Discussion
Iran
(It should be noted that this conference took place the week before the failed U.S. attempt to free the hostages in Teheran.) Discussion of this subject was dominated by reactions to President Carter's call for alliance solidarity on the issue of the American hostages -- in particular, for support of economic sanctions amed at securing their release.
The begin with, most participants agreed that this was not just a matter between the U.S. and Iran. Not only were humanitarian considerations and political loyalties involved, but international legal principles and centuries of diplomatic practice were at stake. As one International speaker put it, it could not possibly be in the strategic interest of the West as a whole for the U.S. to be seen -- by the Russians, the Saudi Arabians and others -- standing alone in its humiliation. A German said that what had happened to the Americans could happen to any other country, and called for a "joint reaction against this barbaric act." An International speaker though that Europeans -- for the sake of their own dignity, and not just to be "good allies" -- ought to join in acting against this violation of international law. The author of the French working paper regretted that there had not been an immediate European reaction as soon as the hostages had been seized, at least in words. "The longer you refrain from showing solidarity in words, the more you have to show it in action."
Two other Frenchmen took a somewhat different view. One professed astonishment that what he saw as an essentially bilateral problem between Iran and the U.S. had been distorted and inflated into a much larger problem. Real solidarity had to begin, he argued, with a recognition of what was realistically possible. It might be true that legal principles were involved, but for the Americans to insist on solidarity overlooked Europe's dependence on Iranian oil. This psychological error was pushing many Europeans towards neutralism.
A compatriot remarked that, while in the last analysis we were all in the same boat, in the shorter run Europe was much more sensitive than the U.S. to developments around the Persian Gulf. The closer one was to danger, the more he had to seek a modus vivendi. If Iran were to fall into the Soviet sphere, Europe would have to manage somehow. This was the backdrop against which many Frenchmen today -- including some considered pro-American and pro-Atlantic -- were tending toward neutralism. The worst outcome in their view would be to have followed an American policy which failed. To illustrate the point that emotional arguments were playing too preponderant a role in the hostage question, the speaker said that a Japanese newspaper had asked rhetorically whether the U.S. would be prepared to sacrifice important economic interests of its own for the sake of fifty Japanese hostages. Finally, he quoted King Hassan of Morocco as having asked whether it was a question of saving fifty hostages, or of saving America. If it were the latter, one would have to be prepared for the sacrifice of the hostages. America had to recover its freedom of action, even if this would cost it dearly.
The growing sense of frustration and humiliation in the U.S. was described by one American speaker, who was supported by others. No issue in recent times had so engaged the motions of the American people as the fate of the hostages; it was becoming an almost obsessive aspect of life in the U.S. Perhaps the President's course of patience had been the right one, but people were feeling so outraged and dishonored that stronger action might become politically imperative. Through all of this, many Americans felt that they were not getting the support to which they were entitled from their "reluctant allies".
Looking at this from another angle, a German wondered whether the Americans were not tending to take out their frustrations about Iran on their European friends, as well as on the Russians. The analogy now dominant in American discussion was that of the appeasement of 1938, whereas the European mood was to beware of slithering into an unwanted war unawares, as the world had done in 1914. The present situation had made the dialogue between the superpowers more important than ever, the speaker said. The U.S. should not expect the Europeans to accede to all the demands that came out of Washington. In the Iranian case, for example, they might reject the idea of a naval blockade or a breach of diplomatic relations, but support some form of economic sanctions.
This led into a discussion of the probably effect of economic sanctions. A number of participants expressed strong reservations on this subject, citing historical precedents. During the Ethiopian war of the thirties, sanctions against Mussolini had served to strengthen his hand, forcing even his opponents to side with him. Economic sanctions against Rhodesia had been somewhat counterproductive. (An American was not sure that they had really been effective since they had forced the British to repeal the Stamp Act in 1766.)
Other Americans feared that economic sanctions would not only not lead to the release of the hostages, but might even invite reprisals against them. Furthermore, by immediately reducing the living standards of the Iranian people, sanctions would play in the hands of the Ayatollah Khomeini, providing proof of the American tactics he had been warning about. Moreover, sanctions would strengthen the Soviet capacity for intervention and subversion. If the West sharply reduced Iranian imports -- either through an arrangement by major trading partners or a naval blockade or mining of harbors -- the Russians could be expected to try to make up the shortfall, by an airlift or land shipments across Iran's northern border. This might not have a big material effect (Iran's population was nearly twenty times what West Berlin's had been), but the propaganda value for the Soviets would be considerable. Reduction of exports -- mainly oil -- would work a greater hardship on Europeans than Americans.
If economic sanctions succeeded, they might lead to the collapse of the current regime, the disintegration of Iran as a state, and an invasion from neighboring countries.
A German participant was convinced that sanctions would not lead to the liberation of the hostages so long as Iran lacked the normal organs of government, including a responsible decision-making center. The pain and suffering of economic deprivation would be felt by those who were powerless to do anything about the problem. And the more effective they were, the more likely they would be to push Iran into the orbit of the Soviet Union and other East European countries.
The greatest danger, though, would come if economic sanctions did not work. What would we do next? Would there not be intense pressure on the American government to resort to military measures, with the accompanying risk of interruption of Persian Gulf oil movements, extensive armed conflict in the region, and a direct military confrontation between the superpowers?
Despite all these misgivings, the speaker said that the government of the Federal Republic was prepared, as an expression of solidarity, to support the U.S. by participating in economic sanctions. All that the Germans asked, he said, was that their judgment that sanctions were not sensible would be carefully weighed by the Americans. He said that he spoke with a great sense of personal sympathy for the plight of the Americans, having been involved himself two years previously in negotiations with a criminal terrorist group which had held some 90 people hostage for over six weeks. In that case, many "very exotic solutions" had been considered, and leaders fo the major political factions had been informed and consulted continuously. Consequently, no possibilities had been overlooked, and nobody in public life had been able to question what the executive was doing. Based on that humiliating experience, the speaker was able to understand the emotional frustrations of individual Americans, and he had great admiration for the self-discipline and caution with which the U.S. administration was behaving under political pressure.
Other Germans, who were equally skeptical about chances of success, remarked that nonetheless sanctions against Iran would be relatively easy to control and that they would at least buy time. One speaker wondered to whom in Teheran we could address our common protest, and asked just what those who were against economic sanctions would propose in their place.
An answer to this was offered by an American participant, who was also dubious about economic and military measures, but who advocated the diplomatic isolation of the Iranian regime. He suggested that the hostage crisis be taken out of the bilateral mood of an Iranian-American confrontation; having as one of the adversaries the "imperialist, oppressive" U.S. just played into the hands of Khomeini and the Soviets. Instead, it would be appropriate for the Europeans to take an initiative by announcing to the Iranian government, in effect: "Since you have shown total disregard for the sanctity of embassies, established now for some 500 years, we can no longer afford to maintain a diplomatic mission in Iran, with all the risks which that entails. Accordingly, until such time as the hostages are released the European government will withdraw their embassies from Teheran and, on a reciprocal basis, send home the diplomatic representatives of Iran in Europe."
This would be a punishment to fit the crime, and the Ayatollah would have a hard time making propaganda out of a measure which originated with Europeans, not Americans, and was not aimed at the well-being of the Iranian people. Nevertheless, it would be bound to have an effect on the Iranian population.
This proposal received support from a number of participants. A fellow American was reminded of the success of another European initiative -- the Nuclear Planning Group -- and thought that this new "exercise in agreement, rather than disagreement" might have considerable impact on even the Ayatollah Khomeini. A Briton regretted that Europeans had not taken such collective action months previously, when it had been evident that Iran had put itself beyond the pale of civilized countries. Moreover, he added, such political isolation might now dissuade President Carter from taking more drastic action under political pressure. An International speaker was worried, too, about the prospect of military sanctions and hoped that there was still time to prevent them.
Two Germans registered their opposition to the political isolation of Iran, and an Italian linked it to "a man's cutting off his manly attributes to spite his wife." It would mean, he explained, breaking off all communication with the person you want to talk to, while allowing your adversaries to have free access to him. Both economic sanctions and political isolation had been suggested as the only means to deal with an irrational government moved by crowd emotion. At the same time, one expected a rational reaction from the irrational, and sometimes demented, leader of that government, which was a vain hope.
The speaker ventured to guess that Lorenzo di Medici would have settled this matter by giving the Russians a free hand in Afghanistan in exchange for a free American hand in Iran. Some of our fundamental difficulties today lay inside us -- our noble, respectable incapacity to do things to people who were still, in essence, living in those earlier times.
One American welcomed the political isolation proposal, but characterized it as a "one-shot solution," which did not go very far in meeting long-term problems. A compatriot agreed that we would be confronting for some time in Iran a major revolutionary upheaval whose end we could not foresee, which might lead to the ethnic division of Iran and a greater opportunity for the USSR to use that division, along with other factors, to increase their influence. The radicals in the Khomeini regime needed a foreign scapegoat, and the hostages were filling that need. Instead of completely isolating Iran politically, would it not be wiser to devise some plan among us whereby -- even if the U.S. could not do so -- Europeans could maintain contact with moderate elements inside Iran?
A Luxembourg speaker tended to favor the political isolation of Iran, but he predicted that political action taken by Europeans would not necessarily be along lines requested by the Americans, who should not expect to be blindly followed. In solving problems like the Iranian crisis, we should rely more on the advice of traditional diplomatists. Above all, we should seek solutions together, not alone; there were potential hostages in all our countries, and our actions would set important precedents.
A Portuguese participant said that his country had made it clear that the Azores would be available to the U.S. as a base if needed in the liberation of the hostages. At the same time, the Portuguese were made uneasy by the memory of 1973, when a similarly helpful attitude had in their being cut off from oil supplies and left with little support or help. They would hope not to be put in such a spot again.
An American participant intervened to say that his government had arrived at some "hard-earned modesty" on the subject of the hostages. No one could say with any certainty what would or would not bring about their release, and we all had to approach the question with humility. It would take some time to determine what effect the sanctions would have. The U.S. had tried a variety of approaches, loosely characterized as "diplomatic," through a number of channels. The President was not proposing an intensification of peaceful measures without foreclosing other diplomatic approaches or sterner measures. The speaker did not share the fear that a failure of the sanctions to produce some very rapid result would lead to further intensification or indeed to military measures. We should nevertheless be thinking about what to do if the sanctions did not work.
An International speaker reported that there had been full and active consultation about Iran (as well as Afghanistan) within the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee. Very recently a message had arrived from he administration in Washington detailing the measures that the U.S. might be compelled to take in the hostage crisis, and discussing in a positive way how the alliance might react.
Finally, an American participant argued that what was going on in Teheran was not in the interest of any of us. After months of patience, it was time to apply not only political pressure but economic sanctions. We should not get sidetracked on an analysis of how effective economic sanctions would be. Simply agreeing to them would be a significant political act, demonstrating that our countries were prepared to risk certain concrete interests. Several speakers had counseled against a tough stance, for fear of pushing Iran into the Soviet camp. But that was a recipe for paralysis; a great power had to pay a price when its citizens were held illegally month after month, and this had important implications for the alliance.
Beneath all the discussions here lay the fundamental question of whether the allies shared a common analysis of the international situation. If the Europeans saw the Iranian crisis as essentially an American problem, and were only going along to show their "solidarity," then we had a much more serious problem in the alliance than we realized. The same was true of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan
A British participant likened the three major current international crises to "three plays being performed by different actors on the same stage at the same time," which had led to substantial intellectual confusion: the Afghanistan play, the Iranian play, and the Arab-Israeli play. While the most dramatic of these was the hostage play -- which one hoped would be only one act -- the Afghanistan play was perhaps more important in the long run, pointing up the need for an effective counter to Soviet pressure, not as a means of punishing the Russians, but of deterring them.
