Reagan Must Show Europe a Command of U.S. Strategy

Given America’s preoccupation with Iran, the contras and the White House, it is natural to expect that our allies share the angst over the muddle and misfeasance at the top of the U.S. government. Yet Western Europe remains far more concerned about something that seems to be ancient history here: What Ronald Reagan did two months ago at his summit meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Iceland.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has now completed its annual set of December meetings in Brussels. The mood was striking for what did not happen. For the first time in years the U.S. Administration was not berated for going too slowly on arms control. It was not told that it was losing the U.S-Soviet propaganda battle in Western Europe. It was not subjected to hand-wringing about the impediment that the Strategic Defense Initiative places in the way of a peaceful future, nor was it even chastised for recently breaking the SALT II treaty limits by deploying a 131st B-52 bomber armed with cruise missiles.

A cynic might conclude that nothing succeeds like failure. Just as the arms-and-money deal produced a valuable opening to Iran and a likely check to further funding for the contras, the Reykjavik summit has produced in Western Europe a useful corrective to the notion that arms control can solve all problems and eliminate all evils. Yet this thought should not be taken as comfort by the opponents of arms control who, in the absence of presidential leadership after Reykjavik, are again in control of U.S. strategic policy.

In short, virtually every European leader continues to marvel at what almost happened at the summit. This, not White House high jinks and posturing about hostages and communists in Central America, is what concerns nations whose security depends on wisdom and steadiness by the U.S. commander-in-chief.

The most obvious issue at Reykjavik was the so-called Euromissiles--Soviet SS-20s and U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles. Before the summit, Gorbachev made significant concessions, and agreement seemed likely to reduce the weapons to 100 warheads on each side. When, at Reykjavik, it seemed possible to scrap them altogether, the allies nearly had to confront the reality of the “zero option” that Reagan had backed for five years. Suddenly the political bruises sustained in the deployment of U.S. Euromissiles were forgotten and their original purpose was remembered: to ensure the U.S. commitment to defend Western Europe, come what may.

Far more significant, however, was President Reagan’s apparent willingness to trade away major portions of the U.S. strategic arsenal, even toying with the idea of eliminating all nuclear weapons. The allies were shocked that an American President would discuss a step that would cede political dominance over the Eurasian land mass to the Soviet Union with its superiority in conventional military potential. Unease was compounded when Secretary of State George P. Shultz talked about defending Western Europe with conventional arms--an idea that NATO abandoned three decades ago as both militarily and politically unworkable.

After Reykjavik, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Camp David to press Reagan, successfully, to drop his proposal to eliminate all strategic ballistic missiles within 10 years; just talking about it, in her view, weakened the tangible link between American and European security. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl came to Washington to remind U.S. leaders of the perils of retreat from the Continent. And NATO’s political organs have now taken the unprecedented step of balking at the zero option for Euromissiles and calling on the U.S. President to exercise caution in pursuing arms control.

Meanwhile, both France and Great Britain have reasserted their commitment to proceed with the modernization of their nuclear arsenals. As these arsenals swell in numbers and accuracy of warheads, they could complicate U.S. arms-control efforts with the Soviets. It is one thing for Paris and London to retain nuclear weapons as marginal re-insurance; it is quite another for them to do so because of emerging doubts as to America’s strategic purposes.

There is thus a hiatus in European criticism of U.S. ambivalence about arms control. But nagging is preferable to a basic wondering as to whether the United States knows the facts of life about Western security and the projection of U.S. power to the Continent. Unless Gorbachev does the Reagan Administration the unlikely favor of badly misplaying his European hand, arms-control anxieties will within a few months move back toward the top of the allies’ agenda.

NATO has taken one positive step by proposing to convene a new set of East-West talks on the conventional military balance in Europe. It would replace the 13-year-old talks on mutual and balanced force reductions by involving all 35 states concerned with European security while leaving the actual talking to members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Pursued seriously, this step might help resolve the key dilemma facing the West in Europe: that U.S. political reliability shows serious signs of erosion while the Soviets’ conventional military superiority and objectives have not changed. But the next step can be taken only by the U.S. President. Despite his current difficulties, Reagan must show the allies that he is in charge of U.S. strategic policy from doctrine to arms control. It is here, not in the Iran-contras scandal, that the credibility of the U.S. presidency is most at risk.