The image of Atlantic relations as an endless contest between the United States and France for dominance of the Alliance was as far as possible from our conception — and even more, our execution. Indeed, our biggest mistake had been too eager an effort to collaborate with France in 1973, carried to lengths that had alienated the other Europeans, especially the smaller members of the Community. The combination of obsession and misrepresentation came to a peak in a long background interview that Jobert gave to the influential French journal Le Point. Jobert made three points: first, that the US–Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War was a watershed, establishing a special relationship between the superpowers amounting to condominium; second, that November 6, 1973, was another watershed, because Europe in formulating its own Mideast policy had issued a sort of declaration of independence from the United States; and third, that Jobert had finally realized that I did not really favor European unity, as supposedly shown by my repeated proposals to deal with only the three major countries in Europe.
What was true in these arguments — the second point — was the heart of the problem; the remaining two assertions were false and demogogic. Matters had reached a pretty pass when Europe had to prove its independence by thwarting the sole peace process taking place in the Middle East. Whatever one’s view about the wisdom of the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War (and I do not think it was one of our greatest triumphs) Jobert knew very well — we had told him repeatedly — that it was our way of putting an embarrassing Soviet proposal on ice and elaborating a legal obstacle to an attack on China, not a new direction of policy. As for our alleged preference for negotiating only with the major countries in Europe, it was the opposite of the truth and breath-takingly cynical. It was Jobert who had made cooperation in the Year of Europe dependent on dealing only with the major countries and only bilaterally. That France opposed our course was understandable; the bitterness of the assault was dangerous and explicable only on the theory that American protection required no reciprocity whatever.
Nor was Jobert’s assault confined to Europe. From February 20 to February 23 I attended an important meeting of Western Hemisphere foreign ministers in Mexico City to start a new dialogue between the United States and its neighbors — of no conceivable direct interest to France. In at least one major South American capital, on the day before the Foreign Minister’s departure for Mexico City (as the minister told me) the French Ambassador had left him a copy of the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War with a warning against a US–Soviet condominium. And there continued to be allegations, too frequent to be ignored, that some French diplomats in the Middle East were talking in a manner that their excitable hosts construed as advice not to rush headlong into lifting the oil embargo against the United States.4
Jobert went further and pursued a European-Arab political dialogue in a manner most calculated to clash with the American peace diplomacy. Even with the best of intentions, a gathering of all Arab foreign ministers would inevitably place the moderates under pressure from the radicals and the Europeans would end up endorsing a radical-leaning program at odds with what we considered realistic. I had made this point emphatically to several allied foreign ministers at the Washington Energy Conference, including Home and Scheel. I repeated it to Home in London on February 26, when I was on my way to the Middle East for exploratory talks to begin the Syrian disengagement. I shall describe in the next chapter the diplomacy involved and its relationship to the lifting of the oil embargo. For present purposes it is enough to point out that the situation was still delicately poised.
On my way home I scheduled a trip to Bonn for the evening of Sunday, March 3, as a result of Helmut Schmidt’s remark to me in Washington that German leaders were hurt because I seemed to use only Paris or London for overnight rest stops. In fact, the reason — at least on the conscious level — was the convenience of the airplane schedulers. But once informed of the symbolic significance Bonn attached to such a visit, I made sure that on my next trip to the Middle East I would stop over in the German capital. And to show our commitment to Atlantic relations I scheduled a briefing of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels for the following afternoon.
These two visits turned into a demonstration of the fallibility of human foresight. For they achieved the exact opposite of our goal, setting the stage for an explosion that finally served as a catharsis.
The foreign ministers of the Community were convening in Brussels early on March 4. It was a sad state of affairs that the Secretary of State of the United States should be at NATO headquarters to brief allied ambassadors while seven foreign ministers were in the same town some fifteen minutes away, not daring to come to my briefing for fear of offending France. But that was the situation and I had decided not to make an issue of it. I even suggested to Scheel, as President of the Council of Ministers, that I could postpone my visit to NATO so as to avoid the appearance of seeking to influence the Europeans. He saw no reason for such punctiliousness, which in truth would have implied that there was some incompatibility between NATO and the European Community.
My conversation with Scheel over dinner on March 3 could not have been more agreeable. He was complimentary about my journey through the Middle East. He discussed Atlantic tension as if it were a French disease to which the Federal Republic was immune. He said he did not understand French policy; Jobert had complexes; his attitude was illogical. “This is why we will never understand what the French objective is.”
