Caution: Stupidity at Work

Richard R. Burt, the U.S. ambassador to West Germany, deserves praise for his blunt public repudiation of remarks by Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle, whose unsolicited advice to the Bonn government was not merely tactless, but stupid.

Perle, in an interview with a German newspaper, suggested that West Germany cut credits to East Germany and spend the money on the military budget. As a spokesman for Chancellor Helmut Kohl acidly pointed out, the Pentagon official did not even have his facts straight. West Germany does not grant direct government credits to East Germany, but instead guarantees private bank loans.

The main problem with Perle’s comments was not inaccuracy, however, but his reckless disregard for their counterproductive effect, from the U.S. point of view, on German politics.

Kohl’s Christian Democratic Party, which rules in coalition with the tiny Free Democratic Party, is a staunch supporter of the Western alliance. The opposition Social Democrats have taken a leftward turn in foreign policy; although they profess adherence to the alliance, the frequently neutralist tone of their pronouncements is not reassuring.

The Christian Democrats are widely expected to win the elections set for Jan. 25. But Perle’s comments were a godsend to the Social Democrats, who accuse Kohl of being an American puppet who fails to safeguard West German interests.

The American ambassador properly went public with a statement strongly saying that Perle was not speaking for the United States--and observing that the Pentagon official’s duties do not include any authority to make or express U.S. policy toward relations between the two Germanys. It is a point that Perle--and his superior, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger--should keep in mind.