1999 (36 page)

As West Europeans assume a greater responsibility for their own defense, a European should be designated as supreme allied commander, and Europeans should be put in charge of the negotiations for arms control in Europe. That does not mean the United States would abdicate its responsibility. As long as the United States risks the lives of its troops in Western Europe, it must have a major voice in shaping the East–West agreements affecting their security. Our role, however, should be simply to stipulate the kinds of accords we would prefer. Overall, since arms control in Europe will affect Europe's security more than ours, Europeans should take the lead in the negotiations.

Negotiations for further arms control in Europe should focus on the conventional balance. It is the imbalance in the instruments of conventional offensive warfare—artillery, tanks, and troops—that creates the threat of war and, in turn, the need for a nuclear deterrent. For fifteen years we have tried to address the issue in the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks. Moscow filibustered, and we acquiesced to negotiating on the Soviet nuclear agenda rather than forcing the Soviets to negotiate on their superiority in conventional forces, which is the reason we need nuclear weapons in the first place. As a result, our arms-control effort has sought to treat the symptoms, while the disease has run unchecked. That must not continue. When Europe takes charge of arms control, it must focus on the major threat to peace: Soviet superiority in conventional forces.

As it strengthens its forces, NATO should also expand its mission. When Soviet influence expands in key areas of the Third World, it affects not only American but also European interests. When Moscow succeeds in picking off one geopolitical target after another, it is an assault on the security of countries on both sides of the Atlantic. Since we share similar interests, we must fashion a joint response.

We must recognize that since 1949 the Soviet Union has changed its strategy. The principal Soviet offensive thrust no longer aims at the central front but rather at the exposed flanks. Kremlin leaders know that the industrial democracies are highly dependent on key sea-lanes and resources in the Third World. Even with a sustained program to substitute nuclear power for oil, Western Europe will still depend on imported oil for over two thirds of its energy in 1995. Moscow has focused on that Achilles' heel, fomenting revolutions and deploying proxy armies in resource-rich countries.

The West will fall just as surely if outflanked in the Third World as it will if overrun on the central front. European economies cannot survive without access to the resources and markets of the world. A Soviet advance in the Third World is as much an attack on the Western alliance as would be an assault on Europe itself. Western Europe should not expect the United States alone to play the role of policeman of the world. That idea is obsolete. Peace is everybody's business. We need a posse, not just a lone vigilante, to keep the peace. Real peace will not be built unless all countries contribute their share in building it and keeping it in good repair. It is particularly important for the Europeans to do so because ultimately the United States could survive alone but Western Europe could not.

NATO countries should take an active role and cooperate in defending Western interests around the world. They have centuries of experience in world affairs to draw upon, especially in areas in which they were colonial powers. France's actions in central and sub-Saharan Africa are an excellent model. Elite French forces have intervened over a dozen times over the last forty years to forestall Soviet gains in Africa.

Terrorism should be another target of NATO's expanded mission. A terrorist attack on the citizens of one country is an attack on all civilized countries. Terrorism is an international challenge to international order and it requires an international response. The NATO allies should develop a program of cooperation and joint action to deal with terrorist attacks.

Our cooperation should extend to our economic-aid programs. We should jointly target those strategically important countries which most need our assistance. The United States should be willing
to take advice from the Europeans in choosing the means to implement our aid. They have a great deal of experience in working with their former colonies and can often play the lead role more effectively than the United States. Its ties with France have enabled the Ivory Coast, for example, to become one of the few prospering countries in Africa. Great Britain's vast experience with its former colonies is an invaluable asset for the West.

Acting together we can achieve more than acting alone. We should therefore expand the mission of NATO. Together, the United States and Western Europe can succeed in blunting the Soviet geopolitical offensive in the Third World and in devising economic-aid programs that encourage prosperity instead of larceny.

Our new Year of Europe must also create a consensus on how the countries of NATO should approach their relations with the Soviet Union. We need to present the Kremlin with a united front politically. We must not allow the Soviets to play one side of the Atlantic against the other, thereby exploiting the fissures in our alliance to increase their influence.

For Americans, a united front requires that we tone down our rhetoric. Bellicose anti-Soviet speeches may charge up conservative audiences in the United States, but they send chills through our allies in Europe. In the European mind, hot rhetoric about the Cold War does not sow doubts about Soviet intentions, but rather stimulates fears about American recklessness. With a firm but reasoned tone, we can communicate the same message to West Europeans, but without gratuitously straining the alliance.