We were meeting at the Bungalow, the residence built for the German Chancellor along the Rhine in the garden of the nineteenth-century Palais Schaumburg. Konrad Adenauer had moved the Chancellor’s office into the Palais when Bonn became West Germany’s new capital. (Adenauer selected Bonn because it was near his residence some ten miles away in the village of Rhoendorf. The story went that he had answered a complaint about the selection with the query: “What did you want me to do? Select Rhoendorf?”) His successor Ludwig Erhard, not having the benefit of an ancestral home close by, had felt obliged to construct an official residence. What possessed that quintessential middle-class Bavarian to place so modernistic a structure into a traditional setting has never been explained. But the building manages to look heavy, even though one side is glass, and obtrusive, even though it is only one story high. The public rooms are too large, the family rooms amazingly crowded for so elaborate an edifice. Everything seems designed to impress on the occupant that he is only a transient; there is not a hint of anything warm or personal or idiosyncratic. One of the decisions of Willy Brandt that I never questioned was his refusal to live there.
Reflections on architectural style did not interrupt the bonhomie of the evening. Scheel’s presentation of Jobert’s attitudes was put forward as if it were a common German-American problem to be resolved with patience and the passage of time. In the warm afterglow of the Washington Energy Conference I had no specific complaints; the slow pace of drafting the various Atlantic declarations was nettlesome but essentially irrelevant, for in truth by now the declarations had lost much of their meaning. Scheel announced that a new draft of the Community declaration would be ready in another week’s time. We began making plans for a Nixon visit to sign them; the last week of April seemed most suitable.
At the very end of the conversation, Scheel mentioned in passing that when the Community foreign ministers dealt with the European-Arab dialogue the next day (as newspapers had been hinting), they would probably agree to some exchanges in technical fields such as health and science. I saw no problem with that and quickly passed on to other subjects.
The next morning I called on Chancellor Brandt in Venusberg, a hillside suburb of Bonn, at what had originally been the official residence of the Foreign Minister, a post he had occupied in the late 1960s. He had maintained his domicile in this more human house on a mountain overlooking Bonn even after his elevation to Chancellor. Brandt was only two months away from being forced out of office; he had the melancholy, faraway look I
had come to know so well from Nixon that seemed to augur the imminent loss of something cherished. There were pauses in our conversation, but no tension. I covered many of the same topics as with Scheel the night before. I explained again the risk that any gathering of European and Arab foreign ministers would reinforce the Arab radicals; on too many occasions I had seen how individual Arab ministers were moderate when alone with me but were forced to take more extreme positions when thrown together with their brethren. We were not against European unity, I told him, whatever Jobert’s insinuations: “A European identity is not inconsistent with consulting with us on matters that concern us both.” There was no hint from Brandt that anything unusual was about to happen in Brussels.
From Brandt’s residence I helicoptered to the airport and reached Brussels about 2:00 P.M. Arriving at NATO headquarters, I found a message from Scheel that he would appreciate it if I called on him at the German Embassy in downtown Brussels after finishing my NATO chores. He wanted to brief me about that morning’s meeting of the Community ministers. The European Community’s psychological separation from NATO had evidently reached the point where the President of its Council of Ministers could no longer go to the headquarters that ensured the common defense to talk to Europe’s principal ally — even though he knew that NATO headquarters was right next to the airport and I had a long transatlantic flight ahead of me.
I explained to the NATO ambassadors our overall Middle East strategy as well as the diplomacy we intended to pursue over the coming months — in somewhat general terms but specific enough so that the Middle East parties would recognize the outline of what had been agreed when the briefing would be played back to them, as I was certain it would be. Afterward, NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns and I met the press in an optimistic atmosphere. I gave my impression that
around the table in the NATO Council there was a considerable unity of views as to the objectives and considerable understanding as to the method. I do not recall that any contrary views were expressed. Am I unfair, Mr. Secretary General?
Luns exuberantly stressed that I had been too modest. There had been more than unity:
There was on the part of all the countries of the Alliance great appreciation for what the United States in the person of its Secretary of State has been doing in the Middle East since November last when the first talks started. We have been somewhat encouraged by the prospect of going step by step further in the direction of a peace which will be in the interest of all the members.
The happy atmosphere disappeared with a thunderbolt. Was I aware, a journalist wanted to know, that the nine ministers of the European Community had just announced in the person of Walter Scheel their decision to open a European-Arab dialogue in many fields culminating in a foreign ministers’ meeting? I replied stiffly that it would be improper to comment on something of which I had not yet been officially informed. I looked forward to my meeting with Scheel at the German Embassy.
There was little doubt of what had happened. Despite the absence of a British foreign secretary — Edward Heath had just lost the general election — Jobert had forced a decision; his colleagues had been unable to resist, or perhaps had compensated for having deserted him at the Washington Energy Conference. I had warned the Community for months that a decision like the one now apparently taken would cause us to dissociate ourselves openly. I was not about to back off now, especially when our Middle Eastern policy stood so narrowly poised.
