President Johnson's Europe

AMERICA DAVID WATT

Washington—It is a sound working principle in foreign affairs to suspect the advice of one's professional friends. This truth began to dawn on me when I once sat next to the eminent chairman of an American branch of the English Speaking Union and discovered that his ardent Anglophilia was entirely due to an obstinately- held belief that the British had discovered the secret of keeping the nigger in his place. Subse- quent attendance at Anglo-Ruritanian Society cocktail parties and the like has confirmed the impression. Foreign idolaters nearly always start from a totally mistaken view of the idol's beliefs and national interests and then proceed, generally by way of their own beliefs and national interests, to demands whose rejection is inevitable but deeply resented. Experience also shows that Americans and Europeans are ideal partners in these misunderstandings, pre- cisely because they are so positive that they understand each other.

Take, for instance, the recent letter to The Times from a group of American governors, senators and others, suggesting a North Atlan- tic free trade area in case Britain failed to get into the Common Market. This was obviously inspired by the friendliest motives. But it was still the wildest fantasy. It is permanently un- acceptable to the American government be- cause it involves a return to protectionism and because it would outrage powerful American trading interests; it is unacceptable to the British government because it involves in the long run economic subservience to the United States; and it offends both governments since it mildly embarrassed Harold Wilson's Com- mon Market bid.

A similar exercise in futility is now being undertaken by a chorus of Atlanticists in both Europe and America who demand a return to an 'active' policy towards Europe on the lines of President Kennedy's `Grand Design.' Here, again, there are perfectly respectable motives for this advice—the fear of an exclusive American obsession with Vietnam, the pos- sibility of a return to American isolationism and withdrawal, the new Franco-German axis and so on. As in the case of free trade, however, the proposed cure is the purest quackery. The Administration is certainly not going to pay the slightest attention, the European govern- ments are in no mood to cooperate even if any- one could think of any dramatic new initiatives, and finally the sensitivity of European public opinion to the slightest American pressure— military, monetary or industrial—has proved to be so acute of late that any attempt to revive cherished Grand Design projects such as the multilateral force would simply broaden the Atlantic still further.

There is nothing particularly surprising about these aberrations. Many Europeans are bound to feel chilly at the thought of being left alone to face the Red Army, the neo-Nazis and the French Foreign Ministry. Many Americans are equally uneasy about the losses of prestige the us has already suffered at the hands of General de Gaulle or may suffer in the future at the hands of the Communists. And both groups feel that the American government ought to use the greatest power on earth to do something about it.

The significant thing, however, is that both groups assume that the American government is failing to do anything at all. They are not by any means alone in this assumption, for it has become a fashionable commonplace in Wash- ington that the Johnson Administration does not have a European policy. This is a view which fits in neatly with two other liberal pro- positions. First, that if the Vietnam war could be got out of the way, Europe and the develop- ing countries would once more resume their rightful place in the American scale of priorities; and secondly, that Johnson is too boorish and uncultivated to understand the subtleties of the European mind.

Unfortunately this is simply not true. If one makes a circuit of the White House, Pentagon and State Department, one finds their inmates thoroughly aware of the issues and dangers in- volved in Europe. Vice-President Humphrey has not been sent off to Europe in a vacuum: Mr Dean Rusk holds forth with great force and fluency on American trade policy in general and the Kennedy round of tariff negotiations in particular; Mr McNamara knows all about the political difficulties of the German govern- ment; and the President himself .has some shrewd and typically teclinicolored views on Mr Wilson's approach to the Common Market. It is quite obvious that these men and their senior officials have given considerable atten- tion to European policy—and recently. It merely happens that their policy differs from that which their predecessors (or for that mat- ter they themselves) followed five years ago.

A long historical perspective will be needed to isolate all the factors that have caused this change. But it is certainly true that at this stage in the evolution of American power, Europe has ceased to be the predominant influence over American policy and has become, both psycho- logically and in practice, simply one of a num- ber of interlocking global interests. This new outlook has taken people here in various ways. Senators Mansfield and Fullbright have drawn the conclusion that the US should leave Europe to its own devices as soon as possible. Others, on the right, remark that the NATO area now extends to the Bering Straits and therefore be- come enraged with the Europeans for not

accepting world-wide responsibilities. But so far as the Administration is concerned, the change has been chiefly visible in the shedding of a great deal of the dogmatic clutter that has been collected around the oldest and biggest of American involvements. It has allowed the us to define its aims in Europe more precisely and to choose its methods more flexibly.

The most important American interest in Western Europe is still seen in Washington as the need to defend the continent from Russian

domination. This is regarded as a constant and open-ended commitment. Mr Rusk and Mr McNamara were both holding their present

positions during the last Berlin crisis and during the Cuban missile affair. President Johnson, as Vice-President, was intimately concerned with both incidents. And none of these men is yet prepared to assume—on the strength of a com- parative ddtente, lasting five years—that the

Russians will not use the opportunity to exploit a sudden overwhelming preponderance of Communist conventional forces in Europe.

Since American intelligence has concluded that the Russians are unwilling for the time being to withdraw troops from East Germany, for fear of upheavals there, the American government has no intention (whatever the result of the 'off- set' negotiations) of making large-scale cuts in its forces in Europe this year—or, for that mat- ter, of allowing Britain to do so either.

On the other hand, if other things were equal, they would like to cut back conventional forces.

