Allies Deserve Genuine Consultation

Is it all going to happen again? That was what many people in Great Britain and elsewhere in Western Europe were asking themselves when Gen. Vernon Walters, President Reagan’s special envoy, made his swift tour of eight European capitals this month.

They recalled that Walters also had made the rounds of European capitals last April before the American raid on Tripoli and Benghazi. And they knew that the United States was once again warning that Libya was planning further acts of international terrorism. By coincidence, while he was in London, Walters heard of the Karachi hijacking, which was so shortly followed by the synagogue massacre in Istanbul.

But the circumstances were not the same as those of last April. Walters had not come for the same purpose, and the Karachi and Istanbul atrocities were not replays of the West Berlin nightclub bombing that provoked the American reprisal.

This difference illustrates one of the most important but frustrating features of international terrorism. Every episode has in common a savage contempt for human life, a readiness to inflate unlimited suffering of innocent people. But beyond this basic truth the conditions vary from one incident to another.

Walters was not on this occasion asking for the cooperation of the British government in another raid. He wanted to encourage generally tougher European economic measures against Libya, but his visit seems also to have been an exercise in diplomatic pressure on Col. Moammar Kadafi--a warning not to risk another act of terrorism.

Had Kadafi been responsible for the Karachi and Istanbul killings, the decision for the United States would have been simple and the action would have been swift. But the position was more confusing. The evidence so far does not suggest that Libya was the culprit this time. Nobody has been found responsible against whom it would be feasible to strike.

In a sense Libya was the easy one. When a state commits terrorism there is a target against which to strike. A state cannot hide or sleep. There are, it is true, a great many states against which such retaliation would not be practical. Libya provided probably a rare exception of one that was both guilty and vulnerable.

But most acts of terrorism are not committed by states. Sometimes, as in the case of the Baader-Meinhof group in West Germany or the Red Brigades that murdered Aldo Moro, the former Italian premier, in 1978, the culprits are known but have to be pursued for years before they can be caught.

Sometimes, as in the case of the Air India crash in which 329 people died off the coast of Ireland last year, there is simply an assumption that the terrorists come from a particular community--in that instance militant Sikhs in Canada.

Sometimes, as with the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, nobody knows who did it.

It is an illusion to suppose that for every act of terrorism there can be a retaliation. Just as the circumstances vary, so must the responses vary. Sometimes it will be possible to strike back. More often the campaign against terrorism will depend on efficient measures for prevention and detection, which require a high degree of international cooperation.

Yet if cooperation is to be effective, certain ground rules need to be appreciated. When President Reagan decided to bomb Libya he informed the British government and asked that American aircraft be allowed to fly on the mission from bases in Britain. But he did not consult the British government about the decision itself.

I am sure that Margaret Thatcher and her colleagues were right to agree. But I am equally sure that those exchanges raise questions for the future.

A great power like the United States must be free to act on its own without having to wait on the agreement of another country, no matter how friendly. It is not absolutely obliged in those circumstances even to inform its close allies in advance, though if it wants to preserve confidence in the relationship it will be wise to do so.

But where some practical cooperation is required there ought to be some genuine consultation over the decision itself. Otherwise the smaller power will always be told that it has an obligation as an ally simply to follow the wishes of the greater power. That will offend its pride and be resisted by public opinion.

Europeans need to appreciate that they must be prepared to take sufficiently tough measures against international terrorism to make such consultations and collaboration worthwhile. They are bound to be bypassed whenever possible if they always go for the feeble option. But Americans need to appreciate that not even such a powerful country as the United States can win the battle against international terrorism on its own.