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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 6, 1984
PAGE 13
early
1950s
and stand on its own. Could not Western Europe-
pacified, prosperous, and with a resource base more impressive
than that of the Soviet Union--do without its patron power across
the sea?... Western Europe could only dispense with the United
States if it fielded a deterrent capability commensurate with the
Soviet force reserved for Western Europe. Yet how could Western
Europe achieve this goal without true supranational integra
tion?.•• No country, if given a choice, will entrust its physical
survival to another, let alone to a European Community-type
bureaucracy.
Nuclear weapons [such as the national forces
possessed by the French and the British] are thus intrinsically
divisive rather than integrationist in their implications....
If nuclear weapons cannot be shared--as the debacle of the Multi
lateral Force in the early 1960s demonstrated--why would a
country like west Germany place greater faith in the puny nuclear
forces of its middle-power allies across the Rhine River and the
English Channel than in the massive arsenal of its superpower
ally? The ultimate implication of a Western Europe minus the
United States, therefore, is a nuclear-armed Federal Republic
with other West European countries to follow ••••
In conclusion, a Western Europe left to its own devices is not
likely to achieve what alliance critics expect it to.... NATO's
detractors ignore tne central role America� play
7
d in pac1fy-
1:..!!.S. � state system that almost consumed itself !!!. � worl d
wars.•.•
Although expensive, deterring war is cheaper than having to fight
one, especially in the shadow of nuclear weapons that make it
unlikely that the United States could still come to the rescue of
Europe as it did twice, in 1917 and 1941. "Which is better for
the country," asked Truman more than a generation ago, "to spend
twenty or thirty billion dollars [over the next four years] to
keep the peace or to do as we did in 1920 and then have to spend
100
billion dollars for four years to fight a war?" ...
Costly as it is, America's European investment has yielded enor
mous profits--notably decades of tranquility on a Continent whose
strategic importance in this century has been dwarfed only by its
inability to manage its own security affairs when left alone.
After World War II, America put out the raging fire of European national
ism, in much the same manner that Red Adair caps fires in oil fields.
Ignorant of history, some want to remove the lid. Of course, things may not
be as chaotic in the future as Mr. Joffe indicates. The nuclear age shoul d
impose certain restraints, even on the old trans-Rhine rivalry. This time,
the French and the West Germans may be able to cooperate even in nuclear
strategy.
The two countries are beginning to show a rather remarkable
degree of cooperation in conventional weapons development.
Indications are that Mr. Safire's "new axis of power" is slowly beginning
to take shape, ready to emerge more fully whenever the "wind" blows
American troops homeward. Learning to cooperate for 35 years while the
U.S. acted as "pacifier" will have been the key.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau