America's Doubting Allies

...Thus the West, suggested Simon Ser-faty of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, should "accommodate when possible and accept confrontation when necessary...

...ForGermans,' said Countess Donhoff, referring to the ongoing pain of Germany's division, "there is no alternative to a policy of detente...

...must give equal weight to Europe's opinions to win its loyalty...

...The Europeans argue that the approach to the Kremlin must be both more positive and more subtle...

...There was no dispute among the Naples conferees either about the community of shared democratic values in the West or the totalitarian character of the Soviet Union, still dominated by the mentality of "vigilance and Party control," as Oxford economist Michael Kaser phrased it...

...No one at Naples took seriously the likelihood that agitates official Washington so much these days—a Soviet attack on Western Europe...

...At the same time, the consensus was that since the Soviet Union is a longstanding world power, confrontation with it on one level or another should be considered normal...

...Professor Czempiel was more direct...

...Europe needs an "activist strategy" that would de-emphasize the military in the whole East-West confrontation and offer some real concessions, he said...

...Some think the present nato consultative process is adequate, if the Europeans would simply be more assertive...

...They found it hard to disagree that the American approach to the nato alliance has taken a zigzagging path along a one-way street...

...Along with Charles Maynes of Foreign Policy magazine and Robert Art of Brandeis University, he cautioned the Europeans about the ideological element in American politics and the difficulty of selling detente again to the public...

...William Griffith of MIT, well known as a hard-headed Soviet affairs analyst, saw the trouble in America's religiously rigid stance toward the Russians...

...Giuseppe Boffa, the Soviet affairs expert of the Italian Communist Party and a well-known spokesman for Eurocommunism, affirmed the Continent's support for the Atlantic alliance and complained only that Washington brushed aside as "neutralism" any European criticisms offered in the common cause...

...policy toward the Soviet Union...

...Following decades of American efforts to build ties of confidence and cooperation with our allies across the Atlantic, the Reagan Administration has succeeded in deeply alarming and to some extent alienating them...

...Toward this end the Europeans appear increasingly prepared to resist what they regard as American dictates, and to combine in whatever way may be required to assert themselves as an equal force and equal voice in the transatlantic society of democratic nations...

...Europeans are now calling as never before for their own unity and independence, to end what Professor Antonio Gambino terms the " master-servant relationship" with the United States...

...Peter Bender of West German television went the furthest...

...Detente remains their basic premise, though not in the simplistic and hence negative sense of wishful trust that Washington gives to it...

...had no historical experience in managing such a relationship prior to the Cold War, and consequently tends to see the rivalry and its handling exclusively in military terms...

...The differences created by recent American actions and statements are, in any case, putting the U.S.-European connection to the strongest test ever...

...In fact, in the view expressed by Lord Kennet and Countess Donhoff, American reactions to native nationalism as exemplified in Nicaragua have done more than any Communist machinations to drive unstable Third World countries into the arms of the Soviets...

...The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was, as the British Social Democrat Lord Kennet described it, "a disastrous surprise," launched without consultation, that left America's friends and adversaries alike confused about its purposes...

...Star Wars alone, though, especially considering the long history of nato cooperation, does not seem enough to explain the intensity of alarm and distrust that it triggered...

...To the surprise of the conference organizers, Professors Rita di Leo and Mario Zuc-coni of the Oriental Institute, support for U.S...

...onto the collision course dictated by Star Wars...

...should no longer have to bear I he burden of arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union...

...complexities and regain military superiority by a quick technological fix, a new "supreme weapon...

...EUROPE IN FERMENT-2 America's Doubting Allies BY ROBERT V DANIELS Naples In Western Europe the United States is becoming its own worst enemy, and is in danger of disrupting the alliance that has been the foundation of the free world's security for nearly 40 years...

...it fails to consult its friends and it is squandering the accumulated legacy of coordination and confidence...

...And, to be sure, the candor among the Europeans that the SDI debate brought out soon made it clear that their misgivings have been building up ever since the Carter Administration...

...Moreover, it is theThird World that continues to be fertile territory for major power grabs...

...No one envisions an agreement at Geneva so long as the Reagan Administration refuses to treat SDI as a bargaining chip and trade it for Soviet missile cuts...

...Expressing American concern over detenle-al-any-priee, Jerry Hough ot the Brookings Institution cautioned that Mikhail S. Gorbachev's new Soviet regime may be preparing an economic and political strategy that will woo Western Europe while retaining a hard line against the United States to justify its own military posture...

...and contended that Europe had the ability to keep the peace between the superpowers...

...Italy's ambassador to Bonn, Luigi Vittorio Ferraris, spoke for many when he characterized SDI as another American attempt to cut through the political Robert V. Daniels, a long-time contributor to The New Leader, is a professor of history at the i niversitv of I 'ermont...

