1999

by Richard Nixon

  We must also agree on the nature of the Soviet threat. The fact is that Moscow threatens the security of the West both on the central front in Europe and in the Third World. It is easy to recognize the threat in Europe, for it comes in the form of over 100 divisions primed and ready to roll west. But the difficulty in detecting the hidden hand of Moscow in the Third World makes the threat no less real. While American superhawks need to concede that not all anti-Western movements and insurgencies result from Soviet actions, West Europeans need to accept the fact that some do and that the West must respond to this indirect aggression.

  We must all recognize that while the Soviets’ long-term major target is Western Europe, their immediate threat is to nations whose natural resources are indispensable to the survival of Europe. The Soviet Union can dominate Europe without waging war in Europe. The fact that there has not been a war in Europe in forty years is proof that NATO has been the most successful alliance in history. But while the Soviet Union has not waged war directly against NATO in Europe, it has successfully waged war indirectly against NATO in the Third World over the past forty years. It continues to do so. If NATO does not develop a strategy to meet that threat, the Soviets will achieve their goal of dominating Europe without attacking it directly. NATO’s conventional armies in Europe will, in effect, have been a Maginot Line which the enemy has enveloped and made useless.

  The major countries of NATO must therefore delineate the critical interests of the West around the world and develop a cooperative approach to defending them. We must stop at nothing less than a renewal of our strategic alliance. We must rethink basic strategy, reorganize the West’s military forces, and reforge the linkage that once existed between overall East–West relations and Moscow’s actions around the world.

  The defense of Europe remains the core mission of NATO. A war in Europe is highly unlikely, but that does not mean that a war cannot occur. No one thought the assassination of an Austrian archduke would trigger a four-year world war which would kill over 14 million people. Most thought that this horrendous conflict was “the war to end all wars,” only to see another world war break out twenty years later. War has no greater ally than those who claim that war will never come.

  Therefore, in thinking about the defense of Europe, we must not begin by assuming that war can never happen. If no chance exists for a Soviet invasion, the United States has far better ways to spend the more than $100 billion in its defense budget allocated directly to European defense. Apart from the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact, there is no rationale for NATO. But if war is possible—even if highly unlikely—we must not let our guard down simply because the current Soviet General Secretary has a warm smile and a firm handshake.

  NATO must first grapple with the role of nuclear weapons in the defense of Europe. These weapons have been both a blessing and a curse to Europe. NATO’s nuclear arsenal has given Western Europe an inexpensive means to counter Soviet conventional superiority in the postwar years. This helped the Europeans economically. But when West Europeans failed to rethink their dependence on nuclear deterrence after their economic recoveries, the sole pillar of their security became nuclear weapons. Europeans sold their souls to the nuclear age. Their decision hurt them politically by undercutting their global role. These once-great world powers demoted themselves to the ranks of the world’s regional powers.

  But NATO cannot do away with nuclear weapons given the present balance of conventional forces. Without them, the alliance would in the event of war face the prospect of choosing between a conventional defeat and an all-out strategic nuclear war. Resolving that dilemma is a more difficult task given the new arms-control agreement. It is therefore imperative that as the process of dismantling the U.S. and Soviet intermediate- and short-range nuclear forces begins we take a hard look at how NATO can maintain nuclear deterrence.

  First, we must resist the political temptation to make our goal in arms control the elimination of all nuclear weapons in Europe. Inevitable political pressures in Europe to take the new arms-control accord a step further and ban battlefield nuclear weapons have already arisen. But scoring easy political points courts a strategic disaster. A denuclearized Europe has been a long-standing Soviet objective. Moscow knows that an American threat to launch an all-out strategic war in response to conventional aggression is not credible. A total ban on nuclear weapons in Europe would further strain the already-frayed American trip wire in Europe. It would leave U.S. allies prey to Soviet conventional military intimidation.

  Second, we must strengthen the link between American nuclear forces and European defense. The new arms-control agreement will eliminate U.S. missiles in Europe over the next three years. That gives NATO enough time to adjust its military posture to maintain deterrence. We should increase the number of bombers capable of executing nuclear strikes deep within Warsaw Pact territory. We should deploy additional sea-launched cruise missiles on U.S. warships assigned to NATO. We should also dedicate some of the new U.S. Trident II submarines, with their very accurate hard-target warheads, to serve exclusively as part of our NATO commitment.

  Third, we should renounce the Reykjavik formula calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons in ten years. The next administration must make a conscious break with this naive notion. For the foreseeable future, nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war will exist. That is a basic fact of international life. Like it or not, nuclear weapons must be part of our strategy to deter war. No deeper blow has ever been dealt to allied confidence in the United States than by the incorporation of the nuclear-free fantasy into the American negotiating position at Reykjavik. The rhetoric of Reykjavik should be replaced by the realism of Margaret Thatcher, who told Gorbachev in 1987, “A world without nuclear weapons may be a dream. But you cannot base a sure defense on a dream. A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for us all.”

  We must also renounce the irresponsible rhetoric of denouncing nuclear deterrence as immoral. It is simply wrong. We would not need nuclear weapons for deterrence in a perfect world. We should in any case minimize our dependence on them. But given the realities of the world, we must have nuclear weapons to deter potential aggressors from launching a war or forcing surrender without war. That is a moral goal pursued by the best means practically available.

