How Europe Views Carter

...A good number of Europeans are firmly convinced, in fact, that the U.S...

...Although European nato defense ministers continued to press for American assurances on the availability of the cruise, and Alliance officials told journalists that Jane's evaluations have not always proved exactly accurate, one could feel a shudder pass through the Continent...

...One diplomat, who is by no means sympathetic to white supremacism, remarked: "What this man has been saying about Rhodesian and South African problems is like throwing matches into a powder keg...

...Israel's friends charge that Carter's actions and statements have tended to favor the Arabs, most notably in the matter of a Palestinian entity, and have destroyed whatever political or moral arguments the majority of the European Economic Community (EEC) countries use against Paris on this issue...

...Many here simply did not believe their ears when they first heard he had described the Cubans as a "stabilizing element" in Africa...

...The EEC does, incidentally, share the U.S...

...wants a cheap dollar to improve the competitiveness of its exports...

...At best, they are seen as the implementations of preelection rhetoric...

...Washington's Middle East policies have come under fire from the Right and the Left, from pro-Israeli and pro-Arab factions...

...The cruise missiles would be a cheap solution, but Europe is worried about the U.S...

...Arab sympathizers, on the other hand, contend that Carter, like his predecessors, has "capitulated to the pro-Israel lobby...

...In the midst of this dispute, the editor of London's authoritative Jane's All the World's Aircraft dropped his own bombshell: He warned that President Carter's decision to scrap the B-l bomber and put all of America's eggs in the cruise basket might turn out to be as fatal a mistake as was Hitler's pinning his hopes against Britain on the V-l and V-2 missiles...

...One was the reaction to President Carter's Christmas Eve pledge to protect the value of U.S...

...The snake links Germany's strong Deutsche mark with several of the weaker Western European currencies, and only minimal fluctuations in exchange rates are permitted...

...salt treaty would be covered merely by letters of intent, and would apply for just three years—a period that would elapse, in any case, before the missiles could become operational in quantity...

...But in the majority of Western European chanceries, Young has become a symbol of the Carter Administration's recklessness and amateurism in delicate international situations...

...Indeed, some of them—like the criticisms of the U.S...

...These days, Europeans are wondering whether to ascribe the decrease in controversial statements emanating from Young to his own political maturation, or to the President's finally being able to assert authority over his UN representative...

...The Europeans fear that once a precedent is set, Washington would be reluctant to upset the psychological climate of superpower relations by making changes in such a sensitive matter—in other words, that an American-Soviet salt agreement would be paid for partly by mortgaging Western Europe's hoped-for nuclear deterrent...

...The weakness of the dollar creates disastrous strains in the "snake" of European currencies—that sickly survivor of the EEC's once-bright hopes for a European Monetary Union...

...The Secretaries stressed that whatever restrictions were placed on the range and deployment of the cruise missile by the new Eliahu Salpeter is currently European correspondent of Ha'aretz...

...Consequently, when the dollar goes down and money seeks refuge in the Deutsche mark, pushing its relative price higher than ever, the reserve banks of the weaker-currency countries are obliged to dip into their strong-currency reserves so as to keep the price of their money within the prescribed limit...

...In short, it feels it is being squeezed from opposite directions...

...Its memory of the general acquiescence to Charles de Gaulle's attacks on the dollar several years earlier is no better...

...imports helps finance other nations' opec deficits is roundly rejected: This may be the case where Japan is concerned...

...AFTER THE FIRST YEAR How Europe Views Carter by ELIAHU SALPETER CYRUS R. VANCE Brussels Europeans, by and large, have somewhat less of a penchant than Americans do for seizing on turns of the calendar to conduct bouts of political soul-searching...

...The cruise missile, however, is hardly the sole aspect of recent American defense and armaments policy making Europeans nervous...

...Washington has been strongly criticized, too, for its stand on one of the most important developments of the '70s—Eurocommunism...

...True, the loss of economic wealth and political power has tended to diminish the propensity of at least some countries for rushing in with advice and censures...

...Washington's contention that the continued high level of U.S...

...West Germany, which still manages to post a positive balance of payments, provides at least part of the support for the weaker currencies...

...failure to do more about its own energy problems—would seem to be almost irrefutable...

...Other indications of Europe's un-happiness with and lack of confidence in U.S...

...As for Europe's deep concern about the stability of American money (the dollar dropped 11 per cent in relation to the Deutsche mark in 1977), it is three-fold in origin: • If the dollar continues to lose ground, moderate opec members will not be able to resist pressures for a substantial hike in oil prices (now fixed in dollars...