The governing party in Britain -- before being elected -- had completed and published an analysis of Soviet policy which had prepared them to issue, after the Afghanistan invasion, a reaction which was sharper than either their French or German allies. (It might have ended up being the only sharp reaction, had President Carter not undergone his own change of feeling about Russian intentions.) In any case, this harsh British reaction was the result of their own assessment of the situation, and represented in no way an attempt to renew their old "special relationship" with the U.S., as the author of the French working paper had suggested.
One reason most of the allies had not better prepared to react to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, according to an International speaker, was that they had heard "wolf!" cried too often before. Nevertheless, the U.S. government had warned its allies as early as last November that Soviet troops were massing on the northern frontier of Afghanistan, a presage of possible intervention. All the allies were menaced in the same way by this escalation of Soviet military power, but they did not all see the danger in the same way, so that there was no consensus about how we should react. The U.S., though, had unequivocally warned the Soviets that any new movement toward the oil fields would mean war. If the European powers had given the same sort of warning to Germany after Munich, World War II might have been avoided. (A German speaker differed with that, saying that no protest would have stopped Hitler, who had "wanted his war.")
Another German speaker, who was seconded by a Luxemburger, wondered whether Afghanistan was part of a relentless geopolitical advance of the Soviets, or rather a specific response to a specific problem on their southern border -- a passing phenomenon. In either case, the problem of Afghanistan would not be solved by moving the Europeans into the firing line. That would jeopardize all the palpable gains of detente, which had brought more frrom for dissidence and more human contacts between the two Germanys.
The author of the French working paper took exception to the general European preoccupation with analyzing at length why the Russians had intervened in Afghanistan. To him, it had been simply to avoid the contamination of Islam, as they had intervened in Czechoslovakia to avoid the contamination of liberty. One could say that they had acted to protect their internal empire -- but none of this was important to the question of whether and how we should react.
On this point, an American speaker said that the basic question about Soviet motives in Afghanistan should be asked in connection with their part in the coup d'etat which had brought a Communist regime into power there in April 1978. The Soviets had been preparing for that opportunity for many years, having begun a training and advisory program in the 1950's which enabled them to organize their own cadres within the Afghan armed forces. As early as the 1960's, they had organized Communist political groups inside the country, and in 1977 they had forced a merger between the two principal feuding groups. Given their close ties to Taraki and Karmal, it was inconceivable that the Soviets had not had advance knowledge of the coup in April 1978.
They key question was why they had found it necessary at the time to destroy a nonaligned and independent government which fully protected their interests and posed no threat to them. The speaker's conclusion was that this had been an act of imperialism, culminating 150 years of advance into central Asia. He further believed that neither the Americans or the Europeans had possessed the political or military assets to forestall that coup.
After April 1978, the old split within the Afghan Communist movement had re-emerged, and insurgents had begun to operate in teh fall and winter of 1978-79. In September 1979, Taraki had been overthrown by Amin, who had proved to be a less dependable puppet. The USSR had then invaded in order to protect "their revolution," a clear example of the operation of the Brezhnev Doctrine.
The Russians' entrenchment in Afghanistan offered them various advantages. Through overlapping tribal groups in Iran and Pakistan, they had new opportunities for infiltration and subversion in those countries. By contending that history was on their side, they also could hope to intimidate other states, especially in the Gulf area. This participant disagreed with the suggestion of the previous speaker that the Soviet invasion had resulted from their own fear that the Islamic revolution might spread into their southern regions, although the growth of the relative size of the central Asian population within the USSR was indeed a cause for concern in Moscow.
We should not base any of our policies on wishful thinking that the Soviets could be dislodged by military means. The Afghan insurgents lacked firepower and outside support, and no groups were openly complaining in the Soviet Union about Russian casualties. Nor should we hold out much hope for neutralization of the country. Furthermore, it was unrealistic to expect the Soviets to leave voluntarily, as anyone who had been associated with their regime would be summarily dispatched by the Afghans after their departure.
Unfortunately, the Western response to the coup of April 1978 had been almost nonexistent. And our neglect had not even been "benign." The most important thing we could have done was to restore close ties and working relations with Pakistan. Indeed -- in the name of human rights and nuclear nonproliferation -- we had virtually destroyed the links between the U.S. and Pakistan, cutting off all American assistance to that country in 1979. The shock of the Soviet invasion had finally made clear the threat to international stability and to our oil lines.
The speaker concluded that, for the most part, our response to the invasion of Afghanistan had been appropriate. Although we could not hope to oust the Soviets militarily, we had to make the point that this kind of transgression against the international order could not be tolerated, and that we would not hesitate to take measures to protect our access to the oil of the region. We would have to keep our military forces "over the horizon", and we could not expect the Arab states to help us. We should seek to regain Pakistan's shaken confidence, and to supply arms to the Afghan rebels, who would continue to fight as long as possible. The terrain in Afghanistan was not conducive to effective guerilla[sic] warfare, especially against helicopters, but the rebels' bravery would keep them going for some time. Above all, our response to what the Soviets had undertaken would have to be with consistent policies which underlined our interests both in that region and globally.
A Portuguese participant said that the Afghan invasion had to be condemned on the basis of international principles. It had changed the geostrategic picture not only in the region, but worldwide. The question was, what were we going to do next in response to this Soviet move? The speaker found the Iranian and Afghan problems to be very different in nature, and he regretted that the Americans in both cases were "going along the same road, taking similar measures."
The pros and cons of boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow were dealt with in several interventions. A Briton thought that such action would not be effective in the context of a wider demonstration, while an International participant characterized it as a sentimental rather than a strategic reaction. Let us not make Afghanistan the touchstone of the survival of the detente, he said. An American emphasized that a boycott would be a powerful symbolic protest, delivered within the Soviet Union in a highly visible and dramatic way. Its message would not be lost on the Russian people, whether or not it was followed by other measures.
A German speaker agreed about the symbolic importance of staying away from the games. Thinking back to "Hitler's Olympics" of 1936, he asked whether the various countries really had to wait for a lead from the U.S. Olympic Committee before acting on their own. With all of our tak about human rights, did we not have the moral strength to adopt a stand? The German Committee would take its final decision the following week, but it appeared that three-quarters of the citizens of the Federal Republic favored a boycott.
Another German predicted that his country was likely to follow the American lead and boycott the games, although many people doubted this would induce the Russians to leave Afghanistan, and indeed feared that it might bring reprisals on dissidents and Jews in the Soviet Union. The Germans in any case could not be more concerned than they were about the implications of Afghanistan, and believed that there had to be a Western response. They were prepared to support economic sanctions in matters of strategic importance, but not if certain countries, or the West as a whole, would be hurt more than the Russians. It had to be remembered that the Germans had certain treaty obligations with the USSR, and they wanted to avoid giving the Russians any excuse to break those treaties. (A compatriot agreed that it was enormously important for the Germans, living in a divided nation, to maintain their obligations, and they would not let themselves be talked into not honoring their agreements.) Most people in the Federal Republic believed in a combination of incentives and pressures to get the Russians out of Afghanistan, and in the need for a long-term strategy to deter further aggression. This would include redressing the military imbalance, and perhaps the single most important and credible signal America could give the Russians in the wake of Afghanistan would be the reintroduction of Selective Service in the U.S.
A Greek speaker advocated both a boycott of the Moscow games and a limit on the growth of Western credits to the USSR>
According to a German participant, the French working paper had overemphasized the consequences of economic sanctions on the Soviet Union, and the possibilities of Russian retaliation. Germany's trade with the Eastern bloc, for instance, amounted to little more than seven per cent of its total foreign trade, and the value of high technology exports to the East had been exaggerated. Furthermore, an embargo could be easily bypassed via neutral or socialist countries, and the Soviets could take counter measures within their own orbit. Perhaps the strongest argument against economic sanctions was that relations among the allies were bound to suffer as they wrangled month after month about the framework and its details.
Several participants commented on the suggestion by the author of the French working paper that the fate of the people of El Salvador, under a regime supported by the U.S., was probably not much better than that of the Afghans.
One American remarked ironically that he was "fascinated by visions of 80,000 U.S. troops in El Salvador," while another called the comparison "inaccurate, outrageous . . not helpful or productive."
A Swiss participant commented on the difference between the two situations as observed by the International Red Cross. In Latin America -- e.g., El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Argentina, Colombia -- the Red Cross was allowed to visit all political prisoners without the presence of witnesses, to bring letters and family news both ways, and to give medical care. The prisoners in these countries were free to register complaints on any subject, including the U.S. But it was notable that, while there might bec omplaints about U.S. political influence, there were no complaints of American military aggression or torture.
In Afghanistan, the Red Cross had not been allowed to visit a single prisoner, political or military, and it had been furnished no list of names. In the USSR, it had not been permitted for the last fifty years to visit political prisoners, and such visits were also forbidden in East Germany and other East bloc countries, as well as North Vietnam. Some access to prisoners had recently been granted in Iran, but not without witnesses. These facts, which had been published in the IRC's annual report, had to be borne in mind when one was tempted to make facile comparisons about human rights conditions.
Relations Among the Allies: Communication, Understanding, Leadership
The crises of Iran and Afghanistan, and our various responses to them, had inevitably focused attention on the subject of relations among the allies. A Canadian speaker led off the discussion of this subject by saying that we were referred to as an "alliance" and the time had come for us to start acting like one. During these recent crises, there had been no summit meeting of heads of government of the major partners, nor of their foreign ministers, and no cohesive position announced by the NATO Council. We lacked the degree of consultation which mad marked alliance relations in the past, as during the Berlin blockade. Besides a redefinition of NATO's area of concern, we needed more effective consultation among the "senior" members of the alliance; the "juniors" would certainly welcome that. The speaker disagreed with those who feared that a united alliance front might impair relations with the Soviet Union. The line with Moscow had to be kept open, but "a clear message should be going down it."
A French participant agreed that our "family crisis" was dramatic. Divisiveness in the West was much more serious than in the past. Many people seemed resigned to the fact that the challenges coming upon us had been lost in advance. This mood was accentuated by the Russians' ostentatiously brutal attitude, designed to intimidate. Soviet tanked had been gratuitously put before the camera of the world, and Georges Marchais, secretary of the French Communist Party, had called detente "the right that capitalist countires have to be beaten." Was it any wonder that there was discord in Europe and a feeling in the U.S. that the alliance was disintegrating? When the German government declared that it would choose solidarity with the U.S. in spite of grave misgivings abotu tactics, did one not sense considerable underlying bitterness? A German wondered if there were minimal requirements for transatlantic solidarity, and if there were a point beyond which solidarity turned into folly. Where exactly was the place of his own country in all this?
A British participant said that the difficulties many of us were going to face would arise from complicated local circumstances where East-West relations did not play a major role. We had a worrisome tendency -- often visible in the U.S. -- not to gear on a problem until it was placed in an East-West context, which was usually artificial. Differences between the U.S. and Europe reflected not only divergences of interests and of national psychologies, but also of judgment. But perhaps the greatest bar to improved alliance relations was not insufficient consultation but structural arrangements in the U.S. -- notably the relationship between the Congress, the President, and the diplomats. Many Europeans had observed that the U.S. tended not to make the best use of its experienced diplomats. It would be well advised to concentrate on solving problems as they arose in various regions, with the help of its diplomats, instead of always seeing things in terms of the two-power conflict, which was outmoded now with the emerging importance of Japan, China, the Arab countries and others of the Third World.