  Fourth, we must find ways to integrate West Germany into our strategy of deterrence. It was West Germany—under Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt—that initiated the request in 1979 that U.S. intermediate-range missiles be stationed in Western Europe. The new arms-control agreement pulls out those missiles, as well as the Soviet equivalents. But every target in Western Europe is covered by the thousands of long-range missiles in Moscow’s inventory. The elimination of intermediate- and short-range weapons does not reduce the Soviets’ nuclear threat to either Europe or the United States. It does remove NATO’s capability to respond to a Soviet attack on Europe with nuclear weapons from Europe. With no nuclear weapons of its own, West Germany is particularly vulnerable to the nuclear and conventional blackmail of the Soviet Union. The next administration must find ways to reassure the Germans on this issue.

  Fifth, we must improve NATO’s conventional forces in order to raise the threshold which would require the use of nuclear weapons. NATO’s conventional inferiority is the reason the United States deployed nuclear weapons in Europe. In the event of war, NATO today would find it difficult to avoid escalating immediately to the strategic nuclear level to hold off the Kremlin’s conventional forces. But that need not be the case. NATO could reduce the possibility of having to make that awesome decision by rectifying the current imbalance of forces on the conventional level. In fact, the research fallout from the Strategic Defense Initiative holds the promise of developing new conventional weapons that will help restore the balance in Europe. We should recognize, however, that increasing NATO’s conventional forces is not a substitute for, but a strengthening of, nuclear deterrence. It substantially leng
thens the nuclear fuse.

  Western Europe would benefit politically, as well as militarily, by raising the nuclear threshold. The fear of nuclear war has corroded the morale of Europe. It was inevitable that a defense policy based on a threat with such cataclysmic consequences could not be sustained. Europeans have come to feel threatened by their own defense. They therefore should adopt a strategy based on a credible conventional defense of Western Europe. Our allies will feel more secure—and therefore more confident—if they have a defense that defends rather than relying on one that might turn out to be an empty cannon.

  For a policy of deterrence to have credibility, Europeans must be reassured that the benefits of carrying out the policy will exceed the costs. The present nuclear deterrent does not meet that test. The fear of nuclear war is greater than fear of the Russians. A credible conventional defense backed by a nuclear deterrent would meet that test.

  In developing its strategy, NATO must reject the enticing but dangerous concept of “no first use” of nuclear weapons. The Soviets push this line because they know that NATO’s strategy is solely defensive. No serious observer believes that NATO would launch an offensive conventional attack on Warsaw Pact forces. On the other hand, the Soviets’ strategy is openly offensive. The sole purpose of NATO strategy is to deter a Soviet attack. Renouncing first use of nuclear weapons would eliminate a major element of deterrence. Soviet military planners must be made aware that if NATO’s conventional defense fails they run the risk of nuclear retaliation.

  An initiative for the conventional defense of Europe can come from the United States—but the political actions to bring it about must come from Europe. Today, the U.S. military presence in Western Europe has reached its highest level in three decades. There is no chance that American spending on NATO will rise. There is a great danger that it will be substantially cut. If West Europeans value the American military presence, they must act now or risk losing it.

  Hawks have joined doves in arguing that the United States should withdraw a substantial portion of American forces from Western Europe in order to compel action on the part of the Europeans. As long as Americans pay the freight, they point out, West Europeans will be willing to go along for the free ride. That view is already pervasive in Congress. At a time when the U.S. presence in Europe has hit its high-water mark, the support in Congress for maintaining that presence has hit its low-water mark.

  There is nothing more dangerous to NATO than the smug attitude among many Europeans that the United States would never dare pull out of the alliance. I would warn Europeans against that view. As President, I fought repeated battles in Congress to stave off the Mansfield amendments to cut sharply United States forces in Europe, and I just barely won. I believe in the importance of Europe and in the necessity for the United States to support NATO. But I also know the Congress. The fact is that Europeans have won few new friends and have disillusioned many of their old allies. If Western Europe tries to muddle through the present crisis, the skeptics in Congress will inevitably put together a coalition, with the new liberal isolationists joining the old conservative isolationists, to cut back on U.S. forces—and this time they will have the votes to win.

  The bottom line is that West Europeans cannot have their defense on the cheap anymore. Europe can no longer rely solely on the threat of a U.S. nuclear escalation to compensate for NATO’s conventional inferiority, because that has lost credibilty in the era of U.S.–Soviet parity. And there is no way that the United States will assume the responsibility for matching the Soviet Union’s conventional forces. West Europeans must recognize that they no longer face a question of whether they can save money, but whether they can save the alliance.

  As a result, Europe must develop a European solution to the problem of the conventional defense of Europe. That must involve to some extent the integration of West European armies. This idea was rejected when France voted down the proposal for the European Defense Community in 1954. It was made impossible when France pulled out of the integrated command of NATO in 1965. But an integrated defense force is an idea whose time has come.

  Over the last forty years, while some Europeans have fought abroad against unconventional guerrilla forces, no European country has fought a significant conventional conflict outside Europe, except for the Suez intervention in 1956 and the Falklands War in 1981. Apart from defending Europe, the conventional forces of our allies have had virtually no rationale for existing. It makes sense, therefore, to maximize the effectiveness of those forces for their principal purpose. That can best be achieved by reviving the idea of a true collective defense of Europe, beginning with the full integration of forces on the central front in Germany and extending the concept geographically on a pragmatic basis. France will need to alter its relationship to NATO, but its leaders already recognize the need to cooperate more closely with its allies, as evident from West Germany and France’s plan to form a fully integrated brigade.

  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 bu
t 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.