...The depreciation has the effect of cheapening American goods and raising the cost of European products in markets throughout the world—making it even more difficult for Europe to cover its oil bills with exports...

...hard-pressed Europe still buys much more from America than the other way around...

...While Krem-linologists insist much more evidence is needed before its true impact can be adduced, there can be no question of the misgivings in Rome and, especially, Paris about the attitude toward the challenges posed by the Italian and French Communists...

...Nor did it diminish the sense of dependence on the U.S.: Europe continued to charge that America was not giving the free world strong enough leadership, revealing its awareness of how crucial the decisions made in Washington are here...

...In the area of global politics, some European statesmen (possibly including British Foreign Secretary David Owen) no doubt identify with U.S...

...due to its enormous oil imports are the real cause of the decline in the value of the dollar...

...Nevertheless, the unanimous belief is that in the long run, nothing short of an end to America's profligacy can break the opec stranglehold on the free world's energy supplies and prices...

...The net result is a dwindling of reserves and an unjustified increase in the price of local currency—making exports less competitive, trade deficits larger, money less valuable, and so on and on, in an accelerating vicious circle...

...This has prompted Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to grumble quite audibly that Bonn must now finance the deficits of its Western European partners (and, indirectly, a portion of the American trade deficit as well...

...Moreover, Bonn sees the depreciation of the dollar as the cause of the Deutsche mark's appreciation and of the reduced competitivenes of German exports...

...relationship...

...In looking to 1978, Western Europe has conveniently forgotten that its own panicky reaction to Arab oil embargo threats in October 1973 —and refusal to accept the tough moves then suggested by Kissinger— contributed immensely to the subsequent quadrupling of oil prices...

...at worst, as a consequence of irresponsible wishful thinking vis-a-vis the Soviet Union...

...European economists further maintain that the huge payments deficits accumulated by the U.S...

...The fact that Western Europe lacks solutions for its own parallel problems did not soften the tone of rebuke...

...The "purges" in the CIA, for example, have received very few cheers from seasoned commentators and diplomats...

...This amnesia, though, does not necessarily negate all of the arguments currently being made against the United States in European capitals...

...The issues of contention between Europe and America in 1977, if not as emotionally charged as those of the Johnson and Nixon eras, were spread over a wider range and involved more vital matters...

...Early last year, for instance, Europe's military (and, less overtly, political and economic) leaders enthusiastically embraced the development of the cruise missile, seeing in it the ideal answer to their own strategic weaponry problem...

...currency: The rate of the dollar improved only modestly on money markets here...

...Western Europe claims not to have the wherewithal to modernize its nuclear delivery systems enough to make them viable in the '80s...

...The inclination has never completely disappeared, though, not even with the passing of such convenient topics for sanctimoniousness as the war in Vietnam and the legend of the CIA's unrestrained omnipotence...

...The Continent continues to live in the (possibly irrational) fear of a recurrence of the 1973-74 oil crisis, and argues (quite rationally) that it was America's demand for imported oil that gave the Arabs the opportunity to use the "oil weapon" in October 1973...

...fiscal policies are not difficult to find...

...Statesmen here are convinced—and say so openly—that America's wasteful use of energy is at the root of all, or almost all, evil...

...willingness to sell them to its allies, or at least to supply the technical blueprints and data required for targeting and navigation...

...Outgoing EEC Council President Henri Simonet, speaking at a luncheon for journalists the day before Christmas, observed that it was up to Washington to take responsibility for the protection of its currency...

...At the semiannual nato meeting held in Brussels last month, U.S...

...The situation is not expected to change radically over the next three or four years...

...United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young's ideals, even if not with all of his comments and methods...

...Yet the latest shock wave in the protracted dollar crisis, coming as it did close to one year after Jimmy Carter's inauguration, provided a natural opportunity for statesmen and commentators here to tally the credit and debit sides of the Carter Administration in relation to the Continent...

...Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance tried to reassure their European colleagues that they had little cause for concern...

...view that Japan employs some questionable practices in promoting exports and restricting imports, but not America's reluctance to get tough with Tokyo...

...Some charge that by stressing the reconvening of the Geneva Conference, Carter has unwisely reopened the Middle East front door to the Soviets after former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pushed them out the back way by dealing directly with Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus...

...Others maintain, to the contrary, that Carter, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Vance still hold to the unrealistic belief that the Soviets can be kept out of the region...

...Assessments of the United States from this side of the Atlantic have always been marked by the faintly patronizing manner of an experienced adult talking to, or about, a promising but rather impetuous young man...

...But economic matters have of late been the greatest source of friction by far in the Western European-U.S...

...At present, expanded North Sea production and the recession have reduced European oil imports...