Western unity in danger

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33423, 3 January 1974, Page 8

Western unity in danger

Many of the problems confronting the Atlantic community will need to be ironed out during 1974. If they are not, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation must be in danger of falling apart. At the root of discord seems to be the idea that RussianAmerican detente is really aimed at super-power dominance. France and Belgium, in particular, have charged that America’s new relationship with Russia, most recently expressed in their joint effort to resolve Arab-Israeli tensions by bringing the parties to peace talks in Geneva, is in fact undermining West European security. The United States Secretary of State, Dr Kissinger, takes precisely the opposite view, although he has not concealed Washington’s resentment of virtual desertion by America’s European allies during the Middle East supply crisis. In particular, he sees danger for Europe in the French idea that the Western community should organise itself into a “ third force ”, standing between the super powers. Dr Kissinger repudiates any suggestion of SovietAmerican dominance, but he has asked whether a new political alignment in Europe would be a rival to rather than a partner of the United States. He has reminded his European allies that France, in particular, has persistently opposed recognition of the relationship between the Common Market countries and the United States as a partnership. These are attitudes of which Dr Kissinger has become increasingly critical. In London recently he said that both sides of the Atlantic must suffer if some new form of unity in Europe were sought at the expense of the Atlantic community. Addressing the Pilgrims Society he had this to say: Even today in the United States more than 40 Senators consistently vote to make unilateral reductions in American forces in Europe. Even today, seme Europeans have come to believe that their identity should be measured by its distance from the U.S. On both sides of the Atlantic we are faced with the anomalous — and dangerous — situation which in the public mind identifies foreign-policy success increasingly with adversaries, while relations with allies seem to be characterised by bickering and drift.

Dr Kissinger sees two political courses open to Western Europe: to adopt the French idea of a “ third force ”, which would endanger defence ties with the United States, or to tighten the N.A.T.O. partnership in a way that would give it a new vitality. The energy crisis represented a challenge, he said, which the United States could solve unaided — although with great difficulty — but which Europe, in isolation, could not solve at all. In Britain, there is a growing feeling that the Atlantic alliance is now m worse shape than at any other period of its 24-year history. There is probably also a feeling that, instead of developing the “ third force ” theory tn terms of what binds them together, the European members of N-A.T.O. should be trying to understand what binds them to the American North Atlantic democracies.

It is widely accepted in Western Europe, despite Russia’s professed hopes for mutual force reductions, that Soviet power has grown well beyond parity with N.A.T.O.’s forces. Western Europe needs American military power for its survival, whereas the United States can survive without European assistance. The corollary, as the “ Economist ” has pointed out. is that if Western Europe came under Soviet influence, "the Americans would have lost a

• great deal, but the Europeans would have lost •• everything That is the gist of Dr Kissinger's warning to NATO—that it represents a community with shared ideas and ideals, which can be realised only if it holds together.