A Frenchman complained about the difficulty of following the U.S., which changed tactics frequently -- often without forewarning -- and gave the impressions of having no well-established policy. According to a Luxemburger, this tended to make Europe's "solidarity" with the U.S. merely tactical or emotional. The divergence of attitudes did not need to concern us; that was common enough within the European Community, so why should we not expect it across the sea? But we should each put our analysis of a problem on the table, discuss the substance of our differences, and hope to arrive at a consensus.
A German participant described the events of recent months, as well as some of the interventions at this conference, as being "as peculiar as they are unusual." The Iranians had taken the American hostages and the Soviets had oppressed the Afghans. Europeans had expressed regret at this, then turned back to their daily business, including criticism of the Americans. Perhaps criticism of the Carter administration was justified in many ways, but it had to be admitted that many Europeans would have criticized the U.S. administration, no matter what its policies; it was simply a pretext for not taking any action themselves. The national egosim which Europeans had so clearly displayed in recent months would not help us to find our way back to the spirit of the alliance and to do the courageous things which had to be done.
Another German speaker called for a concerted Western response to the constellation of our crises: Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, and a new arms race if SALT II were not ratified. These dangers were all interrelated, and it would be unwise to try to settle some of them without reference to the others. Only on the basis of close consultation and cooperation could real alliance leadership emerge; it was no good to try to command it. The leader had to listen to its allies, to be prepared to talk to them several times about a single issue, to put itself into their shoes every day. It was not enough to proclaim leadership occasionally in Sunday speeches. But the leader's role in the alliance could only be exercised by the U.S., which could not be supplanted by another nation or configuration.
The latter conclusion was described as "perhaps too Manichean" by an International participant. Could not the allies, all together, facilitate the task of American leadership, and at the same time do more than they had in the past?
Another International speaker said that the Americans, whose generosity and unique power had provided the framework for past alliance policy, were "becoming more like the rest of us." They would no longer be able to provide that leadership -- no matter what administration was in office -- and this foretold a reformulation of the alliance into a real multilateral affair, with the other partners, especially the Federal Republic, Britain and France, taking up the leadership slack. If that did not happen, though, we risked drifting into an "everyone for himself" policy, which would generate profound frustration on both sides of the Atlantic. The U.S. would be led to blame its allies if America's unilateral policies did not succeed, and Europeans would resent being pushed into responsibilities for which they were not yet ready. The fumbling of the alliance in trying to coem to grips with Afghanistan and Iran underlined the need to start meeting the next crisis, having learned something from the last one. In any case, this transition to shared leadership was bound to give us "a rough ride, over choppy seas."
An American speaker reflected on the role of political leadership, which was, as he saw it, to explain to the public amidst the confusion of events what the underlying pattern was and what the basic direction of policy ought to be. The most dangerous course would be to try to register every fluctuation of public opinion that might arise. The public would not forgive its leaders for producing catastrophes, even if they were the result of public preference.
The trouble with our discussions -- both in the U.S. and among the allies -- was that they were focused on technical questions, such as the working of economic sanctions, and not on the fundamental issues of where we were aiming to go and what we were trying to do. We would have continual difficulties until we explained those issues to our people in a coherent and clear-cut fashion.
Division of Labor
The division of responsibilities between the U.S. and its European allies had been nicely responsive to immediate postwar conditions, according to an American speaker, but the reallocation of wealth attendant on Europe's recovery had not been accompanies by a reallocation of responsibilities. Several participants said that a new division of labor was now appropriate, but, as one Briton put it, this would probably mean a change in the thrust of the alliance. The U.S. would still be the most important nation, but no longer the dominant one.
An Italian dated the onset of the transition phase to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Just as the dollar had fallen as the cornerstone of the monetary system, so American military power had ceased to be convertible into credible action. This presupposed a new sharing not only of responsibility but also of labor. America was still the center of power, but as it was a democratic state, we could never expect to be as quick at decision-making as the Warsaw Pact.
Various speakers agreed that if the U.S., and possibly Britain, were called on to deploy military or naval forces outside Europe, the other allies would stand ready to fill in the gap. But one German participant explained why his country had to be careful not to do this alone, or to "stick its neck out too far," as he put it. Germany was a divided nation: 17 million Germans lived in the eastern part, some two and a half million in Berlin, and hundreds of thousands in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Rumania. Since the Helsinki conference, 230,000 Germand had been allowed by agreement to leave the East, and to acquire full human rights in the West. German leaders had been worried that the human rights campaign might jeopardize the progress that was being made along these lines. If the Eastern administrations, which were already very sensitive about the matter, were to be challenged too openly by the Federal Republic, these repatriations could be brought to a halt. The delicacy of the situation was not widely understood among Germany's allies, but it was being played out against a backdrop of heightened nervousness in the Eastern countries. A recent military parade in Budapest, for example, had lasted for three hours -- an intimidating display of tanks, rockets, and low-flying MIGs. This speaker asked parenthetically whether it was appropriate for the U.S. to question the solidarity of its European allies when it did not even have military conscription. Granted there had to be more equitable sharing of the burden, but even American politicians and journalists were raising the question of whether the U.S. was really living up to its defense capabilities without the draft. The author of the American working paper intervened to remark that the U.S. might well have to re-examine its all-volunteer army policy.
An Italian objected to the term "division of labor," which he said the Comecon nations used in place of "the market." It suggested that one party did the deciding, and the others had to do what had been decided. This concept would not increase the force of the alliance, but just change the rankings.
A Briton, though, judged a fairer division of labor to be a reasonable American aim, and a "touchstone of an effective and truly Atlantic alliance." If the alliance could not respond as a whole, then those who could should be more forthcoming.
The author of the French working paper remarked that nothing had changed on this subject since the first NATO conference in Lisbon in 1952. Suggestions that the Europeans shoulder a greater share of the burden had invariably been met with the objection that increased defense spending would weaken their economies, which would encourage Communism. The truth was that Europeans did not honestly wish for real European military strength. They recognized that it could not be achieved unless Germany had nuclear arms, which was politically out of the question.
A Briton conceded that this might be the habitual European mood, but he argued that it was the task of politicians to try to change public attitudes. It was demonstrably false that Europeans could not spend a large percentage of GNP on defense without favoring Communism. All the European governments at the moment were deliberately depressing living standards "out of theological devotion to untested economic theories from Chicago," and increased defense spending -- if not at the expense of other public spending -- would in fact reduce the threat of Communism. We could really not go on basing our thinking on the premise that nobody wanted to see the German defense forces increased. The speaker was not advocating nuclear weapons for Germany, but simply a greater European contribution on the conventional side, which would relieve some of the burden on the U.S.
The Current American Mood
A U.S. participant described the mood in his country today, which he said was marked by much confusion, the absence of a sense of great crisis, and a reluctance to make important sacrifices -- whether for energy, for defense, or for the hostages in Iran. This was perhaps not surprising, as the American people were confronted with a series of problems for which they felt they had no answers, including inflation, oil and Islamic fundamentalism ("a curve ball thrown by history"). They had got through the last quarter century fairly well, but the future would not be a projection of the past, as there were many new elements in the picture.
To judge from the leading presidential candidates, one might say that Americans were reasonaly content, and did not want an activist government. But their problems were deep and long-term, and could not be solved by passing them along to the diplomats, as a previous speaker had suggested. The most important contribution Europeans could make now was to be very much aware of U.S. politics, and to try to advance their suggestions in a way that would not antagonize "the sleeping, unknown god of American public opinion."
A compatriot agreed with this analysis of U.S. opinion, but thought nevertheless that, given proper leadership, the American public could focus on new things. Most of us tended to forget that an unprecedented step had been taken by the U.S. in 1949 in signing a treaty of alliance with Europe which called for its troops to be stationed abroad indefinitely.
A British participant sensed that, if American opinion was muddled, it was the result of an incoherent U.S. policy over a period of time and could be remdied quickly by a coherent one. Several participants had suggested an irrevocable shift away from American leadership in the political and military fields, but the speaker did not agree. President Carter's incoherence had been unnecessary and had produced doubt and hesitation in the public mind. The lessons of Afghanistan and other cirses might begin to turn the tide.
An American speaker alluded to the effect on alliance consultations of the U.S. election campaign (which had become, in the words of another participant, "as stylized as a Japanese kabuki play"). Apart from some philosophical patterns, though, the two U.S. parties had no fundamental differences on foreign policy. The American handling of the Iranian and Afghan crises had not been influenced in any substantial way by the presidential campaign, and the members of the alliance were certainly not being asked to support policies created for U.S. domestic political reasons. The policies might or might not be wise, but they were being offered on their merits.
Just as Americans were used to disagreements on domestic political issues, so they did not expect full agreement from their allies. But discord "was not always welcome in individual cases," and recent policy disputes in the alliance about Iran and Afghanistan -- which Americans thought involved Europe more intimately than the U.S. -- had produced stirrings of isolationism in the U.S., which the speaker hoped would subside. In any case, the alliance remained central to U.S. policy for profound reasons, both strategic and sentimental.
A German participant, who said he had argued about this subject for a decade with Senator Mansfield, agreed that a revival of isolationism was always a latent danger in the U.S.
The Political Evolution of Europe
If America's current mood complicated alliance relations, so did the growing pains of the European Community. A Belgian participant felt ill at ease with the ambivalence surrounding talk about "Europe." True, a certain number of geographical units had banded together, and international organizations had been formed, but there was no real European decision-making machinery in operation. This was a constant source of difficulty, since American public opinion tended to think that the Community, with all its organs, was in a position to act in a crisis. This was unfortunately not the case, as a veto process was effectively at work, in violation of the Rome Treaty. One of the major responsibilities of Europeans now as[sic] to set up a rapid decision-making process. A Luxembourg speaker lent his support to that point.
An International participant regretted that the European Community, as an entity, had been largely ignored in these discussions. European speakers had not underlined the importance of the Community, nor had the Americans indicated that the E.C. might be useful in negotiations to resolve the current crises. Without greater emphasis on Community action, Europe would not be able to do "the difficult things" in either the political or the economic sphere.
A German speaker shared this concern, warning of the dangers that the Community might break up in bickering over secondary issues, voluminous and important though they might be.
A British participant described as a completely new development of the past half-dozen years his country's acceptance of the discipline of European political cooperation. Britain's first response in any situation now was to wish to consult and coordinate with its partners in the Community. (This attitude was not always reciprocated by the others, a fact of which those who criticized British diplomacy might not be aware.) The speaker believed that the emerging political cooperation -- although the resultant delays might exasperate the Americans -- was potentially very important. Europeans should build on it and forego the small political successes which they might achieve if they acted a little faster alone. The manifestation of this spirit was beginning to bear fruit, as with the recent program to help Turkey, in which Germany had taken the lead. The machinery of the two great institutions -- the E.C. and NATO - would grind on, but in the gaps between them problems would continue to be slowly resolved on a country by country basis.
Concerning Turkey, an International speaker praised the alliance for the program it had supported to assist that country, but a German participant remarked frankly that the disparities in commitments given to Turkey by the various allies invited a "ridiculous comparison". He went on to comment on the Community's decision to admit Greece. There had been no need to enlarge the E.C. membership, and this would mean a certain economic burden for all parties, but it was an important step for Greek security. The same reasoning applied to Spain and Portugal; their national industries would have a hard time at first, but in the long run their people would benefit.
A Greek participant ventured to say that the preceding speaker, in his conception of "helping Greece," was perhaps overlooking the substantial popular discontent and loss of faith in NATO among the Greek people. There was a fundamental disharmony which could lead within a year and half[sic] to Greece's departure from NATO. The absence of support now on issues of principle could bring results which pro-Western Greeks would not want to see.