For Europeans, a united front requires linking policies toward the Soviet Union with Soviet behavior in the world. Soviet intentions should be measured by actions, not atmospherics. Europeans, usually more realistic than Americans about how the real world works, should be the first to recognize that improving the atmospherics of East–West relations without resolving substantive East–West issues is a chimeral gain. We all should remember that the Soviets need better relations with the West more than the West needs better ties with the Soviets.

In addition, West Europeans should cooperate with us far more than they have done in developing a concerted effort to block illicit exports of strategic technologies to the Soviet Union. Some of their actions have been shockingly irresponsible. In the mid-1980s, the Soviets worked through Japan and a NATO country, Norway, to obtain the machinery necessary to make their submarines quieter. As a result, the United States will need to spend more than $50 billion to restore its previous superiority in antisubmarine-warfare capability. West Europeans should recognize the danger to the West posed by leaks of high technology to the Soviets. After all, while the United States operates submarines in the North Atlantic, West Europeans must live along its shores.

Most of all, an effective Western united front requires NATO to mobilize its economic power. It is both our greatest asset—NATO's economies outproduce the Soviet Union's by over three to one—and our least-exploited one. Since Moscow spares no weapon in its struggle against the West, we should lose no opportunity to use our best assets to constrain the Kremlin.

As Gorbachev seeks to revive the Soviet economy, our economic power will provide us with unprecedented leverage. Soviet economic growth depends in part on access to Western trade and technology. We can be certain that in the wake of a U.S.–Soviet arms-control agreement we will see Soviet trade delegations make the rounds of Western financial centers shopping around for investors. It is no accident that Gorbachev explicitly requested an opportunity to meet with U.S. businessmen during the summit in December 1987.

Neither the Reagan administration nor the West Europeans have placed adequate political conditions on an increased East–West trade. The United States not only ended the Carter grain embargo but also negotiated a new grain deal to appease American farmers. West European governments have sought to cut whatever deal the Soviet market would bear. Both have adopted the shortsighted policy of scurrying after economic deals without linking them to Soviet international behavior. Without an ironclad linkage to Soviet restraint in the world, an increase in trade will end up subsidizing our own destruction. It is a myth to proclaim that economic sanctions will not hurt the Soviet economy. This is like saying that
a lifeboat will not float because it has leaks. Plug the leaks, and sanctions will work.

We should be willing to strike economic deals with Moscow—but for a price. We can set that price only if Western countries cooperate in formulating a strategy to capitalize on their economic power.

In the new Year of Europe, NATO must resolve to take sweeping actions. Its usual middle-mush solutions will not forestall a fundamental crisis. Our reevaluation of the alliance should not be driven by recriminations, with each side thinking up a menu of punitive steps for the other, culminating in a dissolution of the alliance. Instead, it should be a cooperative venture to forge a common approach to the world of the 1990s. The alliance has brilliantly served the purpose which brought it into being forty years ago. But the threat it was designed to meet has profoundly changed, and the alliance must be changed to meet it. The world in 1999 will be very different from the world in 1949. If the forty-year-old alliance is not radically overhauled now it will be obsolete by 1999.

We should not heed the counsel of those who believe Europe is washed up economically and politically. That view will be proved wrong. There are already visible signs of the coming European recovery. It is hard to believe that only six years ago Britain was written off as the sick man of Europe. Today Britain leads the industrial democracies in the growth of economic productivity and GNP—and Britain's progress is a harbinger of Europe's.

Western Europe has the potential for a second renaissance in the 1990s. Great nations that decline to make the sacrifices necessary to provide for their defense lose a sense of self-respect which is difficult to define but is painfully obvious to those who experience it. No one nation of Europe can become a superpower. But a united Europe can be a superpower. Rather than playing the role of honest broker between East and West or, worse still, of a pawn in that struggle, Western Europe can and should be an equal participant in its own right. A Europe dependent on the United States for its defense will, at best, be consulted before decisions are made
which affect its security. Even more likely, it will be informed only after the fact. This is an intolerable situation for great nations.

The peoples of Europe have the strength, the education, the industrial capacity, and the technological expertise to step into the front rank of nations. A substantial but affordable increase in their conventional military power will qualify them fully to play a leading role in shaping their own and the world's future. But the Europeans will not tap their potential unless they mobilize themselves to take charge of their own destinies. For their own sake, they should take on more of the responsibility for their own military security, and we should work to help them realize their potential. In a new Year of Europe, we need to reshape the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not only so that the alliance will meet the new challenge it faces, but also so that our allies will be able to play a political role worthy of their heritage.