But there was always another aspect to Brandt’s policy about which we could never overcome our reserve, especially as it was articulated by Brandt’s political confidant, Egon Bahr. For Brandt did not really present his policy as an acceptance of the division of Germany. Rather, he put it forward as a means to achieve German unity by building good relations with the East and turning the Federal Republic into a magnet for Eastern Europe. As a first installment, there would be a better life for the 17 million East Germans. Travel and exchanges would multiply. Trade with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would increase. Gradually, so the argument went, the ties would become close; the dividing line between East and West in Europe would begin to fade.
The question in our minds was which side of the dividing line would in fact be the magnet. We feared that over time, at first imperceptibly, the Communist world would wind up in the stronger position. Détente was difficult enough to manage for the other Western allies because it might encourage euphoria, be confused with psychotherapy, and fail to insist on Soviet reciprocity. But for Bonn all these dangers were compounded because the Soviet Union in effect held 17 million Germans hostage. We worried whether West Germany could consistently face two ways at once. The danger was not withdrawal from NATO; no German government would be prepared to forgo this protection against direct attack. What concerned us was a tendency to avoid controversies outside of Europe even when they affected fundamental security interests; a creeping dissociation from Western policies except those for the physical defense of Western Europe; and a more cautious approach to Soviet challenges that tended to drain the Western response of meaning. On one occasion I said to an associate that I dreaded the moment when “no German Chancellor can afford the hostility of the Soviet Union. When that happens it will be a very dangerous situation.” It has not yet happened with a German Chancellor but it came close to describing Brandt’s personal odyssey.
This uneasiness about the drift of Brandt’s policies was shared by his principal partners in the Western Alliance. It was a staple of the conversations of Pompidou, Heath, and Nixon that Brandt’s Eastern policy would, however unintentionally, sooner or later unleash a latent German nationalism. A free-wheeling, powerful Germany trying to maneuver between East and West, whatever its ideology, posed the classic challenge to the equilibrium of Europe, for whichever side Germany favored would emerge as predominant. To forestall this, or perhaps outflank it, each of Brandt’s colleagues — including Nixon — sought to preempt Germany by conducting an active détente policy of his own. In this sense Ostpolitik had effects far beyond those intended. It contributed to a race to Moscow and over time heightened mutual suspicions among the allies. As for Brandt, after he left office he became a passionate spokesman for a course that relied upon NATO for reinsurance but whose practical implication was European neutralism — at least with respect to issues outside of Europe.
What was sentimentality in Brandt was cool calculation for Egon Bahr, Brandt’s chief aide for sensitive negotiations, whom I had first met in the mid-Fifties. Unprepossessing physically, extremely agile intellectually, indefatigable, Bahr showed what consistent commitment can achieve even from relatively subordinate positions. He was the intellectual driving force behind Brandt’s Ostpolitik. His ingenuity and negotiating skill were indispensable in bringing about Bonn’s treaties with the USSR, Poland, and East Germany, and the Four-Power Agreement on Berlin.
When, after some initial hesitations, Nixon and I had acquiesced in Ostpolitik, which overt American opposition would have wrecked, Bahr had been my counterpart in all sensitive backchannel discussions between the White House and the Chancellery. Bahr and I both knew that we started from different, even clashing, premises, but we found a common vocabulary reflecting parallel interests. Outsiders may debate who manipulated whom; serious students of international affairs know that common policies can endure only if both parties serve their own purposes.
Bahr at any rate did not view the prospect of separate approaches to Moscow — inherent in Ostpolitik — with reluctance; he actively sought them. He saw in them the key to German unification. This was not because, as some of our people thought, he was pro-Soviet. Rather, he was an old-fashioned German nationalist. After all, though half-Jewish, he had sought to become an officer in World War II and had been deeply hurt when he was refused. Like Bismarck, he sought to exploit Germany’s central position for its national goals. Bahr had sufficient confidence in his dexterity to believe he would avoid the pitfalls that had produced disaster on earlier occasions when Germany had struck out on such a complicated course.
It was from this essentially nationalist perspective that Bahr reacted to the Year of Europe. I first broached the subject with him in a conversation in Washington in January; in early April I solicited his views in advance of my speech on the Year of Europe. Like most political leaders, Bahr used every development as a means to advance independently formed preconceptions. In a thoughtful reply he affirmed the conventional thesis of the importance of the Atlantic relationship. For the foreseeable future, he argued, Europe was dependent on the military protection of the United States; no disagreement on economic matters should be allowed to threaten these ties. But Bahr also held that the problem of security had altered fundamentally in recent years. Throughout the postwar period American strategic nuclear power had been the key to Europe’s security. As it lost credibility, no European country — much less Europe as a whole — would be prepared to make the economic sacrifice to build conventional defenses capable of deterring a Soviet invasion. From these truisms Bahr produced a revolutionary conclusion. Soviet-American parity would lead to an attempt by the two superpowers to preclude nuclear war; they had a common interest in this that might well override their obligations to allies. If Europe could no longer rely on American strategic preeminence and if Europe would not — or in terms of its domestic politics could not — make the effort to defend itself, Europe and above all the Federal Republic had to seek safety in relaxation of tensions with the East. Military forces in Central Europe should be reduced, not augmented; contacts between East and West should be multiplied. The relaxation of tensions was in that view an alternative to security policy, not an outgrowth of it.
