THE U.S. & EUROPE: THE WAITING GAME

THE vision was there when the smoke of World War II lifted. As early as 1946, Winston Churchill gave it breath in summoning the Old World to "make a kind of United States of Europe." In 1947, the Marshall Plan began to give it bone and sinew. In 1950, with the Schuman Plan to pool the Continent's coal-and-steel resources, it began to stir. It envisioned nothing less than a prosperous united Europe athwart one Atlantic littoral, allied with the U.S. on the other side--two giants whose joint democratic and humane stand for freedom everywhere would be more than a match for Communism.

Though the dream is far from dead, it has seldom been more obscure and entangled in controversy than this week as the foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gather in the great A-shaped building in Paris at the head of Avenue Foch. The U.S. and France seem set on a direct collision course that threatens to wreck NATO. The ostensible object of the trouble is the U.S. proposal to create a multilateral nuclear force of 25 Polaris-missile surface ships--although MLF does not even formally appear on the ministerial agenda. In fact, the malaise goes to the very core of Atlantic relationships, and how they have changed since the vision was born.

The Original NATO. Created in the wake of Communist coups in Eastern Europe and the Berlin blockade in 1949, NATO was originally designed to defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion. With a joint-command structure headed by a U.S. general, NATO was to have some 50 divisions assigned to it fulltime. Today it has only 26, ten of them German, even though nearly all the national armies and navies of Western Europe are "earmarked" for NATO's use in case of war. At the time of NATO's founding, the U.S. was the only effective nuclear power in the world; Europe was still economically prostrate. NATO gave Western European nations a needed sense of military security and, perhaps most important, strengthened their political stand against domestic Communism.

As the Continent began to revive, the U.S. sponsored the European Defense Community, envisioning a common multinational European army. The French vetoed it, but out of its ashes came the Common Market and the resurrected German army. Apart from Western Europe's economic renaissance, perhaps the most significant change has been in its attitude toward the Soviet Union, particularly since the Cuban missile crisis, when the Russians dramatically backed down. This confirmed what most Europeans had long come to count on: that a Soviet invasion need no longer be feared, and that at any rate it could be deterred only by nuclear power. NATO seemed to lose its raison d'etre, except insofar as U.S. troops stationed on the Continent provided hostages to misfortune--to ensure an American nuclear response just in case the Soviets did after all attack.

As the U.S. sought possible countermoves to Russian aggression in Europe other than nuclear Armageddon, Washington kept pressing for more conventional forces and began talking about a "graduated response." De Gaulle cited this as proof that the U.S. would not defend Europe unless the U.S. itself was attacked. So France pushed ahead with its own little atomic program--after all, argued De Gaulle jealously, Britain had its nuclear force too.

With.that the U.S. began a new search for a way to share the bomb with Europe--even though Washington remained convinced at heart that the bomb was unsharable.

Enter MLF. Is the sharing really necessary? Quite a number of Europeans would gladly leave their nuclear defense in U.S. hands, and this probably includes a majority of Britons, possibly even of Frenchmen. But in a larger sense, De Gaulle is right in saying that Europe cannot be truly independent unless it can somehow be master of its own life-and-death decisions. MLF is frankly designed to give its members--particularly the Germans--a semblance of participation and control, while retaining for the U.S. the ultimate say on whether or not to push the nuclear button on the ships.

To most military men, MLF has a distressingly gimmicky air. Apart from its vulnerability to attack, there seems something innately absurd about two dozen ships with international crews and a lethal cargo cruising the seas like so many nuclear Flying Dutchmen. The U.S. replies that there is simply no way to set up a land-based deterrent on the Continent with international participation.

De Gaulle sneered at the whole idea--until it suddenly came close to reality when German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and President Johnson signed the "Texas Communique" last June to set up MLF by the end of this year. The U.S. hoped that other NATO nations would join as well, but few showed any interest in the expensive ($4 to $6 billion) project that would add nothing essential to the U.S. nuclear shield over Europe anyway. Britain's Tory government was among the least interested.

