A European Year

...If the British government is to have any hope, in its new initiative, of breaking some of the ice in Paris, it will have in the end to show more positively than it is doing that it too shares some of this spirit of European independence...

...Well before the recent German crisis, however, a West German pointedly remarked to several of us on a panel broadcast over Radio Geneva, "De Gaulle should remember that the road from Bonn to Moscow is shorter than from Paris...

...In most nations, nationalists (extreme when the economic and political crisis is extreme) win elections, internationalists win sainthood, but only in the foreign press...

...The conclusion, of course, is the need for a stronger national military force...

...The sense of European nationalism puts into perspective the most ghost-ridden development in Europe this New Year's eve: the end of the Ade-nauer-Erhard era in West Germany...

...And most likely not the de Gaulle of the new year...

...Now the priorities seem to have changed, and the politicians of Bonn see evidence of it not only in de Gaulle's, but President Johnson's opening moves for a direct settlement with the Soviet Union...

...Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea...

...But here again is an irony...

...That imaginary force has been sunk in the American search for agreement with Russia in an atomic non-proliferation treaty, and Erhard and Schroeder went down with it, along with other sunken policies of the United States in the wake of the end of the cold war...

...This has already been called an American defeat with some reference to a Gaullist victory...

...It is now Europe that does not want foreign entanglements which lead to involvements, such as in America's distant war...

...This, I believe, is the meaning of Britain's new bid for entry into the Common Market, the big change in Bonn, the familiar old stand of Charles de Gaulle, and Europe's own East-West dialogue, in which even West Germany talks of participating...

...Now they have joined the Conservatives and there is virtual British unanimity on going into the European Community, to give the Common Market its more significant name...

...At first sight, Britain's new bid for entry into the Common Market is a repeat of the previous attempt a few years ago...

...Emphasis added...

...A few more years in Vietnam and there may be few American divisions left in Germany, or, for that matter, little influence...

...America regarded as sick and mad...

...A Gaullist Germany, with its own brand of German nationalism, could be the greatest threat to France, even though it was de Gaulle who had inspired it...

...It may not be a happy one for Washington, but it can be safely predicted, from Paris, that it will certainly be a European Year, from the Urals to the Channel...

...This is something you ought to know," Churchill told de Gaulle one day before D-day, as they lunched in his private railroad car...

...The Christian Democrats, who had ruled since the war, had tied themselves to Washington, and Washington, tied to the cold war, had put the well-being of West Germany before virtually anything else...

...if he does not, it would prove the thinness of his stated intention...

...This January, Europe, more modestly and more accurately, will be entering a European New Year...

...De Gaulle may remain unconvinced, or act unconvinced, as he pursues his own goal, without British competition, of leading a Europe, which, nation by nation, is declaring its independence from America...

...On reflection, much depends on who would be taking the trip—Willy Brandt, the the new Foreign Minister, or Franz Josef Strauss, now the Finance Minister, whose relationship to power has been described as more than faintly erotic...

...This, however, is not the de Gaulle who will be welcoming, as I write, Soviet Premier Kosygin to Paris in December, nor the old friend of Konrad Adenauer who is now waiting to see which policy offers France the greater payoff—the original Bonn or the more recent Moscow axis...

...It is, better than anything, an indication of how far Britain has gone since World War II, and particularly, one must add, since American involvement in the Vietnam war...

...While that press has been focused on the National Democrats, such Germans as Rudolf Augstein of Der Spiegel have been trying to tell us that it is Strauss who is the real danger...

...With the United States increasingly isolating itself in a confrontation in Asia with an even more isolated China, the New Year in Europe, however the specifics sort themselves out, will have the most distinctively European aura of any since World War II...

...Another characteristic of the new European politics is its old-fashioned nationalism...

...In May, 1966, he told Senator Frank Church of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Eastern Europe would not tolerate either a restitution of Germany's pre-war borders, or a German nuclear force...

...While he perceived England as only an island separated from the Continent, he reproached it primarily for being bound by a "special relationship" to the United States...

...More precisely, it should be called un-American, or perhaps non-American...

...Even as Britain turns toward the Continent, so Western Europe and Eastern Europe turn toward each other, and America's hold on Europe fades and weakens...

...Today the Sunday Times is telling Wilson to go all the way...

...Germany," he said, meaning the Adenauer-Erhard government, "thinks the German problem and reunification have to be settled first...

...The new European politics will be more and more independent of the United States—not necessarily opposed to it, although occasionally in opposition, but increasingly pursuing parallel but independent policies...

...In cultural terms, the Russians have wanted to be European since at least 1717, when Peter the Great took several of his mistresses to Versailles...

...It would have been superfluous to add that Moscow is much further away than Bonn...

...A further prediction: This European year will be called anti-American...

...In this sense de Gaulle is Europe's George Washington—a comparison he himself, incidentally, does not find displeasing...

...Astonishingly, Lord Thomson's Sunday Times of London spelled it out without the slightest trace of understatement...

...But not the de Gaulle of last spring...

...In reality it constitutes a basic change, at least in the thinking of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the Labor Party, who previously fought it...

...Parenthetically, why, then, the American assumption that Russia will do almost anything to get us out of the Vietnam mess...