A Turkish participant said that the next ask for his countrymen, along with building up a healthy economy, was to mend their relations with the Greeks. The sources of their difficulties must now appear insignificant compared with other problems in that part of the world. As a Greek participant at this conference had pointed out, there had not been a single Greek murdered during the recent political crisis in Turkey. That could be taken as one measure of the lack of real animosity between the two peoples.
The Turkish speaker praised the remarkable spirit of solidarity behind the OECD efforts -- led by Germany -- to provide necessary aid for Turkey, which had been put in severe financial straits by the foreign exchange crisis produced by oil price increases and the U.S. arms embargo.
The Alliance and the Third World
The foregoing speaker went on to discuss the way in which the West, in its relations with the Middle Eeast, had repeatedly chosen to identify itself with individual governments, kings, princes, shahs and sheikhs, rather than with nations or peoples. If our intelligence services had not alerted us to the fragility of those regimes, then we had not been well served. The only worthy statesmanlike approach in the long run was to identify ourselves with broader national interests in spite of the temptations of short-run advantage.
We also tended to bring a double standard to our dealings with that part of the world, and to employ rather questionable practices to facilitate our relations -- a phenomenon which would shock us if used at home. If we looked the other way rather than face the issue of corruption, would we not be partly responsible for the fall of the old structure which we hoped to preserve? For the longer run, the speaker was not pessimistic about the outlook for the Middle East. Tens of thousands of students from these countries had been, or were being, educated in the West. If we did not spoil those students, but treated them like our own, given them a real sense of the world and a sound education, we were bound to reap the benefit. They would eventually bring to the management of their countries' affairs a wiser and more sophisticated mentality than would otherwise have been the case. The combination of a fundamental Islamic faith and an early exposure to the humanistic values of the West should constitute a strong bulwark against Communist pressures in the Middle East.
A Greek participant remarked that the working papers had looked at European-American relations as the center, with Third World problems put in as addenda because of the crisis in the Persian Gulf area. He was more inclined to look at the Third World as the center of the alliance's problems. In the post-war period, the U.S. had placed immediate prestige and self-interest second to considerations of longer term interest. As a result, Europe and Japan had recovered to become naerly equal partners with the U.S., while the Soviets had been contained in Europe. By the mid-sixties, then, one could hav ehoped for similar acts of statesmanship toward other parts of the world, but by and large these had not come to pass. There had been some successes -- America's negotiations about the Panama Canal, Britain's about Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, France's approaches to the Arab world before 1973 -- but these were the exceptions.
The gap in psychological comprehension between the West and the Third World had been too wide. A few Westerners with a long experience of political subjugation understood, but there were not many of them. Too much stress had been laid on simple geopolitics. This overlooked the fact that, only when the internal situation of a country became untenable, was the Soviet Union able to move in. Difficulties had also been caused by the West's having to defend the free market concept in the Third World. Political pressures, including consumerism, had made it easy to cut back on foreign aid. With the result that, by 1973, we had not succeeded in making the Third World feel a large community of interest with the West. Consequently we had been punished since then, and our varying responses to that punishment pointed up the differences among us. Even at this late stage, there were certain lessons to be learned from our experience: (1) It was a msitake to support regimes just because they were anti-communist; "an internally sound neutral was ten times better than an unsound ally." (2) the OPEC countries had somhow to be brought into partnership with the West. (3) Aid should go to needy countries, not just to those with political appeal. (4) We needed to be concerned with countries for their own sake.
A Swiss participant felt that the Western countries would be well advised to include humanitarian considerations in their common global approach to world problems, and to defend their position with conviction. Otehrwise the prisoners and other victims of turmoil would have to endure suffering without end.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict
One of the most dramatic examples of being concerned with countries for their own sake involved the Arab-Israeli conflict. While we all wished for a secure Israel, we did not all see equally clearly that the only way to achieve it was through a relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian state. A German said that, just as Israel had a claim to sure and acknowledged borders as a state, so the Palestinians had a claim to self-determination.
Two Britons, an Italian and an American agreed that any effective restabilization of borders in the Middle East was inseparable from progress toward a solution of the Palestinian problem, in which Europe ought to play some role.
The author of the American working paper spoke of the need for a radical improvement in the fairness and arrangements and the prospects for citizens on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
(Addendum)
An International participant said that he had found the working papers and the discussion of these political aspects too complacent. We were not taking seriously enough "the trembling beneath our feet." The main source of our difficulties within the alliance was the changing power relationship between the U.S. and Europe, and the ball was in the Europeans' court to organize themselves better to speak with the Americans.
But European criticism of the U.S. seemed to have become unusually intemperate; one could not help comparing the mood now with the solidarity expressed at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The speaker suggested that there was more behind this than simple Europe's desire to be heard, and to take a bigger share of responsibility. Did the explanation perhaps lie in the fact that all of us -- and particularly the Europeans -- had begun to feel like hostages, partly of the oil-producing countries and partly of the Soviet Union? Had our self-confidence given way to self-doubt, which we were trying to rationalize by criticizing our allies? If this was so, we had to make these fears conscious if we hoped to deal with them.
Security Aspect
New Threats and Old Allies: Prospects for the Security of Europe and America
International working paper
Nothing in relations between Europe and America changes very much or very fast. That is nowhere more true than in the realm of security. It is frustrating for analysts, who must seek to judge whether the latest flap is a passing thing or the portent of real change, and who find it is almost always the former. For citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, of course, it is a happy state of affairs. It reflects stable societies and settled relations among them rooted in enduring common interests. It means that patterns of transatlantic security relations persist even though the bumbling of governments strains them. NATO at age thirty looks much like NATO at twenty, and not much different than at ten, the military departure of France having made surprisingly little difference.
On their surface, recent events contain hints of a turning point. NATO's recent decision on theatre nuclear forces (TNF) are a beginning, not an end to that issue, and they suggest changing patterns of nuclear relations between Europe and America. Similarly, the taking of American hostages by Iranian terrorists and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan stand as stark testimony that the most probably threats to Western security derive from outside, not inside Europe. Afghanistan also marks the definitive end of the period of East-West detente that began in the early 1970's, even if the shape of what will follow is not clear.
On second glance, however, recent events appear to confirm existing patterns, not overturn them. NATO decided, in December 1979, to deploy new cruise and ballistic missiles in Europe capable of reaching the Soviet Union. That step, politically difficult in Europe, represents a reinforcement of, not a departure from existing NATO nuclear strategy: the new weapons will be American, and the principal rationale for them was that they enhance the link to America's strategic nuclear deterrent.
Responses to Afghanistan are harder to read at this distance, but there, too, major change in existing change in existing transatlantic patterns is unlikely. Europeans will be called to do more in defense, outside Europe but primarily inside: America will remain the pre-eminent military guardian of Western interests outside Europe. The U.S. will want more flexibility in using its European-based garrisons for purposes beyond Europe, but that will stop short of the need to draw down forces in Europe soon.
Still, it would be unwise to take existing patterns as immutable. The history of the last 35 years is littered with "might-have-beens" suggesting that security arrangements could have turned out differently. When in 1951, for instance, the U.S. first sent large numbers of troops again to Europe, Secretary of State Marshall told Congress that there was nothing "magic" about the numbers, and clearly implied that the stationing was temporary. Or suppose the French parliament had approved the European Defense Community in 1954; a much more significant European defense organization was not out of the question. Or take the sequence of events from de Gaulle's proposal for a directoire in 1958 through the Skybolt misadventure and French non to British entry in the EEC in 1962 to the end of the Multilateral Force (MLF) in 1965. If that sequence had played out differently, the European share in Western nuclear responsibilities might have been much greater.
More than likely, the future will look much like the recent past. The U.S. and its European allies will continue to live with the dilemmas and paradoxes of their defense, never mind that the dilemmas grow sharper. Yet it is worth considering what might drive future security relations between Europe and America to patterns sharply different from simple projections of the present and recent past. I look for possibilities in three areas: one is traditional, nuclear weapons and conventional defense; a second is the question of threats outside Europe; and a third, addressed briefly, is shocks from outside the realm of "security" as usually defined.
Nuclear Weapons and Conventional Defense
In his celebrated Brussels speech last September, Henry Kissinger said that the nuclear umbrella with which he and his fellow secretaries of state rhetorically had covered Europe consisted of assurances that "cannot be true, and if my analysis is correct we must face the fact that it is absurd to base the strategy of the West on the credibility of the threat of mutual suicide." What was mischievous about his words was hardly the newness of the thought -- it had been in the back of the mind of everyone on both sides of the Atlantic who through about the issue for a decade -- but was, rather, the political fact of the emperor's aide saying that the emperor had no clothes. He began to back away from his words as soon as he said them.
Plainly, there is in the current pattern of transatlantic nuclear relations a paradox that cannot be resolved. No one could ever be sure, 20 years ago or now, that the U.S. would in fact use nuclear weapons if only Europe were attacked. The reasons for doubt are greater now, but the situation is not qualitatively different since the time in the mid-1960's when the U.S. became vulnerable to a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union even if America struck first. Weaponry matters, but now, as two decades ago, it comes down to Europe's confidence of America's will. That is why nuclear issues are barometers of more general strains in transatlantic relations.
Necessary as nuclear modernizations -- by both the U.S. and its allies in NATO -- are, nuclear parity between East and West, both in Europe and in intercontinental systems, will be a continuing fact of life. The Soviet Union is deploying SS-17, 18, and 19 ICBMs at the rate of about 125 launches a year. In systems aimed at Europe, the SS-20 has received most of the attention; some 50-60 are being implaced each year. But the Soviets also are developing new shorter-range systems for Europe: the SS-21, 22, and 23.
Whatever the U.S. and Europe do, and there are a number of things they should do, they will not recover a nuclear superiority that is psychologically reassuring, let alone militarily significant. Nuclear questions will continue to be sensitive. The December decisions by NATO thus represent a beginning, not an end; they will not usher in anything like the last 15 years of relative quiet on nuclear issues between the U.S. and Europe. What will that mean? A continuation of the present is most likely: modest new deployments plus evolutionary changes in doctrine plus efforts at political reassurance. Yet several other courses are possible, though neither is likely.
The recent decisions by NATO, and the process that produced them, bear comparing to the MLF episode of the early 1960's. Many of the initial concerns were the same; then as now they came down to the unknowable: would the U.S. respond? Allied attentions first ran to hardware "solutions" culminating in the multilateral force (MLF) -- a fleet of NATO surface ships, manned by sailors of different nations, carrying medium-range nuclear missiles whose firing would be under American control. In the end, the resolutions were much more political than "hardware". From 1963 onward the U.S. assigned submarine-launched missile warheads from its central strategic arsenal to NATO for planning purposes, and officers from NATO countries became interested bystanders at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters in Omaha.
However, the principal measure was the creation, in 1966, of the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). Initially with a rotating membership always including the Alliance's major members and now with a permanent membership, the NPG served to give Europeans access to American nuclear planning. It built confidence without changing weaponry or procedures for its use. It sufficed to lay nuclear matters to rest, I judge, in part because of the evident lack of wisdom of more dramatic "hardware" solutions. However, it was also enough because the East-West climate was warming, and European confidence in America was growing, hence nuclear matters were less sensitive.
Last December, NATO opted for a combination of hardware and procedural solutions. The hardware -- 572 cruise and Pershing II ballistic missiles -- while more political than military in purpose, was based on a solid military rationale, even if that rationale was not always the one argued in official pronouncements. In 1980, unlike 1966, procedural solutions alone probably would not have sufficed, but NATO's decisions embodied several of these as well. New nuclear machinery was created: the so-called High Level Group of the NPG made senior officials from capitals central to NATO discussions, and a parallel Special Group dealt with arms control implications.