...His most recent book is Russia: The Roots of Confrontation...

...isplaying divide and rule among its European allies...

...In European eyes, hethinks, the United States under Reagan has become "uncertain" and "unreliable...

...Detente isn't blissful harmony, observes Frankfurt University political scientist Ernst-Otto Czempiel (whose wife is a Social Democratic member of the West German Upper House), it is merely "the lowering of military tension within the conflict" as the political contest goes on...

...policy did not materialize among the American delegates...

...Arms control has never been tried...

...Again, Star Wars is the culprit...

...Lamenting the dependence on America, he quoted de Gaulle on the Soviet Union as a healthy counterbalance to the U.S...

...Bringing together nearly two dozen foreign journalists and academic specialists (including nine Americans), plus an equal number of Italian diplomats and opinion-formers ranging across the political spectrum, the Naples gathering revealed an ominous state of mind behind the diplomatically phrased concerns of West European governments about the present course of U.S...

...Even worse, according to Richard Ullman of Princeton University, if Star Wars stymies success at Geneva, it will mean the end of the arms control process and the triumph of American unilateralism...

...Europe tries to be pro-American," said Arrigo Levi, editorialist for La S/ampaofTurin, but it can't understand the thrust of the Reagan Administration...

...Europe is frightened more by the United States than by the Russians,'' declared Countess Marion Don-hoff, publisher of the liberal daily Die Zeit of Hamburg...

...Standing above practically all other issues for the participants from both sides of the Atlantic is the future of nuclear arms control and the evident impasse in the Geneva negotiations...

...SDI, said Jean Klein of the Paris Institute of International Relations, has upset the stability of deterrence and arms control, and not even the Americans can explain what kind of strategy it represents...

...The U.S...

...They are determined, however, that these interests shall be addressed in a true community where, as Hella Picks of England's Guardian put it, the U.S...

...The action most immediately responsible for the collapse of transatlantic confidence is President Reagan's Star Wars proposal...

...They are keenly aware of the interest—in politics, in economics, in values—that their countries share with the United States in the face not only of the Soviet Union's power but of innumerable hot spots in the Third World...

...said Lord Kennet diplomatically...

...The problem, he feels—as do many Europeans—is that the U.S...

...Gorbachev's opportunity is all too clear...

...Others, particularly the Italians, feeltheU.S...

...This alone, according to Werner Weidenfeld, an adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, would avoid the "crisis of legitimacy" that afflicts the alliance when each new problem comes up...

...The accumulating signs of American unilateralism and Washington's almost exclusively military approach to security are pushing the Europeans to radically rethink their place in the whole East-West equation...

...Not only do they believe (to one degree or another) that they can tame the Soviet regime by catering to its economic reform needs through theexpansion of trade and technology transfer...

...Indeed, the mood in Naples underscored the seriousness of a comment by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs: "The United States has suddenly—and without thinking the consequences through in advance—altered the foundations on which East-West relations have rested...

...How Europe might gather itself together to play such a role is a matter of much greater uncertainty...

...In the near future Geneva will bring nothing," asserted former Austrian Foreign Minister Erwin Lane, intimating that economic interests had locked the U.S...

...In other words, to Western Europe detente means expanded trade and mutual economic benefit, with the hope of encouraging a reform outlook in the USSR and easing the lot of the Eastern European satellitecountries...

...Added Curt Gasteyger of the Geneva Institute of International Studies, "It takes some time to absorb these shocks that are coming across the Atlantic...

...The Soviets have all they can do to modernize their own economy and keep up in the technological race...

...One aspect of this mood is the call for a direct European voice in thearmscontrol process...

...Yet there, too, the Soviets are believed to be losing the momentum of their interventionist surge of the '70s from Angola to Afghanistan...

...Thai is the warning driven home by one expert observer after another at an international conference on Europe's role in the East-West confrontation, held in June at the Naples Institute of Oriental Studies...

...For Gorbachev's purposes, Hough noted, "Star Wars is an absolute god-send...

...Dutch MP and Defense Committee Chairman Klaas De Vries went further, questioning America's intellectual honesty: "Europe is fed up with theories that interfere with the solution of real problems...

...There is now a distinct feeling that Europe has to unite in a way it never has before, has to mobilize the power to govern its destiny independently, and perhaps has to assume the primary role in shaping Western relations with the Soviets...

...The Europeans are emphatically not anti-American, as they repeatedly stress...

...They insist that the answer is a substantial European leap toward political unity and a common foreign policy, conceivably within the framework of the European Parliament...

...The many indications of restiveness at the conference run the risk of being misunderstood across the Atlantic...