Whose hand at the helm?
"THIS YEAR has been called the Year of Europe," Dr Kissinger declared in April, adding " but not because Europe was less important in 1972 or in 1969." The reasons for the appellation were, Presumably (Dr Kissinger did not tell us), that Britain had joined the Common Market and that President Nixon, having become re-elected, was determined to turn his attention to the great diplomatic problems of the world during his second, and historically more important, term of office. Dr Kissinger mentioned five "new realities that require new approaches" in his speech:,
The revival of Western Europe is an established fact as is the historic success of its movement towards economic unification.
The East-West strategic military balance has shifted from American Preponderance to near equality, bringing with it the necessity for a new Understanding of the requirements of our common Security. Other areas of the world have grown in importance. Japan has emerged as a major power centre. In many fields "Atlantic " solutions to be viable must include Japan.
We are in a period of relaxation of tensions. But as the rigid divisions of the past two decades diminish, new assertions of national identity and national rivalry emerge.
Problems have arisen, unforeseen a generation ago, which require pew types of co-operative action. Ensuring the supply of energy for Industrialised nations is an example.
THERE IS LITTLE WRONG with Dr Kissinger's analysis. It provided the intellectual framework for what was intended to be President Nixon's grand diplomatic strategy which, following Upon his tete-a-tete meetings with the heads of governments of Britain, Italy, West Germany and France would lead to a ' European summit' in the late autumn of this year which would proPound a new Atlantic charter. This diplomacy would have as its Purpose the arrangement of the relationships of the major industrialised nations of the non-communist world, and in particular a redefinition of the Atlantic alliance between North America and Western Europe. But the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.' President Nixon's and Dr Kissinger's grand new designs are now, half-way through their year of Europe,' very much askew. And this is a very serious matter indeed.
IT IS EASY ENOUGH to see the causes of their schemes being frustrated. The President of the United States has rendered himself politically incompetent and diplomatically infirm by his mishandling of the Watergate scandal and has become quite incapable of supplying the leadership the west requires. At the same time, Britain's accession to the Treaty of Rome — which Was the specific event which precipitated the 'year of Europe'' and which has added urgency to the need for new diplomatic definitions and arrangements — has not brought about a more extroverted Europe. On the contrary, the Europe of the Common Market seems, with Britain's participation, to have Become more Introverted than ever and to be far more concerned with finding solutions to its own internal problems than with seeking new arrangements on an ' Atlantic ' basis with the outside world. But even with a competent, firm and vigorous President and a Europe persuaded or compelled by Britain's accession to look outwards, the American concept of an Atlantic charter emerging from this year of Europe would have been frustrated by the determination of France to fashion Europe into a 'third force' Independent of American influence and decreasingly dependent Upon American protection. The United States has never grasped that the basis of French Europeanism is anti-Americanism, or that President Pompidou, like President de Gaulle, is far more
concerned with repelling the United States and the AngloSaxons than resisting the Soviet Union and the Slays. Thus, the meeting between Presidents Nixon and Pompidou in Iceland (in the middle of the Atlantic of all places) whatever purpose it may have had in the minds of Nixon and Kissinger, served the purpose for France of quashing the American-European summit and further talk of an Atlantic charter.
POMPIDOU MAY BE SICK and a dying man. But he pursued French interests, as he saw them, with far more vigour and success than did Nixon American interests. This is a measure of the disaster that is befalling the western, Atlantic alliance. The President of the United States has now become so weak that a sick Frenchman can effortlessly out-manoeuvre him. This would not matter if the conflict between the two men were of minor importance; and it would be an excellent stroke of fortune were the French to be right and the Americans wrong. But it is appalling when it is the Americans who are right, when it is American analysis which is accurate and American diplomacy which is striving to bring about the most secure arrangements.
THE UNITED KINGDOM and its Prime Minister are unlikely ever to have a better opportunity than now to re-assert British leadership. In different ways, the heads of governments of the United States and France are incapacitated, and although Chancellor Brandt is now a major European politician, West Germany has not yet shown any disposition to accept that its enthralled accord with France now threatens its defensive reliance upon the United States, let alone to seek to play a creative role of its own in world affairs. The stage is empty and open for Mr Heath:
There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
IT WILL NOT DO if Mr Heath leaps onto the empty stage as a surrogate for President Pompidou and begins declaiming French propositions with an English accent. The Prime Minister has had his way over the Common Market, but he is as far as ever from persuading the country into acceptance, full-hearted or otherwise, of his policy. The country will certainly not tolerate a European policy which endangers the Atlantic alliance. Since American presidential weakness and French presidential determination now accidentally combine, with potentially disastrous consequence, to endanger that alliance, it is up to Mr Heath to take up the task the United States has temporarily, through the selfmutilation of its President, perforce abandoned. Mr Brezhnev, fortunately, is showing no inclination to seek a passing advantage from Mr Nixon's incapacity. The situation is critical without, yet, being urgent. There is time, and this is the time, for the British Prime Minister and the British Foreign Secretary to look again at Dr Kissinger's analysis, and to pick up the pieces of the Atlantic strategy he outlined and which, but for the Watergate debacle, President Nixon would now powerfully be advancing. If Britain allows Europe, at this juncture, to turn its back upon the United States and to strive towards the mirage of a " third force," then eventual disaster will inevitably confront Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. Such a disaster can only be averted by the Atlantic alliance and the Atlantic strategy being sustained; and the best — indeed the only practicable — man to sustain these against their present threats is the Prime Minister, provided only that he can free himself from the French clutch. It is not too much to ask that he do so, and takes his tide at the flood.
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