The spectre of the neutron bomb debacle was much on the minds of those who made the December decisions. Washington learned from the neutron bomb that it could not, on a sensitive nuclear issue, merely tell its European allies that it was prepared to do what they wanted. Washington left no doubt where it wanted to come out on theatre nuclear forces (TNF), but did so without bullying Europeans. And new procedures helped. But in the end, decision-making was not very different from the previous two decades of NATO nuclear practice, notwithstanding the European-ness of the TNF issue and the prominence of European NATO members, especially the Federal Republic. That pattern amounted, somewhat crudely, to the U.S. deciding, with American preferences overturned only in light of serious European complaints.
Now, as in the 1960's, the most dramatic alternative to more of the same is a European nuclear force. On that score, General de Gaulle's logic is compelling: if Europeans fear that America will not push the button, then they need buttons of their own with nuclear weapons to match. If the logic is both familiar and compelling, so are the obstacles: the political difficulty of Anglo-French cooperation, and the much greater problem of how to include Germany. The most that can be said about recent developments is that Europeans have moved slightly toward more interest in their own nuclear weapons.
If European nuclear independence is beyond the pale, the opposite possibility, conventional deterrence, merits more consideration. Again, the logic is compelling: if deterrence through the prospect of nuclear escalation is improbable or unwise, then deterrence without the threat of nuclear weapons is preferable. Again, of course, the problems are familiar and formidable. For so long NATO has preached its hopeless inferiority in conventional forces that it has come to believe it. And beneat the surface of that debate other facts are at work, especially the abiding reluctance of Europeans to contemplate a conventional war in Europe.
There is no question that the Soviet force in Eastern Europe is impressive and growing more so. Since 1965, the Soviets have increased the total number of their divisions from 148 to 170, and added about 1,400 aircraft and 31 regiments to their tactical armies. Much of the expansion in numbers has resulted from the military build-up in the Far East, but qualitative improvements spread across the entire range of Soviet forces.
Yet the situation hardly is as bleak as it is often portrayed, and probably never has been. If the Warsaw Pact attacked without mobilization, NATO could field almost as many men in the central region as the Pact. The Pact's numerical advantage would peak after about two weeks of mobilization, but still be less than 2:1, hardly happy for the West but not appealing to a conservative Soviet military planner. Moreover, despite continuing Soviet force improvements, NATO's position should look better in several years, not worse, given the improvements undertaken in the Long-Term Defense Program (LTDP). The debate over the impact of new weaponry, such as precision-guided munitions, still rages, but it is hard to believe that on balance it does not favor the defense.
Assessing the conventional balance is bedeviled by bean-counting and the distance between Eastern and Western worst-case analyses. Popular analyses of the balance too often still count numbers of divisions on East and West, ignoring differences in size and structure; or compare numbers of tanks, forgetting that tanks may fight other tanks but so do anti-tank weapons and aircraft. Prudently conservative military planners in the West must assume that most Soviet tanks would actually work, and even more improbably, that Soviet allies in Eastern Europe would fight alongside their Russian comrades. Suffice to say the situation must look different from the Kremlin.
There is no question that reliance on conventional deterrence would require more defense effort, especially in Europe, but the increases need not be so large as to be completely out of the question. There is something anomalous in a Europe as big and far richer than the Soviet Union unable to defend itself without America. Nuclear weapons would then be structured to deter other nuclear weapons, and NATO would be spared the awful prospect of planning for a first-use of nuclear weapons that seems more and more incredible. America would loom less large in a less nuclear NATO, but its conventional presence would remain, surely through a long interim.
The Nature of the Threat
It has become ritual on both sides of the Atlantic to say that the gravest threat to Western security lies not in Europe but outside it. Iran and Afghanistan have given more evidence in support of that rhetoric. Yet it is far less clear precisely what such statements mean for American and European policy, still less what they imply for existing security arrangements. This issue is as old as the nuclear question. Most of the time it has been the U.S. hectoring its European partners to attend to the Soviet threat beyond Europe. Vietnam is the most obvious case in point. There, the preaching failed: Europeans simply did not see Vietnam as a threat to them. Worse, it diverted American attention from Europe. The most Europeans would do was limit criticism of the American role.
Now, there is a shared assessment of the threat, at least in rhetoric, but no consensus on what to do about it. Afghanistan may turn out to be a watershed. Surely it is not hard to imagine how threats beyond Europe could change the nature of transatlantic security relations almost beyond recognition. If there is a near-term threat to the cohesion of the Alliance, it is this.
The problem is both one of managing alliance politics and a deeper one, of substance. Afghanistan underscores the problem of alliance politics. The strong American reaction caught Europeans off guard. There were the customary problems of consultation. As usual, the Washington reaction presumed that America had wisdom, and that Europeans should line up behind the American lead, as irritating as ever. When Europe did not follow America's lead, it was easy for Americans to see Europeans as weak and parochial, special pleaders for special European interests. They were bound to ask if there was any security threat outside Europe that would induce Europeans to respond by curtailing their detente through limiting trade and other relations with the East.
Of course, European perceptions were just the obverse. The American reaction came out of context. After not doing enough for years, the U.S. was now doing too much, too fast, or not doing the right things. Underlying European anxiety was the feeling that Washington had no tolerably clear conception either of its relation with the Soviet Union or of how to respond to turmoil outside Europe.
From America's perspective the pattern is much the same as for nuclear issues: America decides, Europe complains, as Peter Jay put it. Europe's responsibility lags behind its capability and its stakes. That makes an impossible tightrope for American policy: too little consulting on security issues is to ignore European interests, too much is to evade leadership; too little military reaction to Soviet adventures is weakness, too much is provocation.
In the wake of Afghanistan, Europeans will certainly be called upon to do more in the realm of defense, mostly inside Europe and mostly by meeting existing commitments. However, several European nations, Britain and France in particular, can contribute to broader Western military cooperation outside Europe. Whether that cooperation takes place inside or outside NATO is a secondary matter in the short run; NATO has a role to play, but the allies do not lack for means of talking with each other if the will is there, and institutional issues should not be allowed to hang up the debate.
Europeans can also contribute by allowing the U.S. more flexibility in the use of its forces stationed in Europe to meet threats beyond Europe. Beyond that, there will be pressure on Europeans to do more in Europe to compensate as increases in American forces for contingencies outside Europe begin to compete with, or even cut into forces earmarked for Europe. What Europeans cannot do is refuse to do more outside Europe yet complain if any American actions threaten existing levels of American deployment in Europe.
The new catchword, "division of labor", suggests a more appropriate formulation of the transatlantic bargain than the "burden-sharing" of the 1960's. Yet without a forthcoming European attitude and careful American handling, division of labor could easily produce the same kind of strain in the Alliance as burden-sharing, for there is a real risk that the American Congress will perceive Europe not to be doing its share.
Managing the politics in the short run will be hard enough, but deeper issues must also be confronted. For 15 years the ritual refrain on both sides of the Atlantic has been that detente is indivisible. What the American and the European response to Afghanistan demonstrates is not that the refrain is untrue as that it always was too simple. Detente is, and was, divisible for some purposes.
There is no question that detente in Europe is real in a way that Soviet-American detente never was. For Germans, in particular, but for other Western Europeans as well, the web of economic dealings and humanitarian contacts creates stakes for Europeans that do not exist for Americans. One-fourth of all the Federal Republic's trade is with the East. Total American trade with the Soviet Union amounted to a little over two and one-half billion dollars in 1978; Western German trade with the Soviet Union was well over twice that figure.
Europeans are thus bound to view detente through the prism of Europe. That need not be bad. It may make sense for Europeans to differentiate between Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union so that the situation in Eastern Europe may not close down entirely, and to sustain some "carrots" in relations with the East. There may be a virtue in Europe and America pursuing the same objectives through somewhat different policies.
Yet the concept is easier than the practice. That is clear enough in European arms control. When negotiations on theatre nuclear forces (TNF) look so unpromising -- because the U.S. is in the position of trading its potential weapons for real and increasing systems on the other side -- Americans are bound to ask why European politics sustains a romantic attachment to negotiating before arming.
The danger is even grater[sic] in framing responses to threats outside Europe. Americans could see Europeans prepared to spend billions insuring against military contingencies in Europe that are, admittedly, the worst but also the least likely, while unwilling to do much about more probable military contingencies outside Europe. If there is anomaly in a Europe unable to defend itself without America, so, too, is it anomalous that 35 years after the war the U.S. is still the preeminent military protector of Western interests outside Europe, interests that are easily as important to Europe as to America.
"Mansfieldism" in the American Congress is quiet but not absent. It could be awakened, perhaps dramatically, by a perception that Europeans were not doing their share to meet the real threats to security, threats outside Eruope. Divison of labor acnnot mean that Europeans do the easy or nice things -- sustaining "carrots" in relations with Eastern Europe, developing special economic ties to Yugoslavia -- while the grubbier, military tasks fall to America. Europeans must share risks as well as labors. There is more than a hint of unilateralism already in the American mood, partly reflecting nostalgia for past American strength, never mind how true the image, but also reflecting impatience with friends and allies.
The danger for NATO is not that it will be seen as ineffective, only irrelevant. In the early days of NATO, there was a near one-to-one correspondence between the nature of the perceived threat to Western security and the scope of the institution designed to deal with that threat. That is no longer true. NATO, even if effective, seems relevant to only a narrower and narrower slice of the security threat Europe and America confront.
External Shocks and Internal Politics
In the end, the shape of security relations between Europe and America will be determined more by factors that have little to do with "security," even by a broad definition, than by anything discussed in this paper. Those relations will be driven by internal politics in Europe and America and by outside shocks. The 1973 oil embargo is a case in point. Its repetition in a stark form -- such as a complete cutoff of Saudi Arabian oil -- would turn relations between the U.S. and Europe upside down. The SS-20 would pale as a threat beside the prospect of homes without heat, and a transatlantic scramble for energy would make a mockery of the Alliance.
Similarly, while Eurocommunism is less fashionable as a topic these days, it and other internal political developments are just as important over the long run. My own sense is that NATO is fairly resilient in dealing with internal political changes in member countries. The special arrangements created for France, or Greece, or briefly for Portugal suggest some possible adaptations. The real problem is not that special mechanisms cannot be created, but that they further erode the cohesion and common purpose of the Alliance, a central theme of this paper. They convert NATO into a more and more limited security organization.
Some developments in internal politics could make a dramatic difference. For instance, Mansfield-amendment type pressure for withdrawals of American forces from Europe might arise not from perceptions of Europe's irresoluteness and NATO's irrelevance, but rather from the combination of deep recession in the U.S. with a turn toward serious trade-warring across the Atlantic.
There is not much those who tend the security of Europe and America can do about such shocks, other than bear in mind that they may occur. In the 1980's it will be all the harder to frame common responses in pursuit of basic interests because there will be so many more uncertainties and issues around, some of them divisive across the Atlantic. There will be all the more risk that in the next crisis the allies will break apart like characters in a bad play: Americans shooting from the hip, Germans fretting, the French gloating, the British waving the flag and the rest standing around trying to sort out the plot.
The question of leadership is the most overworked topic in transatlantic relations. It has become trite, though no less true, to say that America can no longer lead as it did but that Europe is not yet in a position to fill the gap. In that sense, a transition is clearly on us. But it has been on us for a decade or more.
Something much more complicated than a loss of American will is afoot. Europeans exaggerate the lingering effect of the trauma of Vietnam. The nature of the change in the international environment is straightforward: the preeminence the U.S. enjoyed by comparison to both Europe and the Soviet Union in the early postwar period was unusual in history, and it should not surprise us that it has eroded. Nor should it surprise or even dismay us that the world became more complicated as the center of power shifted vaguely southward, though specific manifestations of that shift are cause for dismay.