Bahr, therefore, opposed the key aim of our new approach; he would hear nothing of strengthening the political coordination within the Alliance because an Atlantic bloc would undermine the flexibility necessary for his version of détente. At a minimum, each European nation should be free to pursue its own approach to East-West relations. Bahr never explained why the Soviet Union, placed in a predominant position by the lassitude of the West, would relieve us of the consequences by playing Bahr’s game of, in effect, matching our unilateral disarmament. Also, this proposition implied that in some circumstances it might be in Europe’s interest to separate itself from the United States so as to improve its freedom of maneuver toward the Soviet Union. Here was the intellectual basis for Europe’s playing along with the Soviet strategy of “differential détente,” setting the democracies against each other and dividing Europe from America.
If Bahr’s analysis was correct, nuclear parity would erode the relevance of American protection and Europe’s conventional inferiority would dictate a “political” solution — an elegant phrase for accommodation to Soviet power. This might be camouflaged as closer East-West economic relations, but insofar as these worked they would also increase Western Europe’s dependence on Moscow. The Kremlin would have another pressure point in an East-West trade that for some Western countries was becoming the crucial hedge against recession.
The Year of Europe was beginning to reveal hitherto unarticulated differences in perspective between the United States and at least some of its European allies. The common fear that had united the Alliance for the first two decades of its existence was either disappearing or, where it existed, providing arguments for appeasement of Moscow as readily as for a new approach to Western partnership. In Heath’s case, we missed his essentia
l point, ascribing his reserve to his personality rather than to his convictions. With Brandt we understood his basic point only too well. But we saw in it only a potential, not yet an actual, danger. We concluded we must ensure against it by tightening the bonds of the Alliance — which was our starting point for the Year of Europe.
It was time now to consult with France again about developments since my meeting with Pompidou in December. On March 29 I met with the new French Ambassador in Washington, Jacques Kosciusko-Morizet, to discuss how we might proceed.
Kosciusko would have won no prizes for charm. He was a classic product of the grandes écoles, those indelibly French institutions of whose graduates Pétain said in a perceptive moment: “They know everything. Unfortunately they do not know anything else.” Kosciusko was brilliant, analytical, and unsentimental. Conducting foreign policy on the basis of the national interest was, for him, the implementation of a concept developed in France at least three centuries earlier. He understood immediately that we had no desire to reopen the controversies of the Sixties. We would raise no objection to European autonomy; we would break no lances over the issue of national identity that had so preoccupied de Gaulle. We did not, I told him, challenge Europe’s right to conduct its own policy. What we sought was a harmonization of separate judgments, not a legal document that proscribed different opinions. On that basis, we welcomed Pompidou’s idea of a summit gathering of allied leaders as outlined to Reston in December. As an initial step I proposed a meeting between Pompidou and Nixon. I stressed our fundamental concern: “The question is whether the Western world will have a good consistent policy, or will we be like the Greeks and be overwhelmed by the outside world?”
Kosciusko said that he would return to Paris for instructions. Before he could get back, the quadrennial parliamentary elections were handsomely won by Pompidou’s party. In the resulting cabinet shuffle, Pompidou replaced the voluble Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann with the precise and austere Michel Jobert. This seemed promising at the time. In the White House we knew Jobert favorably for his unfailing helpfulness on many issues as assistant to Pompidou, indeed as my counterpart in the Elysée. Kosciusko returned to Washington early in April with French agreement to a Franco-American summit. Our general approach to the Year of Europe met no objection.
As usual, the venue for a Nixon-Pompidou summit caused trouble, reflecting the always prickly French pride. Nixon still owed Pompidou a return visit for the French President’s journey to the United States in February-March 1970. But Paris remained reluctant to receive Nixon as part of a European tour. We in turn could not go to Europe for the sole purpose of visiting France without offending all other allies. We were driven, as on other occasions, to look for an island in the Atlantic. That reasoning had led us to the Azores in 1971; it caused us to choose Iceland in 1973 (and later Martinique in 1975). At that rate it was mathematically predictable when Franco-American relations would begin to stagnate for lack of suitable islands for their leaders to meet on.
On April 13, I gave Kosciusko an outline of a speech on the Year of Europe that I proposed to deliver on April 23. No objection was raised from Paris. We construed silence as assent.
That left only Italy to be consulted, a prospect customarily involving ambivalence on both sides. The Italian leaders wanted to be treated on an equal level with those of European countries of comparable size. But they were not eager to risk a domestic crisis over implementing American designs and, even less, risk relations with the other members of the European Community. They sought involvement without controversy; we settled on consultation without commitment.