...In the latter state, however, Strauss's Christian Social Union, a wing of the Christian Democrats, won impressively...

...that by the end of his premiership, Wilson would probably have Britain securely established inside the Common Market, with himself as the leader of Western Europe to challenge the power of the White House and the Kremlin...

...However, such a European development might well be laid at the White House door, a failure of White House direction in Europe...

...In foreign policy, it means roughly Adenauer's old line of negotiating with Russia from a position of strength, which in turn means strengthening West Germany's military position...

...As de Gaulle has demonstrated, many things can be done nationalistically in the name of Europe, which is still only a geographic, not a political, reality...

...In any case, it has suddenly swept over the West Germans that their country may be the only major nation whose national interests have been trusted to another, whose national interests are no longer theirs...

...But even more astonishing is the prediction for the New Year, or the next few years, made by British columnist James Margach two years ago...

...Or, indeed, if either one...

...The White House, in the meantime, had firmly identified itself with Lud-wig Erhard and his foreign minister, Gerhard Schroeder, who had even more firmly identified themselves with such aspects of American policy as the multilateral nuclear force, opposed by practically every other member of NATO...

...Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt...

...In his lofty and prophetic visions of Europe," the editorial reads, "de Gaulle knows he is on ground that is shared by many others when he preaches the doctrine of Europe for the Europeans, from which American influence will be, if not eliminated, at least severely scaled down...

...Before getting down to these cases, it might be well to set the atmosphere of Europe on New Year's eve...

...In the moment of his own disenchantment with Bonn, de Gaulle indicated to Senator Church that a detente with Russia must precede German reunification, and the latter could come only under "certain conditions...

...Nikita Khrushchev, one of the first of Eastern Europe's Communists to be exposed to the new Chinese experience, expressed the sense of Europeanism in one of its cruder fashions (but no cruder than what one hears privately from other official Russians...

...The first attempt was vetoed by de Gaulle in January, 1963...

...But Wilson now has the support of the British, once among the best friends of the White House...

...Macmillan in 1962 chose Europe rather than the open sea, when he made the first British move to enter the European Community, but he still stuck to his American President, that is, to the United States, and de Gaulle barred him from Europe...

...It would be too easy to call a West German alliance with Russia the specter haunting Europe, and certainly the White House, on New Year's eve...

...Eastern and Western Europe are saying a plague on both your houses to China and the United States, the mad, sick men of Asia, and increasingly turning to each other...

...Boating with de Gaulle on the Seine in 1960, the Russian had suddenly seized the Frenchman's hands and said, "You and we, we are white...

...There is considerable naivete among the German Gaullists—and Franz Josef Strauss is not now disillusioning them —that de Gaulle is another John Foster Dulles and that as Washington drifts in European affairs Paris will somehow take its place...

...It is too early at this writing to know how the newly-installed "grand coalition" will approach all the major issues of foreign policy, but it does seem clear that Bonn will seek greater independence from Washington so as to avoid being further trapped in U. S. decision-making...

...Margach now adds that already "he [Wilson] has traveled further and more swiftly than anybody expected...

...There, at last, for the world, is that dreaded adjective, "national," in German politics, whether coupled with Socialism, as in National Socialism, or Democrats, as in National Democrats, the neo-Nazi party which picked up votes in the recent elections in Hesse and Bavaria...

...De Gaulle, who is not averse to playing dangerous games (part of his definition of grandeur), is aware of this and counts on other nationalisms to keep it in check...

...The development has been a good one, but the identification with the old policies and politicians has submerged, if not sunk, the United States as an influence in West Germany...

...The statement is astonishing for any nostalgic Anglo-American with memories of World War II, or for that matter of Harold Macmillan of more recent time...

...Our army wants to know how to defend the country against war since it may not be protected in war," recently wrote Wolram von Raven, formerly of the West German Defense Ministry, in the weekly, Die Zeit...

...Today it is obvious to every Britisher that Wilson will have to disprove the tightness of that bond or face a second veto...

...Asked about reverting to it in his devotion to de Gaulle, France's cultural minister Andre Mal-raux flashed back that not Victor Hugo's dream of Twentieth-Century internationalism, but Nietzsche's prophecy of nationalist wars was the reality...

...Strauss also proposes greater cooperation with France and speaks of a European rather than a national nuclear force, which is one way eventually to arrive at the latter...

...There is more than sentiment to a French-Russian alliance, more than a memory of the pact he signed with Stalin in 1944...

...Add to this the fact that the only thing that keeps NATO afloat is constant bailing, and the uneasiness of Germany's military is all too clear and is being made increasingly public...

...De Gaulle recorded this in his Memoirs and has never forgotten it...

...Both, of course, are dear to, if hidden deep in, German nationalist hearts...

...Russia," he said flatly to Senator Church, "is no longer a menace...

...Preoccupation with Asia, particularly Vietnam, has created the predictable vacuum in Europe, and Russia and West Germany might well meet in rushing to fill it...

...It is he who might win control of a major party, namely the Christian Democratic Union, behind a front-runner like Kurt Kiesinger, with a program initially of moderate nationalism...

...Walter Lippmann's sharp conclusion after a European trip, "We Americans can co-exist peaceably only if we forego the messianic megalomania which is the Manila madness," became the London Observer's Saying of the Week...