Reluctant Allies

The Reagan Administration’s determined effort to enroll Western Europe’s political and technological resources in the “Star Wars” program--officially known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI--is making progress. Great Britain broke the ice by signing the first government-to-government agreement providing a framework for participation by British firms. Now the West German cabinet has conditionally agreed to let private firms enroll in the research, and Italy is expected to be not far behind. Even in France, where the government is sharply critical of SDI, nothing is being done to discourage participation by individual French companies.

The fact remains, however, that allied governments remain deeply skeptical about the Star Wars program. With good reason, they suspect that it may do more to undermine European security than to enhance it. Americans have equally good reasons to wonder whether the evolving terms of European participation are in the U.S. interest.

The Europeans were disturbed at President Reagan’s failure to consult them before announcing his Strategic Defense Initiative in March, 1983, despite the abrupt change that the SDI program represented from alliance-approved doctrines of nuclear deterrence. The President consulted hardly anyone in his own government, for that matter.

The more substantive European concerns were that the Star Wars program would derail arms control and trigger a new arms race, that its enormous prospective costs would divert money from other arms programs of more immediate relevance to European security, and that the controversial program would play into the hands of Europe’s pacifists and anti-Americans.

These concerns have not gone away--far from it--but they are moderated by the knowledge that the Soviets are pursuing an ambitious anti-missile program of their own and by worry that if Europe does not sign up it will miss out on technological breakthroughs that might have important commercial applications.

The major European allies agree that Washington should pursue research into strategic defense as an offset to Soviet work in the field. They know that if Star Wars worked it could be used to protect Western Europe from medium-range Soviet missiles. But they insist that the research program be kept within the bounds of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They also make it clear that European governments plan to share in any new technologies that result from research, even though they will refuse to invest any money in it--a proposition that isn’t very attractive to the American taxpayer.

Even among Europeans who are inclined to view SDI favorably, there is justifiable concern that, as the program matures and costs grow, its U.S. funding will be at the expense of the American share in financing the enormously important modernization of the conventional, non-nuclear forces facing the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe. Both U.S. and European military leaders warn that, unless these conventional capabilities are beefed up, the alliance will be dangerously dependent on the early use of nuclear weapons in event of a Soviet invasion.

It seems clear that Star Wars, far from bringing the United States and its allies together in a common enterprise, will serve as another, possibly serious, source of disunity and contention. This ought to be worrying the Administration as much as it concerns staunchly pro-alliance politicians in Western Europe.