In that context the public mood on both sides of the Atlantic is bound to be unpredictable. That matters more in America's case because of the still central U.S. role, but it is a difficulty for Europeans in framing their role as well. Varied, even conflicting undertones in public mood will coexist, with one or another breaking to the surface: a desire to wish problems away by believing that, after all, nothing much that happens in the world affects the U.S.; or a feeling that America must build strength and go it alone, impatient with allies who complain but cannot act.
Common security interests between America and Europe are strong and likely to prevail. No doubt NATO at 40 will look much like NATO at 30. But there is real risk that in a more and more turbulent world, differences, many of them over secondary issues, will undermine basic interests Europe and America continue to share. To prevent that, issues like the following must be addressed:
- Nuclear questions will continue to be sensitive. They are as much political as military, reflecting the state of European confidence in American will. There are no "hardware" solutions once-and-for-all, though the U.S. and its allies must modernize their forces. But East-West nuclear parity will be a continuing fact of life.
- It is thus more urgent than ever to come to a sensible assessment of the conventional balance in Europe. It is not beyond the pale for the allies to defend Europe without the awful reliance on nuclear threats -- such as first use in a losing conventional war -- that are less and less credible.
- The most immediate challenge to common purpose between Europe and America is security threats outside Europe. "Division of labor" cannot be cosmetic, nor can it mean only that Europe does the easy things.
- Europe must share risks as well as labors. That meas cooperating in military measures beyond Europe. It may also mean facing the fact that, for the time being, East-West negotiations over theatre nuclear forces (TNF) are unwise in substance, notwithstanding their political attraction.
Discussion
The Present Military Situation of NATO
A British participant took issue with the implication of the author of the International working paper that NATO was a rather complacent and weary organization where nothing ever changed much. As a military alliance which existed to field forces, NATO could not entertain the idea of changelessness. In truth, the picture had been one of constant evolution, in response not only to advances in military science but also to political events (e.g., France, Greece, the founding the NPG, British withdrawal from the Mediterranean, the revolution in Portugal, the phenomenon of Eurocommunism, the impact of the Long-Term Defense Plan). NATO was indeed a very adaptable organization, and harnessing it depended on the will of the member nations. To say that the body was a level one, though, did not mean that its thoughts and actions always responded to the demands of the hour.
An International speaker offered an overview of NATO's present military situation. He began by recalling the beginnings of NATO, which he described as a tremendous improvement over previous alliances with its unique peacetime military integration. Despite numerous internal crises, the alliance remained "alive and kicking." The recent events in Iran and Afghanistan had produced shock waves in NATO and, for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, there was the specter of a generalized war. We faced this prospect with the knowledge that the Eastern bloc had an overall ratio of superiority in the conventional field of 2:1 in armor and ground forces, somewhat less in aircraft. But if NATO could take full advantage of the minimum warning time -- say, five days -- it would be able to contain a Soviet onslaught by its conventional forces after some initial sacrifice of ground. The speaker was worried, though, about the use of warning time. In the annual paper exercises, there were always some governments which feared to declare an alert and mobilization. This reflected the widespread pacifist leanings among our people, and the wish not to increase the chances of war. In fact, the contrary was true. By inaction, we might miss the last opportunity to defuse a dangerous situation.
Since the summit meetings of 1977-78, NATO had set about correcting the disparities which had been expected to tip the military balance clearly toward the East by the early eighties. Its members had sought to do this by spending, on average, three per cent more a year in real terms. (Some, like Turkey, were unable to spend that much, but Portugal, on the other hand, had raised its military budget this year by ten per cent in real terms.) The Long-term Defense Program, with well over a thousand concrete projects, was proceeding smoothly. Just as a slackening in these efforts had been detected, we had been rudely awakened by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
By our military expenditures as a percentage of GNP were only about half what they had been 20 years ago. This belied the common thesis about the unbearable burdens of defense.
The Soviet Union was still spending four to give per cent more for arms in real terms each year. With only slightly more than half the national income of the U.S., the USSR was spending $20 billion more on defense -- and only ten per cent of their budget represented personnel costs vs. 50 per cent in the U.S.
As for comparing NATO's readiness and efficiency with that of the Warsaw Pact forces, however, the speaker thought that this could not be done with any authority or certainty. The proof of the pudding was in the eating, and he hoped that this particular pudding would never have to be eaten.
A Briton argued that it was difficult in the nature of things to agree on military facts. Everyone would have a different view about how a war might start, how it would be fought, and what would happen at various stages. Moreover, there was a tendency in the military always to exaggerate the strength of the adversary, for reasons of institutional vested interests. None of the nuclear weapons systems in the world had ever been used, and no one could be sure just how they would work. There was a whole new range of electronic countermeasures. Any rational aggressor would need a degree of certainty which was beyond reach to take a step involving a significant risk of nuclear response from the other side. These considerations had enabled the Europeans to feel secure even though the Russians had achieved nuclear parity.
This discussion of the military situation struck one American participant as rather complacent. If the consensus here was correct, then the consensus of many military experts was incorrect. Few of them believed that NATO had a significant capacity for prolonged conventional defense in Europe. The whole history of European defense showed that what was needed to win a conventional battle was superiority, not an overwhelming degree, but at the decisive points. Did our conventional strength really justify our counting on such a breakthrough? If so, this should be made clear to our policy makers. Certainly it was not beyond the wit of rational men to come to an agreement about what our true military position was.
Strategic Issues
An International participant was struck by the volatility of our defense debates, although the problems remained the same. Six months before, our discussion here would have been dominated by the issues of theatre nuclear forces (TNF) and the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent. Now we seemed to be groping for confidence about the conventional balance in Europe, and doubtful if our military forces were relevant to troubles in the Third World.
In our debates about both TNF and strategic forces, we tended to project our political questions about doubts in the nuclear arguments. For example, discussion about TNF and the SS-20 would have been conducted completely differently at a time when there was more confidence in Europe about U.S. leadership. "When something is wrong politically, the alliance gets nuclear pimples." Was there not, underneath the current American debate about the vulnerability of its land-based missiles, more of a political than a strategic rationale, i.e., what was to be the role of U.S. power in the 1980's?
The speaker foresaw that, in five to eight years, the strategic nuclear position of the Soviets would be in no way enviable, as trends were running against the kind of arsenal they had set up. But even if we should get back to a position where the U.S. did not have to worry about a measure of strategic weakness, there would be no return to the fifties or sixties. There was a central trend now in nuclear strategic technology which would lead sooner or later to the vulnerability to pre-emptive strikes of all strategic systems. We were seeing this with the land-based systems today, as well as in U.S. pronouncements about the possibility of finding and destroying Soviet submarines. This would offer a profound challenge to the European-American nuclear umbrella relationship. Whether you doubted it or believed in it now, the U.S. President's readiness to be the first one to use nuclear systems for a European contingency was bound to be affected by his knowledge that he would be exposing his own domestic strategic sites to a counterstrike by the USSR. This problem was not here yet, but it was time for the alliance to start thinking about it. If the first use of nuclear weapons became more unlikely and less credible, was there another way, and would conventional forces provide it? But we risked discussing this issue in the wrong way. It was not technology and equipment which were at stake, but available personnel. The fact that the U.S., with its global role, had significantly fewer reservists than the Federal Republic, with a regional role, said something about this.
Two German interventions touched on the TNF question. One speaker alluded to the fact that the USSR was deploying one additional SS-20 every week, and said that the best approach to redressing this imbalance still lay in a serious attempt at arms control, based on the NATO positions of December 1979. It was to be hoped that the ratification of SALT II after the U.S. election would open the way to further negotiations on theatre nuclear forces. Without that, we would be led to an unbridled arms race.
The other speaker, who opposed any bilateral or trilateral arrangements within NATO, had favored modernization of theatre nuclear forces for some time. But this must not be done by putting medium range ballistic missiles only on German soil. That would not only tempt the Soviets to single out German targets, but might lead the Germans themselves, say in 1986-90, to behave differently from other Europeans.
An Italian speaker said that the U.S. was maintaining strategy that had been elaborated when it had been the principal superpower. That position had declined, and this had been perceived by its allies, adversaries, and third parties. The entire political situation of the alliance now had to be re-thought. Elements such as long-rage TNF's would mean and increased role for Europe in nuclear negotiations -- indirect perhaps, but with an impact on the alliance nevertheless. Unless this process could be carried out within SALT or a similar framework, serious problems might result.
An American participant sensed that the military debates in all of our countries were surrogates for political debate, and that a systematic strategic analysis was hard to achieve because of the intrusion of political considerations. In the U.S., the most "bloodthirsty" strategies were being advocated by the most "liberal" groups, apparently as a way to avoid building up nuclear forces and to evade the issue of whether there was any military significance to the use of nuclear weapons. This had led to the elaboration of theories that related deterrence largely or entirely to an economic analysis of the degree of destruction needed to give pause to a potential aggressor. The curious result was that systems analysis had been used, on all sides of the debate, as a way of using numbers to prove preconceived positions. Not only would the American Minuteman force be vulnerable, but there were substantial psychological inhibitions on a president whose only option was the mass extermination of civilians, in the absence of plans that gave him any rational basis for relating the outcome of a war to the challenge he might face. This dilemma would likely be intensified by the end of the eighties, when there might again be a mutual vulnerability of strategic forces, but the point was that it was extremely dangerous to gear our defense policy for the indefinite future to the sort of plans which now existed for the use of nuclear weapons. This could lead to a degree of escapism that might produce paralysis in a crisis. Of course if there were an all-out Soviet attack in the center of Europe, the risk to the USSR of something unforeseeable would probably always be greater than they would be prepared to take.
Those who had a sense of strategy were oddly united with those who wanted to do nothing with military force, in that the latter reckoned that leaving U.S. forces in Europe could do no damage. They could never be used, according to this reasoning, because they were protected by the nuclear umbrella, and it was better to have them in Europe than in some remote place where they might actually become involved in a military operation. In short, there had been a misleading consensus behind the presence of American forces in Europe that did not really guarantee a willingness to look at the world in geopolitical and strategic terms.
According to the author of the American working paper, although it was not inevitable, it was certainly in the line of inertia in the development of nuclear weapons that we might find ourselves moving steadily away from the sound part of the strategic doctrine of the fifties and sixties, elaborated in the notion of the secure second strike deterrent force, which was a totally different thing from "mutually assured destruction." It was now true that -- because of MIRVs and the possible large scale deployment of ICMs -- a time might come when one side or the other would perceive the kind of advantage which did not now exist in the international strategic forces. But it was still possible to make technical improvements and design arrangements which would make the next generation of these weapons at least fundamentally no more dangerous than what we had at present. One of the most important tasks before our defense planners and their political masters would be to block the inevitability of the "If-I-go-first-I-win" kind of thinking.
Another American speaker said that, while parity might have existed since the late fifties or early sixties, there must surely be a difference in that parity (a) when the U.S. maintained a substantial advantage and the Soviets were able only to destroy American cities, and (b) when the U.S. no longer had a substantial advantage and the Soviets had the capacity to destroy American weapons. Likewise, there was a difference in Europe between (a) a situation in which the U.S. and the alliance contemplated with some degree of rationality the strategic first use of nuclear weapons, and (b) a situation in which we knew that the Soviets were contemplating such a strategy, had executed it in their own maneuvers, and had added to their forces a whole family of nuclear weaponry, quite apart from the SS-20. In short, we were entering a period that was qualitatively different from what had gone before.
