Threat to Alliance Can’t Be Taken Lightly : Weinberger’s Warning to Europe Is Impolitic But On Target

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger is catching a lot of flak for his public warning, voiced in an interview to be aired by the British Broadcasting Corp. tonight, that if ever implemented, the British Labor Party’s anti-nuclear policy would lead to the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance.

The out-of-power Labor Party justifiably called Weinberger’s comment a crude and unprecedented attempt to swing British public opinion against the party in advance of the elections, which probably will be held next year.

The fact is, nonetheless, that the U.S. defense secretary was telling it like it is. Labor, which is now given a decent chance to win a plurality in the next election, primly proclaims its support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But if the party wins office, it is pledged to scrap Britain’s own nuclear forces, shut down U.S. nuclear bases in Britain and forbid the passage of U.S. ships carrying nuclear weapons through British waters.

It is hard to imagine a better way to bring about the collapse of U.S. support for the defense of Western Europe. And the mentality reflected in the Labor Party’s defense platform is not confined to Britain.

A month ago West Germany’s major opposition party, the Social Democrats, reaffirmed the party’s support of NATO and chose Johannes Rau--a relative moderate--as its candidate for chancellor. But the left-of-center party roundly condemned practically everything the United States is doing in the foreign-policy field and left the definite impression that the blame for world tensions should be divided equally between Washington and Moscow.

Rau, overlooking the fact that the installation of U.S.-made medium-range missiles in West Germany was originally his own party’s idea, says that as chancellor he would call for the withdrawal of the missiles.

Norway and Denmark, on NATO’s northern flank, have never allowed the storage or deployment of nuclear weapons on their soil. Now they are also getting cold feet about conventional, non-nuclear deterrence of Soviet aggression.

Norwegian Defense Minister Johan Holst, who has been considered a stalwart supporter of the Atlantic Alliance, last week banned the United States from using F-111 bombers in NATO maneuvers in the area for fear the Kremlin would interpret their presence as a provocation.

In Denmark the Social Democratic Party has embraced the idea that the way to avoid war is to assure the Soviets that they are not threatened. The prophets of “non-offensive defense” would make NATO’s forces--nuclear and non-nuclear--incapable of anything but purely defensive action. If the Soviets were so uncouth as to attack anyway, reliance would be put on local defense units.

The same general idea has gained considerable currency on West Germany’s democratic left. Andreas von Bulow, who headed a national security study group for the Social Democrats, recommends doing away with all tanks, fighter-bombers and other weapons that would give the Bundeswehr the “structural” ability to attack.

All of this flies in the face of the military truism that, once war starts, he who fights a purely defensive conflict is destined to lose. It also overlooks the hopelessness of local resistance against a large and ruthless Soviet invasion force.

Friendly Europeans reassure American worriers that the rhetoric of out-of-work opposition politicians should not be taken seriously. West Europeans, they say, strongly support membership in the Atlantic Alliance and are not about to elect governments that don’t. Maybe, maybe not.

Certainly it’s true that Americans can legitimately question whether the Europeans are contributing as much as they should toward their own defense of their continent. But we should never forget that they already are doing a lot.

The Europeans have 3 million men and women on active military duty, and that number could quickly be doubled in event of war. They provide more than 90% of NATO’s infantry and armored divisions and 80% of the combat aircraft.

West Germany is the greatest single contributor to Western Europe’s NATO contingent. From the standpoint of the average West German, however, their greatest contribution to NATO is the use of German real estate.

Every year some 80 large-scale maneuvers are held in West Germany. And, whereas U.S. Navy and Air Force practice is largely confined to uninhabited desert areas in the United States, an average of more than 2,000 noisy, low-level flights per day are held in West Germany. Would Americans tolerate this kind of assault upon their peace and quiet?

Beyond that, it must be said that U.S. officials have been extremely insensitive at times to European concerns.

Early in his term, President Reagan scared the hell out of Europeans with his amiable talk about the possibility of a nuclear war confined to Europe.

The Norwegians, who live frighteningly close to the great Soviet military concentration on the Kola Peninsula, can hardly be sanguine about Navy Secretary John Lehman’s so-called maritime strategy. That strategy, if taken seriously, gives the Soviets an extra incentive to attack Norway in the early hours of a war--even if that war originates on the other side of the globe.

President Reagan’s minions often seem oblivious to the prospect that today’s opposition party should be treated with a modicum of respect because it may be in power tomorrow. The Weinberger interview is a case in point.

Despite all the crosscurrents, public opinion polls still show strong support for the Atlantic Alliance. It’s probably true that if European elections were held on the single issue of support for NATO, the pacifists and anti-Americans wouldn’t have a chance.

Unfortunately, though, elections turn more often on domestic economic and social issues than on foreign policy issues. Europeans shouldn’t lightly dismiss the perils of electing governments that talk about reducing pollution and unemployment--but whose policies, once in office, would also cause the destruction of the Atlantic Alliance.