The Beauffre Plan
The second and greater barrier, of course, is the row over the organisation of European de- fence. which has at its core differing views of the proper relationship between Europe and the United States I was interested to learn from General Beauffre, the impressive soldier-intel- lectual who commanded the French forces at Suez and now heads his country's equivalent of the Institute of Strategic Studies that he's publish- ing a book towards the end of this year which will suggest an attractive compromise solution.
Very roughly (and I apologise in advance to the General for the crudeness of my account) NATO would be reformed by the setting-up of an inte- grated European Defence Authority (to organise conventional defence: nuclear forces would , in- evitably remain under national control, so long as this remains the only effective sovereign politi- cal power) which would be joined to the United States by the North Atlantic Treaty in a new, quasi-bilateral form. European forces would to under the command of the nation in which they were situated. Germany would be completely non-nuclear, but offered the carrot of eventual reunification and the reassurance both of a say in overall European strategic policy and of a con- tinuing American military presence. This, surely, is the sort of constructive compromise proposal that Britain ought to be putting forward at the present time, instead of outdoing the AmeriCsas in its rigid anti-French NATO fundamentalism.
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