A German speaker remarked that we had arrived at a military equilibrium, or parity in a rough sense. This had been marked by SALT I, confirmed by SALT II, and would possibly be further confirmed by MBFR. It was time to think again about the meaning of "deterrence", and about its practical implementation, for which we needed above all men, not just money.
The author of the French working paper observed that efforts to strengthen the nuclear side of the alliance had made the possibility of non-nuclear intervention less credible. We sought instinctively not to mix up the two theatres, knowing that we were not very strong in theatre strike forces; yet we still had the desire to intervene locally. A model for such intervention had been provided by France's assistance to Tunisia against the attempted coup from Libya. Much of the French strategy in Africa had been criticized by the U.S., but it should be seen in the perspective of a worldwide strategy for Western defense.
A Briton detected in this discussion a feeling that the present strategic situation was a "straitjacket" which was stultifying to Western interests and was not giving us the scope we needed. We could not hope to recover that degree of nuclear superiority which was psychologically reassuring, aking into account anything that Europe could do not through its nuclear powers or was likely to find politically convenient and feasible in the near future. The superpowers knew that their differences were not going to be settled by nuclear exchange, and had reached a stage of mutual deterrence, which some modernization here or additional deployment there would not alter significantly. But this was not the kind of deterrent which would preclude carefully calculated expansion on the Afghan model. The Russians would stand ready to take quick advantage of ambivalent situations.
The Need for Stronger Conventional Forces
The above speaker went on to say that NATO had almost talked itself into a position of conventional inferiority. Europe might not be reluctant to face a conventional war if it would, by so doing, avoid the nuclear alternative. In any event, new conventional possibilities ought to be much more closely studied. The sudden leap forward in all branches of electronic warfare had opened the way to technically-advanced nations to neutralize opposing forces, and by the threat of such neutralization, to deter attacks. Advances in light, maneuverable, reasonably cheap anti-armor weapons were potentially dramatic. Developments allowing the attrition of armor at long range by specialized aircraft, combined with defense suppression by electronic means; firing from gun-launched "smart" weapons; at sea, the ability to deceive enemy fleets -- all these were now within our grasp. They could make conventional deterrence a way to break free from unsatisfactory nuclear dependence. This would demand much more highly developed industrial collaboration between nations and far better systems for the training and integration of reserves. The process would be painful and politically difficult, but it would be worth it.
An Italian participant agreed that improved conventional deterrents would carry a high price tag in terms of industrial and military integration. This would also mean a greater political weight for Europe, a divergence of political perceptions, and perhaps a different strategy for the alliance itself. All this would work if the Americans would be flexible enough in their strategy to make use of European differences for common ends; but if the rigidity of U.S. strategy increased, it would not work.
A German intervened to say that, even in the conventional field, his people must not become the largest army in Europe. Not only would the Russian and Poles not like it; neither would the Britons or the French. At first the other allies would be glad to have the Germans do the job alone, but eventually it would damage the psychological cohesion of the alliance.
The author of the international working paper reiterated that, if we feared that the threshold for the use of American central strategic forces was too low, we ought logically to try to raise it by greater reliance on conventional forces. We should aim, he said, for a situation where NATO's main reliance on the central front would be on conventional deterrence where nuclear weapons would be structured to deter other nuclear weapons. But we should seek to spare ourselves the awful prospect, which we now faced, of being forced to make the first use of nuclear weapons. We were often the prisoners of our own claims of conventional inferiority. In fact, the situation should be getting better rather than worse, as NATO implemented measures in the Long-Term Defense Program. The situation would never be as happy as we would like, but it probably did not look very tempting to Moscow, either.
The Question of Political Will
The author of the International working paper remarked that defense efforts in all of our countries had gone up and down very substantially over the years. In 1953, the U.S. had been spending almost 15 per cent of its GNP on defense, and France and Britain 11 per cent. By 1978, the U.S. had been down to five per cent, and only recently had this figure begun to rise. Europeans were right in pointing out that, while more military power might be necessary, it unlikely to be sufficient.
In American debate on this subject, there was an almost nostalgic feeling that, if we augmented our military force, that would solve our problems. Although we contemplated doing more, we did not seem to have a very good idea of what we ought to be doing. If one country decided to spend more on aid to developing countries instead of increasing its military budget, that should be acceptable. But the "admission ticket" for all of us for spending on defense and related matters probably ought to be six to eight per cent of GNP rather than three to five per cent. Whether all of us could achieve that was a hard question of domestic politics, not alliance politics.
What did we expect to get for our money? For some purposes (e.g., deterring the USSR from certain kinds of activities), we might not want to be very precise in our public proclamations about what our forces were to be used for. But we then risked creating a gap between what we said we wanted to do and what we actually could do. Unless we explained to our people what their money was being spent for, it might prove hard to sustain the willingness to make the required expenditure.
An American participant was reluctantly persuaded that increased military spending for preparedness would be necessary on both sides of the Atlantic. But, given the problems of inflation, unemployment, unsatisfactory productivity, and the distraction of national elections, he was not sure that our political processes would succeed in producing the ncessary financial support.
The author of the French working paper thought that the will of his country could be characterized as strong in one sense but weak in another. One strong element in French independence consisted in her always remaining somewhat on the outside. On the other hand, the sense of independence in the world conflict that was partly the result of France's nuclear strategy had encouraged a trend towards neutralism, particularly in the left wing parties. Nevertheless, it had been remarkable that, in the whole Atlantic discussion about Pershing II, there had been total silence from the French. Experienced observers would have understood that this in fact amounted to "shouting approval." Furthermore, it was noteworthy that the French Communist party had totally failed in its campaign to mobilize opposition to the alliance's decision. Even the C.G.T. had balked. When the Communists had used "Pershing II!" as a rallying cry, the response had been "SS-20!" In Italy, the will to defend the country was relatively strong within the Communist party, as Berlinguer realized that without the Atlantic alliance a fate similar to that of Dubcek[?] was likely to befall him.
Another French speaker referred to the neutralist current developing in Europe. People had not been seduced by Russian ideology, but they were intimidated by the displays of naked force and were become fatalistic. They sought to minimize and rationalize the worrisome signs.
One could understand the impatience of European leaders with the shilly-shallying of the U.S. administration, but instead of giving voice to their criticism could they not have proposed getting together with the Americans to work out a common strategy? Was it really too late for Europe to avoid the dilemma of appeasement or war?
A German participant said that we had to inform our people honestly if we expected to enlist their support for defense; we could not "steamroller" them. He mentioned two examples: (1) Before the German debate about the deployment of rockets, the trade union leaders had been well-briefed by the government. So when "doves had come from all over the world to ask the German unions to stand firm for peace," they were prepared to reply. (2) If our people were sometimes reluctant to take on a greater defense burden, it was perhaps because NATO had shouted "wolf!" too often and too loud.
A Briton was worried by our tendency to find every possible reason for not facing up to our problems. It was right to acknowledge our weaknesses, but by turning away and not risking certain dangers, we would actually help to bring them about. Wringing our hands was the best way to invite provocation.
A similar rule could be applied to the question of American leadership, at least in military and political matters. Unless the U.S. showed a willingness to act alone, it would not get collective action from its allies, or a peaceful reaction from its adversaries. This was not true in the economic sphere, where events since the Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods had shown the necessity of collective action. But for the U.S. to say that, in political or military matters, it could act only in concert with its allies was to undermine its credibility; it would maintain its credibility only by expressing a willingness to act unilaterally.
Security Threats Outside the Alliance Area
The author of the International working paper remarked that it had become commonplace to say that our greatest threats now emanated from outside Europe. But what did this really mean, and what were the implications? To speak simply of the division of labor needed to deal with those threats tended to focus on the question of who was to do what. The more important question was whether we were all -- individually and together -- doing enough.
A British speaker said that the conventional basis for deterrence would allow for greater flexibility in dealing with threats outside Europe. Whatever strategy we adopted, Europeans would certainly be exhorted to do more, and to take a hand in some of the "grubbier" jobs. If this could be done within the context of NATO, all our interests would be better served, but there were still bound to be demands made on us on a bilateral or ad hoc basis. The rules of the alliance provided for the redeployment of troops in national emergencies, and several countries had taken full advantage of that. Perhaps we had moved toward a substantial blurring of the frontier between Europe and "outside". Certainly the Soviets recognized no border. In this environment, we should expect those nations which manifestly possessed the means to do so to maintain intervention forces with which their allies could be supported. Granted, Soviet action in the future might be much more diffuse and difficult to pin down, but our vital interests were almost certain to be threatened. The new technology referred to in the previous section, leading to a greater emphasis on conventional strategy, would make it easier to visualize a concerted response to worldwide challenges, and geographic rules on the map were not beyond alteration. This did not mean that an intervention force was in any way dependent on a move to a more conventional strategy; it would just be made far easier. The biggest difficulty in mounting an intervention force lay in deciding exactly what one wanted to do. Once the strategic and tactical objectives were agreed upon, the rest tended to fall into place. There would certainly be logistic problems to surmount, but we could not go on accepting a situation in which we were powerless to intervene outside Europe in even quite minor contingencies.
An American participant said that, for his country, the Middle East and the northwest quadrant of the Indian Ocean had already become a major strategic front, imposing new demands and giving rise to major new programs which would be expanded over the next five to ten years, which important military and political implications for the alliance. The U.S. was developing, at an accelerated pace, the ability to bring to bear various levels of military power in various plausibly foreseeable circumstances, sometimes difficult to define, but involving the concept that units of central strategic reserves could be moved rapidly by air and sea. Substantial funds and diplomatic efforts were required to insure passage through the territory of various friends and allies, in both the Pacific and Atlantic areas. It was not just a matter of planning, but also of paying for "parking spaces" and all the facilities needed to support a higher level of American presence, primarily through naval deployments. This would include fuel and lubrication products, shelter, water and reserve munitions. A major expansion was envisaged at Diego Garcia, as a hinge to U.S. capacity in that area. These programs, already underway, would cost tens of millions of dollars, but more could and would be done.
The object of the exercise was to develop a fundamental capacity to affect the attitudes and behavior of the Soviets and others in that part of the world, and to acquire the option to provide help against security threats -- to play, for example, the kind of role that the U.K. had played in Oman. Such a role would only be feasible if we, and other people in the area, did not have to work in the shadow of overwhelming Soviet military power, to which we had no counter. What was needed was not a show of force, but a substantial force capable of handling a range of contingencies, even some involving the USSR, in Pakistan and Iran. We did not need the capacity to meet the Soviets everywhere at once under the worst cases, but we needed a substantial force that could be moved quite rapidly.
This U.S. investment was based not on an economic calculation about the importance of oil, but on a cool-headed reckoning that our relationships could be skewed by an imbalance in that part of the world. The speaker could not think of a case where the interests of the European-American alliance had been so tangibly and palpably engaged outside the area of the alliance as they were now in the Middle East. We were indeed fortunate that the threat was so clear, so lacking in the ambiguities that had been between us in the case of Vietnam. But there were two key implications for the alliance: (1) Cooperation between the U.S. and the powers able to play a role in that area (Britain and France) was critical, but other countries would be important in providing access. (2) This effort targeted on the Indian Ocean did not mean that the U.S. would not do more elsewhere, although it would not be able to do as much more as it otherwise would have. Therefore its allies would have to do more, especially in replacing some of the reserve mobilization capability. The implementation of these enlarged responsibilities would have to be informed by a political awareness on two points: (1) That the Middle East was a new strategic front; and (2) that it was so for all of us, so that traditional notions about how alliance lines were drawn would have to be adjusted.
