The US and Europe
We have requently warned those European Powers concerned to assert their independence Of the United States that there might well, at the end of the day, be a heavy price to pay for such assertion. That price is the expense of an adequate policy of self-defence, assuming the Americans decided to withdraw their troops from the defence of Europe. The day when that choice will have to be taken is now Measurably nearer, after the silly outbursts of Br Kissinger and President Nixon recently.
But our arguments were not based on acceptance of the idea that American withdrawal Would represent a reasonable policy, merely on our fear that Washington would react irrationally to opposition. Now, it appears, the Worst is about to happen: Dr Kissinger — Whose image as not merely a brilliant but a successful Secretary of State becomes more tarnished every day, and whose outbursts of conceited pique become daily more intolerable has given vent to more fits of bad temper, and the President, increasingly unmanned, it seems, by the pressures on him at home, has behaved like a drunken schoolboy, basing policy less on interest than on amour propre. Yet, as M. Jobert has reminded us, American troops are in Europe not merely to defend the Europeans, but to defend American interests.
While, however, we appreciate the danger we now face, and the irrationality of American policy, we must not allow our worries to blind us to the success and the reason of French foreign policy. The present transatlantic dispute arises out of two interlocking problems, the energy crisis and the state of the Middle East. The French have not merely, with enormous success, secured their supplies of oil, they have also embarked on the most forward looking and radical energy policy, which will greatly reduce their expenditure in coming years and eventually make them, despite their lack of natural resources, as nearly self-sufficient in energy as it is possible to be. Britain is vastly more blessed with resources, yet we have been lacking in our pursuit of the national interest, and slow to grasp the necessity of both husbanding and controlling our offshore fields. It is time we ceased both Mr Heath's fawning on the French and Labour's carping at them and, instead, took a leaf from their book.
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