MLF Reconsidered. When Harold Wilson's Labor governmnent took over two months ago, he saw a revised MLF as a means of getting rid of Britain's own expensive nuclear deterrent (largely aging V-Bombers plus three to five Polaris submarines being built). The move might satisfy Labor's strongly antinuclear left wing, save much needed money and retain Britain's traditional balance-of-power role in European affairs--particularly attractive since Germany seems on the verge of replacing Britain in its "special relationship" to the U.S. Last week in Washington, Wilson tried to persuade Johnson to enlarge the MLF concept by including all the British hardware and renaming the whole thin" the Atlantic Nuclear Force. Wilson came away with at least a license to try it on the Germans.

Charles de Gaulle wants no part of MLF, whether it be the compact U.S. or larger British model. He threatens to pull out of both NATO and the Franco-German Treaty if Bonn fails his litmus test for European loyalty. Said a senior French diplomat last week: "If Germany joins MLF in whatever version, she will have left Europe. And Europe therefore will not exist. Then, without a Europe, how can there be a partnership between Europe and America?"

The trouble is that De Gaulle does not say what he means by "Europe"--except that in some mystical way it is identical with France and must stay away from "Atlantic" orientation.

The Ties That Bind. Bonn sees in the U.S. its only outside hope for some day persuading the Russians to permit the reunification of the German nation. London, shut out of European integration, is caught in a financial crisis that only dollar backing can help solve. France, alone of Europe's Big Three, has neither external nor internal troubles requiring the special aid of the U.S., thus can hold out for considerable independence. But Paris frankly acknowledges that, despite the incipient French atomic force, it will be dependent for years to come on the American nuclear arsenal for real protection. As one of De Gaulle's top ministers blandly explained last week, the U.S. is expected to keep its forces in Europe and its nuclear bombs ready--without being allowed to interfere in European affairs.

In a sense, the question comes down to a matter of trust. Many Europeans simply do not wholly trust the U.S. to defend them under all foreseeable circumstances, particularly a decade or two hence, when it may be disastrously involved in Latin America, Asia or Africa. And De Gaulle argues that the U.S. has always been "late" in entering European wars; yet the U.S. can reply with equal distrust that virtually since Waterloo, France has been gravely wanting as a resolute military power. The U.S. must look to a France after De Gaulle, with a large Communist vote and the political chaos of the Fourth Republic conceivably revived.

In essence, U.S. ambitions for Europe are still contradictory. Washington has plugged for a united Europe since World War II, but certainly not a Europe without Britain, and perhaps not--now that the U.S. has tasted Gaullist policy--a Europe wholly independent and able to go its own way as a super power in world affairs. The U.S. wants Europe to take a greater share in defending itself, but at the same time the U.S. does not want any proliferation of nuclear weapons. In particular, the U.S. would like to satisfy German ambitions for a share in nuclear armaments, but somehow without in fact permitting the Germans actually to have any--since that would endanger dealings with Moscow and frighten Germany's neighbors.

The Ultimate Goal. MLF is a frail vessel for carrying such a multitude of problems. In itself, MLF is not likely to solve the much larger problems between the Old and New Worlds. But if the U.S. as its stubborn champion had made it part of a truly comprehensive and inspiring plan for a future united European force, it would have meant more-- and would have deflated De Gaulle's vague talk about "creating Europe." In a sense, both the U.S. and France are wrong in the current controversy, paradoxically not because their policies are so different but because they are so similar. France says that there cannot be a true European nuclear force until there is European unity; in the meantime, De Gaulle expects the rest of Europe to rely on France. The U.S. says the same, and in the meantime expects Europe to rely on the U.S. Only Gaullist delusions of grandeur could suggest that reliance on the U.S. is not safer than reliance on France. But the common fault is that both Washington and Paris slight the ultimate goal of European unity while accusing each other of blocking it.

De Gaulle is convinced that if he waits long enough the Americans will disengage themselves from Europe, proving him right and thrusting the rest of Europe into French arms. The U.S. is convinced that if it waits long enough De Gaulle will pass from the scene, and France will then accept some version of MLF and, for a long time at least, the U.S. nuclear veto. Both the U.S. and Paris are thus waiting each other out and in the process avoiding the real issue. For in the long run, neither French arms nor American arms will suffice if the vision is to be realized and the European nation created complete and whole.

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