A Briton agreed that there would have to be a division of labor in planning for collective action outside Europe, especially as it was too expensive for small and medium-sized powers to maintain a broad range of capabilities. But significant increases in defense expenditure in some Continental countries seemed inevitable if we wanted an intervention force outside Europe. This would raise the much more difficult question of where such a force would be used, and how. Would it be to help local governments resist external attack or internal dissidence? There was a role to be played in the latter case, but it was usually best given indirectly. The moment one went beyond that, one risked trouble. A decade ago, the Kuwaitis had been anxious for a commitment from Britain to protect them from an Iraqui attack. But they would not allow the stationing of British forces, who therefore had had to be based 500 miles down the Gulf at Bahrein. The whole time they were there, the Kuwaiti government had been financing the Free Bahrein movement whose purpose it had been to get British forces out of Bahrein!
Similar difficulties had been encountered in recent months by officials seeking bases for an expanded Western capability in the Gulf. It was proving hard to get the agreement of local people for this, yet it was appallingly difficult and expensive to design a real all-purpose, intercontinental intervention force which did not require a base in the area. Perhaps it was easier to design forces to deter the Russians from intervening, but this would require an enhanced role for Europeans in the defense of Western Europe.
An International participant confessed to serious reservations about this broad redifinition of the responsibilities of the alliance. The alliance, after all, was just barely able to defend Europe, and burdens in distant areas would in effect have to be borne, as now, by the U.S., with perhaps some help from the U.K. and other countries. The danger of a general war would be greatly increased. But the alliance could at least take concrete diplomatic measures and reinforced defense measures which would have an unequivocal meaning for the USSR and third countries. We would have to see how our people and governments responded to such a call, though, as "enthusiasm is rather patchy." Above all, we should not allow the Soviet Union to sow discord among us, and we should not countenance heads of NATO member governments going abroad purporting to act as mediators between the U.S. and the USSR, and pretending that their country could commit itself to another policy, "which in no way corresponds to actual fact."
A Canadian speaker said that, while the division of responsibilities was quite clear at the military level, it was less so at the political level. It was understandable enough to say that detente was indivisible, and to want to apply this concept outside of Europe, but there were practical difficulties. For one thing, problems were unforeseeable, and it was difficult to speak of a global strategy when a regional spirit persisted. Broadening NATO's jurisdiction might render the alliance impractical. The Third World would see it as a new form of imperialism and neo-colonialism. There was also the prospect of nuclear proliferation, which would tend to water down the cohesion of the alliance.
NATO was perfectly credible insofar as it dealt with the military defense of Europe, and what had been accomplished by the members outside of the alliance framework had not really been so bad (e.g., consultations on terrorism, on the political stability of African regimes). With the advent of detente, it would be increasingly difficult to justify the military budget attendant on a greater role for Europe. The Europeans would follow America as much as they could, but perhaps the most likely avenue would be one of ad hoc cooperation on projects related to specific difficulties (such as the Iranian hostages or other crises). This approach would be more easily justified than broad-based military cooperation in the eyes of Europeans, who did not feel any direct threat to their security.
An American speaker found the so-called Carter Doctrine disquieting. For the first time in the postwar period, the U.S. had enunciated a doctrine for the defense of an area without changing its forces or increasing them significantly, and without creating the capability of dealing with contingencies in the area. We were thus creating an extraordinarily dangerous gap between our commitments and our capabilities.
Our policy-makers were likely not to be experts, and the experts themselves were so influenced by their philosophical preconceptions that they tended somewhat to "cook" their military analyses. The experts were far from agreed about our relative capacity to intervene, but it would be critical to have an accurate measure of that if we were confronted with crises outside the alliance area -- for example, in places like Yugoslavia or the Arabian peninsula, not necessarily caused by the Soviet Union.
The author of the American working paper remarked that administration "doctrines" were seldom successful. The content of the "Carter doctrine" simply lay somewhere among the multiple military options which we confronted.
An Italian participant wondered whether the Carter Doctrine did not contain an element of political uncertainty. Was there not a gap between its long-term objects and the relationship of forces in the region, and between the willingness expressed and the realistic political possibilities? In the medium term, it was impossible to set up local military forces without increasing the risk of Soviet military intervention. In the long run, as Keynes had said, we would all be dead. So we had to devise a containment strategy for the short run, and this was complicated by the fragmentary nature of the information we had to work with. Moreover, it was not politically credible that our short-run efforts would be extended in the medium term. In the speaker's opinion, we had to work toward fostering local alliances upon whom we could count in emergencies. Bilateral alliances were not sufficient in countries which were vulnerable and suspicious of direct American support.
An American speaker analyzed the probably consequence of military intervention in the Persian Gulf. The oil fields would be the first thing to go, he predicted. If the three ports and eight pumping stations in the area were destroyed -- internally or externally -- 60 to 70 per cent of the oil flow would be interrupted. More than enough material for upheaval in the region had been provided by political and social instability, massive corruption, inadequacy of the ruling regimes, and the increased component of foreign indentured labor. One did not need "Cubans, Soviets or any other foreign force to do the job." In the last dozen years, 15 of the 28 Arab rules had been removed by non-peaceful means. In the past 15 years, there had been 12 inter-Arab wars of substantial magnitude, without Soviet involvement.
What was fundamentally involved in the concept of our "willingness to fight in the Persian Gulf" was our protection of the status quo. If we ever really go engaged in a successful military venture there, the most likely result would be the complete destruction of, not only the oil fields, but the social and political structure of Iran and many other countries, accompanies by an irrational Moslem uprising against the infidels.
Our strategic stockpile of oil was extremely limited, and the Saudis had refused to add to it. But the Soviets could very well do for a number of years without oil from that region, and without the disorganized situation there. Local governments had refused to be associated with any major effort by the U.S. to build up the strategic stockpile, and America's European allies were reluctant to come along.
Was the Carter Doctrine not really just a reiteration of the Dulles Doctrine: that we would retaliate at the places and times, and with the means, of our choosing? Did that not make sense in the circumstances? Many other proposals on the subject seemed to emanate from a "never-never land." The beginning of all wisdom was to know one's weakness.
Another American observed that any military build-up in the Middle East was first and foremost the responsibility of the U.S. It would have to be sufficient to make clear that any further Soviet aggression entailed a risk of direct confrontation with the U.S. Until the Palestinian problem was solved, Arab cooperation in any security measures would be limited. Indeed such cooperation would be dangerous to the internal stability of the Arab states.
We had to recognize, according to a U.S. speaker, that what was happening in the Near East amounted to the opening of an additional front vis-a-vis the Western alliance. Whatever their motives, the Soviets were not intruding militarily into southwest Asia, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, and across from it is East Africa. The current American capacity to respond in that region had to be seen against this background: There had been 10 to 15 years of neglect of its forces, induced partly by the burdens of Vietnam. Moreover, the traditional U.S. form of intervention on the Euro-Asian land mass, through massive reinforcement by sea and air, unchallenged by any opposing force, was no longer a workable strategy. It could now be contested by the Soviet navy and air force, whose capabilities were being built up.
We were also being subjected to a proliferation of Soviet military pressures around the world, through their naval forces or proxies. There had been instances of this in the fifties and sixties, but it had not added up to the pattern we saw now. The ostensible -- even real perhaps -- reason for these Russian involvements was to support some local movement or authority, but in every case they had used their presence, once established, for their own purposes. We should not turn the new slogan, which said that a military balance was necessary but not sufficient, into the notion that it was not really necessary, that what we needed was just skillful diplomacy, more sympathy with the forces of change, and so forth. All that could not compete effectively with Soviet military growth.
The alliance now faced a crucial problem, in the technical, political, and procedural sense: wil it was itself confined to Europe, it had interests which were outside Europe. Although the instrumentalities of the alliance and of other institutions could not always be put at the service of those interests, we could no longer avoid the necessity of behaving like allies on a worldwide basis, not just in the area of the North Atlantic Treaty
The Question of Political Will
The author of the International working paper remarked that defense efforts in all of our countries had gone up and down very substantially over the years. In 1953, the U.S. had been spending almost 15 per cent of its GNP on defense, and France and Britain 11 per cent. By 1978, the U.S. had been down to five per cent, and only recently had this figure begun to rise. Europeans were right in pointing out that, while more military power might be necessary, it was unlikely to be sufficient.
In an American debate on this subject, there was an almost nostalgic feeling that, if we augmented our military force, that would solve our problems. Although we contemplated doing more, we did not seem to have a very good idea of what we ought to be doing. If one country decided to spend more on aid to developing countries instead of increasing its military budget, that should be acceptable. But the "admission ticket" for all of us for spending on defense and related matters probably ought to be six to eight per cent of GNP rather than three to five per cent. Whether all of us could achieve that was a hard question of domestic politics, not alliance politics.
What did we expect to get for our money? For some purposes (e.g., deterring the USSR from certain kind of activities), we might not want to be very precise in our public proclamations about what our forces were to be used for. But we then risked creating a gap between what we said we wanted to do and what we actually could do. Unless we explained to our people that their money was being spent for, it might prove hard to sustain the willingness to make the required expenditure.
An American participant was reluctantly persuaded that increased military spending for preparedness would be necessary on both sides of the Atlantic. But, given the problems of inflation, unemployment, unsatisfactory productivity, and the distractions of national elections, he was not sure that our political processes would succeeded in producing the necessary financial support.
The author of the French working paper thought that the will of his country could be characterized as strong in one sense but weak in another. One strong element in French independence consisted in her always remaining somewhat on the outside. On the other hand, the sense of independence in the world conflict that was partly the result of France's nuclear strategy had encouraged a trend toward neutralism, particularly in the left wing parties. Nevertheless, it had been remarkable that, in the whole Atlantic discussion about Pershing II, there had been total silence from the French. Experienced observers would have understood that this in fact amounted to "shouting approval." Furthermore, it was noteworthy that the French Communist party had totally failed in its campaign to mobilize opposition to the alliance's decision. Even the C.G.T. had balked. When the Communists had used "Pershing II!" as a rallying cry, the response had been "SS-20!" In Italy, the will to defend the country was relatively strong within the Communist party, as Berlinguer realized that without the Atlantic alliance a fate similar to that of Dubcek[?] was likely to befall him.
Another French speaker referred to the neutralist current developing in Europe. People had not been seduced by Russian ideology, but they were intimidated by the displays of naked force and were become fatalistic. They sought to minimize and rationalize the worrisome signs.
One could understand the impatience of European leaders with the shilly-shallying of the U.S. administration, but instead of giving voice to their criticism could they not have produced getting together with the Americans to work out a common strategy? Was it really too late for Europe to avoid the dilemma of appeasement of war?
A German participant said that we had to inform our people honestly if we expected to enlist their support for defense; we could not "steamroller" them. He mentioned two examples (1) Before the German debate about the deployment of rockets, the trade union leaders had been well-briefed by the government. So when "doves had come from all over the world to ask the German unions to stand firm for peace," they were prepared to reply. (2) If our people were sometimes reluctant to take on a greater defense burden, it was perhaps because NATO had shouted "wolf!" too often and too loud.
A Briton was worried by our tendency to find every possible reason for not facing up to our problems. It was right to acknowledge our weaknesses, but by turning away and not risking certain dangers, we would actually help to bring them about. Wringing our hands was the best way to invite provocation.
A similar rule could be applied to the question of American leadership, at least in military and political matters. Unless the U.S. showed a willingness to act alone, it would not get collective actions from its allies, or a peaceful reaction from its adversaries. This was not true in the economic sphere, where events since the Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods had shown the necessity of collective action. But for the U.S. to say that, in political or military matters, it could act only in concert with its allies was to undermine its credibility; it would maintain its credibility only by expressing a willingness to act unilaterally.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Bilderberg_meeting_report_Aachen,_1980/Text#Discussion
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