...The Brandt proposal for an "institutional dialogue" with the U.S...

...Others were less interested in the title and more pessimistic about the outlook for the Alliance...

...Last December, Secretary Rogers told the Common Market Commission that the U.S...

...And because Japan and the developing countries are not involved in European defense, that topic obviously cannot be taken up by the IMF or GATT...

...Unlike the EEC, though, the U.S...

...government in time to communicate their views for consideration before a final decision was made...

...Finally, the absence of any institution capable of taking on the kind of comprehensive negotiations suggested by the U.S...

...too must share responsibility...

...He spoke from firsthand knowledge as a cosponsor of many major transatlantic enterprises in political, economic and military affairs...

...In the intricate triangular bargaining on shifting issues that characterized British-French-West German negotiations before and during the EEC summit conference of October 1972, Prime Minister Edward Heath sided with Pompidou on this question...

...For the EEC is unable to speak with a single voice until, after infinite haggling, a compromise position is unanimously agreed upon...

...OLD ALLIES FACE NEW PROBLEMS The 'Year Euroi3e* by robert kle,man London Watergate has raised many questions here about the prospects for the Nixon Administration's long-heralded and increasingly controversial "Year of Europe," particularly whether the President can still win the necessary Congressional support for it...

...When he first made his startling comment about dealing with allies at a private conference last December, it was regarded as a jest...

...On the contrary, the Nixon Administration has simply proposed new machinery for consultations with Western Europe, particularly with the EEC...

...it signalled Nixon's private agreement in principle to the concept of an institutional link, previously urged on him by Brandt in April 1970 and June 1971 as well...

...That falls in the purview of the EEC, but it has no defense responsibilities and includes neutral Ireland (not a nato member) and France (no longer a participant in nato's integrated command and defense planning groups...

...incurs by stationing 300,000 of its troops in Europe...

...In his proposal for a new dialogue, Kissinger acknowledged the deep suspicions stirred abroad by the Administration's methods and unilateral policies: "There have been complaints in Europe that America is out to divide Europe economically, or to desert Europe militarily, or to by-pass Europe diplomatically...

...Once a Presidential decision is made, we are told it cannot be changed...

...This has been acknowledged by Helmut Son-nenfeldt, one of Kissinger's former deputies...

...Washington's view might sound "demanding" or "imperious," he conceded, but it was a reality of American politics that Europe must accept...

...It is essential, Sormen-feldt insisted, to reverse nato's strategy, structure, force deployments and burden-sharing arrangements-And for the Allies to absorb the added costs the U.S...

...In 1973," the State Department's last annual report declared, "we will be initiating new negotiations and developing new relationships which could determine the political-economic structure of the Robert Kleiman, currently on leave from the editorial board of the New York Times, is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner studying Europe beyond the Cold War...

...and today resisted by Western Europe-now impede a necessary evolution in transatlantic relations...

...For decades, too, the British-American "special relationship" was largely based on the skill with which London practiced the same art of consultation...

...these subjects are generally handled by separate ministries...

...But it can make consultation among democratic governments virtually impossible...

...favored "operational links" with the Community...

...And then the trouble usually has just begun: Almost as much strain is experienced every time the bargaining calls for some shifting of ground...

...Asked whether London's views had been taken into account in an important U.S...

...At the same time, a major reappraisal of West European defense, and the American commitment to it, cannot be avoided much longer...

...is paralleled, within each European government, by a lack of negotiators competent to discuss trade, monetary, diplomatic, and defense problems across the board...

...When some American officials in Brussels suggested that EEC members would prefer more informal arrangements, he replied that President Nixon felt something "highly visible" was essential...

...After Connally threatened to remove American troops from Europe (and, with them, the credibility of the U.S...

...and the EEC...

...Thus to Europeans, even without Watergate, the "Year of Europe" looks increasingly like the "Year of the United States...

...Yet under Nixon, Europeans complain, this has been an added impediment rather than an advantage in foreign affairs, one that Watergate is unlikely to remove...

...Apart from the delays in the Vietnam settlement and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, an act that was deeply repugnant to Europeans, the projected "Year of Europe" itself aroused much heat from its earliest mention...

...The more Washington denies that its desire to link political, military and economic questions is "for the tactical purpose of trading one off against the other"-As Kissinger put it last April-The more Europeans are persuaded that "the lady doth protest too much...

...no mention was made of those created by American policies in Europe) even when, as in the case of California's citrus growers, they only involve small sums of money...

...Most other European defense matters are handled in the 14-nation nato, which of course has no authority over trade and monetary policy...

...None of these procedural difficulties, however, has dissuaded Washington from its insistence on linked negotiations...

...Europe's distrust of the U.S...

...It was West German Chancellor Willy Brandt who interested Nixon in the idea of an "in-titutional link" between the European Community and Washington, a notion first proposed by Monnet in 1962 and approved later in the '60s by Parliamentary resolutions in all the Common Market countries except Gaullist France...

...Reportedly, he summed up Washington's criticism of its European friends as follows: 1. The U.S...