And if either American or European 'bridge- building' to the East makes really serious pro- gress, Mr McNamara will certainly not be re- strained by the full rigours of his own doctrine of 'flexible response' from recommending American withdrawals. From a military point of view, General de Gaulle is still regarded as irrelevant. The force de frappe is not yet a deterrent which shows signs of convincing

either the Germans or the Russians, and the French withdrawal from NATO, though logistically inconvenient, does not drastically affect the balance of power.

The second vital American concern in Europe is the stability of Germany. For years it has been thought essential to this interest that

Washington's relationship with Bonn should be suffocatingly close and paternalistic. The atmo-

sphere at the moment is far more relaxed. The entire absence of panic in Washington about either the latest German love affair with the French or about the new German openings to the East, is sometimes ascribed to President Johnson's genuine affection for Germans. But it is more likely to be due to an acute sense of the realities of power. Washington is not yet ready (whatever may be said in public) to countenance the reunification of Germany. But since it knows that Moscow is unwilling to con- sider it either, the only real objection to im- proved relations between Bonn and the East is removed. Similarly, the Americans have no Intention of giving the Germans any genuine control over nuclear weapons. But then neither has General de Gaulle; and since this is so, im- proved Franco-German relations are all to the good. The rival claims of German national pride and a nuclear non-proliferation treaty are admittedly awkward, but the Americans still

believe they can satisfy both by some ingenious semantic formula and, if they cannot, one suspects that the treaty will win.

The other major American interest in Europe is that European countries should continue to cooperate with the US economically. On this score, it is true, there are occasional shudders of

alarm in Washington—particularly at the Treasury. Mr Henry Fowler, the Secretary there, has been heard to remark that if the Ken-

nedy round and the present liquidity negotia-

tions fail, the world will be divided into rival trading blocks within two years. But most in- fluential officials are inclined to be more philo- sophical and to rely on the self-interest of the Europeans to turn the trick for them.

For example, European Central bankers have cooperated in a network of monetary swap arrangements which is ultimately designed to perpetuate the present system with the dollar at its centre. They have done so not out of any particular love of the us, but because of the vast strength of the American economy, and because, like all bankers, they fear violent change. The same factors will presumably per-

suade them to go on increasing, at a moderate rate, the quantity of dollars in their reserves—

whatever the French may tell them to the con- trary. Similarly with the Kennedy round; the results may not be spectacular but it now seems likely that some agreements will emerge—not, alas, dictated by the spirit of Atlantic unity but by the interests of the business community and their pressures on governments.

Where Washington's philosophical spirit breaks down is, of course, at the points where there is little or no European self-interest to which one can appeal. In the case of the inter- national liquidity negotiations, it still seems pretty certain that no proper scheme for creat- ing reserves will come into operation until a real live liquidity crisis overrides the con- tinental assumption that any new plan will pro-

duce ruinous inflation in Europe for the sake of a bunch of spendthrifts. This outlook de-

presses most of the American officials involved, and actually seems to madden Mr Fowler to such an extent that he may be prepared to apply considerable pressure on the Germans in order to get what he wants.

Economic aid to the developing countries is an even sorer point in Washington. It is obviously of genuine importance and the Presi- dent has a real preoccupation with it—the counterpart of his rather naive but still deeply- felt commitment to the war on poverty at home.

The failure of most European countries to reach the level of American aid (the Admini- stration reasonably includes food aid in its comparisons) is particularly infuriating since it adds enormously to the difficulties of per- suading an almost obsessively cantankerous Congress to shell out more itself. Here again the Europeans (and notably the Germans) are likely to get their arms twisted.

These flashes of irritation are extremely significant, and possibly rather ominous. For they occur at the precise points where the pre- occupations of a super power and those of a European power diverge. The Johnson Admini- stration may now recognise that it does not greatly matter to the United States how things develop within Europe—providing that certain general conditions of stability continue to be fulfilled. They may not necessarily mind much if Americans and Europeans appear to conflict in their direct relationships—for they tend to believe that there is a close community of in- terest within the developed world which will settle matters satisfactorily. But there is imme- diate alarm as soon as European attitudes directly affect the success of American policies elsewhere in the world.

Luckily for their peace of mind, Americans are apt to assume that the present examples of this kind of difference—over aid or liquidity or

even Vietnam—are the result of European 'in-. ward-lookingness' and that if these parochial money-grubbers could only be persuaded to lift their eyes to the wide horizons which Wash- ington now scans they would all immediately join in the fight for freedom, prosperity and democracy. Some of the exalted doctrinal en- thusiasm for Britain's membership of a United States of Europe has gone out of the window with the rest of the Grand Design; but the Americans remain anxious that we should join —not, as General de Gaulle would have it, be- cause we are specifically pro-American but be- cause we are supposed to be able to persuade Europe to think in global terms. The possibility that the British missionaries might themselves become converted to parochialism has faintly occurred to the American government but is dismissed—mainly on the basis of past ex- perience. The possibility that a European inter- nationalism might be seriously at odds with American policy seems hardly to have crossed anyone's mind.

This refusal to really face the possible con- sequences of a 'third-force' Europe may turn out to be absurdly naive, or it may be a shrewd assessment of the political realities. But what- ever one thinks of it, it has at least allowed the American government to take a more detached attitude towards Europe than at any time since the war. I do not find this at all alarming. Presi- dent Johnson recently said to a European visi- tor: 'I sometimes think we have more trust in you than you do in yourselves or in us.' And he may be right.