The shock of being presented publicly and without warning with a fait accompli turned the meeting with Scheel chilly despite the fact that less than twenty-four hours earlier we had shared a most pleasant evening. Scheel now outlined a procedure, no aspect of which had ever been discussed with us. It was the French plan for the Euro-Arab dialogue. Scheel could have no doubt that we would be far from pleased. He tried to assuage us by promising a new draft of the declaration of the European Community (see Chapter XVI) within two weeks, as if the rhetorical affirmation of Atlantic unity was a special favor to us for which we would accept unilateral actions belying that unity. And he expressed his willingness to arrange an invitation to Nixon for the second half of April — as if Nixon would swallow anything for the domestic boon a trip to Europe would bring him. I replied sharply:
I note that we are now being informed of a decision after first having read about it in the newspapers and after I have been asked about it at a press conference. This, therefore, underlines our concern about decisions which are prepared without informing us and taken without consultation with us.
Second, the fact that the Community has no interest in undermining peace efforts is largely irrelevant. The Community is not able to guarantee that this will not happen in any event.
Third, I have already told you what our strong views are on bringing the Arabs together in this way.
Fourth, the United States will reserve its freedom of action to take similar steps if we believe them to be in our own national interests, and to report on them to the Community thereafter.
Fifth, I say in all seriousness that the United States will not accept this procedure in the long run without its having a great effect on our relationship.
Scheel, who throughout was cool, composed, and precise, argued that it was all a procedural error. The Community had only carried out its earlier decision made in Copenhagen in December. He would make a public statement that the Community had informed me of the Euro-Arab dialogue; he indicated the Europeans stood ready to invite Nixon to complete the various declarations. But I had had enough of the humiliation of having allies dangle an invitation to our President before us for bargaining purposes:
I would appreciate it if that second part relating to the President’s visit were not made public. I will discuss this with the President and let you know his views about the signing of the Declaration. I will let you know whether the new dates for the Political Directors are acceptable, and when the President might come to Europe. . . .
As to Copenhagen, I find it difficult to refer back to that meeting since we were neither informed of that conference or told how the Arabs got there. Yet that Conference led to work about which we were not told, and now to a meeting about which we were not informed. I must say in all formality that this is not a procedure that can last long.
We were determined to draw the line. The new methods of “consultation” between Europe and the United States were being carried beyond the largely theoretical plane of the declarations. We now had divergent policies in areas we considered vital. On my way back from Europe, the soon-to-become-familiar “senior official” on my aircraft briefed the press about the unacceptability of existing procedures and our reaction to the Euro-Arab dialogue. Upon my return on March 6, Nixon sent a sharp letter to Brandt in the latter’s capacity as President of the European Community. Nixon recited the familiar objections to both procedure and substance. He canceled for the time being any further American participation in the draft declaration with the European Community pending a review of the situation; the practical consequence was that he was postponing his trip to Europe.
Brandt replied quickly on March 8, urging continuation of work on the declarations, which would “serve to temper discussion on the European-American relationship.” He expressed the hope that Nixon might find it possible to come to Brussels in the second half of April. At least we had escaped the demeaning position of appearing as supplicants in a project to invigorate Atlantic ties. However, Brandt defended the European decision to meet with Arabs as a supportive and by no means competitive undertaking.
On March 11, I made an inadvertent contribution to keeping tensions high. Addressing a group of wives of Congressmen — in what I thought was a background session — I said that Europe had never really recovered psychologically from the exhaustion of World War I. The remark was made to explain the reason why a nuclear war would do irreparable damage to all sides; World War I had shown how casualties beyond a certain point could rend the cohesion of societies. Though put for
ward in the context of US–Soviet relations, the comment was greeted with outrage in some parts of Europe. My own outrage was only slightly less, though it was aimed at my hapless staff, who had failed to inform me that the meeting was open to journalists.
My comment was in any case secondary to the drama that was developing. On March 15 Nixon returned a reply to Brandt. It rejected further efforts to draft a US–European Community declaration and it put on ice the invitation to sign it. It made clear that Nixon placed the national interest above his Watergate problems; he would not come to Europe at any price:
In our view, a truly consultative relationship would be the most natural and normal manifestation of the partnership which had existed so long between the United States and the Nine within the Atlantic framework. But it seems clear from the experience of the past several months that the Nine have reservations on this score and that therefore the effort to produce formulations that we believe to be essential are bound to lead to continued arguments or even acrimony. On the other hand, to gloss over the obvious difference of view by compromise language would obscure what I believe to be a fundamental issue that must sooner or later be faced on both sides of the Atlantic and could even lead relationships between us to fall into a pattern which we would not want for the future. Consequently, I have concluded that it would be preferable to let the situation mature further in the hope that at a later time events will demonstrate the mutual benefit all of us will derive from the achievement of more organic, consultative arrangements. In these circumstances, the possibility of my participation in the signature of the declaration, which you were kind enough to mention in your letter, should, of course, also be deferred until a later time.
The Nixon letters were largely drafted by my staff and me, but once engaged Nixon took up the cudgels with abandon and with his characteristic instinct for the jugular. On March 15 in a question-and-answer session before the Executives’ Club of Chicago, Nixon left little doubt that his patience was at an end:
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