The official visit to Washington of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti on April 17 gave us an opportunity to present our arguments. I wrote to Nixon before the meeting: “He [Andreotti] can probably be counted on to carry the ball for us with his fellow Europeans to the degree that his domestic position and Italy’s modest political weight permit.” The qualifications were more important than the assertions; they meant in effect that no help could be expected from Rome. For Andreotti’s domestic situation was far from brilliant and his influence in the Community correspondingly marginal. His professorial manner hid a razor-sharp political mind, and he was more interested in foreign policy than any of his predecessors whom I had met. But the last thing he wanted was to add foreign policy to his bursting cupboard of problems. The Italian Prime Minister is chairman of a committee, moreover, not Chief Executive; his power to give orders to his Foreign Minister cannot be taken for granted. It depends much more on their relative position within the Christian Democratic party structure than on the hierarchy of government.
Andreotti’s energies were absorbed in maneuvering a turbulent political system within an extremely narrow margin. For a decade, Italian politics had been dominated by the “opening to the left,” partly engineered by the United States in the early Sixties and designed to bring the left-wing Socialists into the government as a presumed barrier against the Communists. The Socialists, while allies with the Christian Democrats nationally, were in coalition with the Communists on the provincial level. A coherent long-range program was therefore impossible. The only way out of this dilemma was an immobilism that magnified the crisis it was supposed to solve.
Andreotti sought to escape the structural deadlock by grouping into a working coalition the parties from the Social Democrats (the part of the Socialists that refused to work with the Communists) to the free-enterprise Liberal Party. But while such a grouping was ideologically more homogeneous than the “opening to the left,” the parliamentary arithmetic was against it. Its majority was wafer-thin, especially since the Christian Democrats were not one party but a conglomerate of factions, with a left wing separated from the Communists primarily by religious convictions and a right wing divided from the Fascists largely by the memory of national catastrophe. Italy was in the position of having to choose between ideological cohesion at the price of parliamentary instability, and parliamentary stability at the risk of philosophical, and hence practical, chaos.
Not surprisingly, most of the conversation between Andreotti and Nixon concerned not the Year of Europe but the subtleties of the Italian domestic scene, whose intricate and ruthless maneuvers national unification had transposed from the city-state to the political arena in Rome. Andreotti could not restrain himself from expressing the perennial Italian illusion that Italy could contribute by reasons of propinquity to the solution of the Middle East problem. But while every Italian leader I met advanced this proposition, none acted as if he believed in it.
With respect to a new initiative on Atlantic policy, Andreotti promised his goodwill and his support without rising to precision. We could count on benevolent understanding, but the Italian government would not be in the forefront of a new initiative.
As I write these pages I find it astonishing that no record can be found of any effort to consult Japan in advance about its attitude, even though we planned to include it in our initiative. That we should do so in the first place was clearly a triumph of abstract theory over experience. It is a tribute to the self-fulfilling quality of bureaucratic momentum that the joke of naming an initiative including Japan the “Year of Europe” apparently struck no one. Japan was indeed part of the larger community of the industrial democracies, and to that extent we were justified; we would have been deservedly criticized for leaving Japan out.I But while Japan’s role in the economic disputes was crucial, it had less interest in the defense and political issues racking the free world, which were centered clearly in Europe.
The enterprise could have led to severe embarrassment but for the skill of Japanese statesmen in deflecting unwarranted enthusiasms by means of a bland courtesy that never permits the interlocutor to get to the point. Only when forced into a corner by mortifyingly poor manners do Japanese leaders attempt a frontal refusal. Wherever possible they protract the negotiation until the protagonist throws up his hands in despair. Since the Japanese never had any intention of joinin
g the Year of Europe, our failure to consult them about it did not enter the catalogue of “Nixon shocks,” such as my secret trip to China and the abandonment of the modified gold standard in the summer of 1971. Japan was relieved not to be asked to take a position on what it wished to avoid. And for the rest of the time it was to stand on the sidelines watching the inscrutable Westerners tear each other apart about how to improve their friendship.
Our process of consultation was completed on April 19, 1973. Sir Burke Trend was in Washington for his regular meetings and I gave him an advance text of my speech announcing an Atlantic initiative. He seemed receptive; no critical comment — or anything else — was heard from London.
Perhaps we should have sensed from the lack of precise response to our approaches that our allies, who had urged us for years to give higher priority to Atlantic relations, were going to disappoint us. To the degree that we were conscious of European hesitations, however, we regarded them as yet another reason for a major effort to work on the elaboration of common purposes. We thought the best way to concentrate minds was to advance a formal proposal.
The “Year of Europe” Speech
IN four years in the Administration as national security adviser, I had never given a formal public speech on a substantive topic. The address on the “Year of Europe” was my first. The audience was the annual meeting of the editors of the Associated Press at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel on April 23, 1973. Neither Nixon nor I expected controversy. We thought we were ushering in a period of creativity in the Atlantic partnership.
I began by stressing that we had proclaimed 1973 as the Year of Europe not because Europe had been less important previously but because new conditions were a challenge to the free nations:
Years of Upheaval Page 23