Fears of Denuclearized Europe Pose Dilemma : NATO Summit Coming as Western Nations Begin to Deal With Defense Issues on Their Own

President Reagan meets the other leaders of the 16-nation Atlantic Alliance this week at a time when Western Europe, perhaps more secure and prosperous than ever, is fretting about its future.

The root of this paradox is the growing prospect--or specter to Western Europe--of having to face its security and political problems increasingly on its own. With the impending withdrawal of American intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe and a warming of U.S.-Soviet relations, Europeans are feeling a chill of American disengagement, a need to take charge of their own destiny, a mood for change and a great uncertainty about what to do.

“The peace and stability of the political and territorial order of Europe finds itself today at a crossroads,” Jacques Chaban-Delmas, president of the French National Assembly and a former premier, wrote in a recent article.

‘Watershed Reached’

“A watershed of some kind has been reached,” Peter Jenkins, a distinguished British political columnist, wrote recently in the Independent, a London newspaper. “After (the 1986 superpower summit in) Reykjavik (Iceland) and the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) treaty, nothing can ever be quite the same again. Basic dilemmas, long postponed, will now have to be addressed.”

One of the major problems for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is wooing Western Europe with a message of peace and convincing many Western Europeans that the Soviet Union is no longer their enemy.

“NATO is like the Vatican,” said a French official who specializes in Soviet affairs. “And, in the Vatican, when the devil is no longer the devil, you have a problem.”

No one expects any of these problems, and the issues they raise, to be solved at the NATO summit meeting Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, the advance word is that the bureaucrats are already preparing a final communique that will paper over differences and be brimming with the usual banalities of mutual transatlantic confidence as Reagan prepares for another summit with Gorbachev in Moscow late this spring.

Deeper Problems

But analysts believe that the deeper trends and problems in Europe are not going to be resolved by the optimism of a final communique or by any assurances from Reagan about how the security of Europe and North America are intertwined.

There are no cries that the Atlantic Alliance is in crisis. Europeans do not believe that American troops will automatically go home just because the medium- and shorter-range missiles are coming out. But they realize that the status quo in Europe is changing, both in the East and in the West. And this realization is forcing a deep self-examination on the part of Europe’s political leaders, diplomats, think-tank analysts and journalists.

For many peoples of Western Europe, it is obviously a great relief and, they hope, a harbinger of a safer world to know that these missiles will be removed from their farms and forests. On the other hand, their governments worry about any steps toward denuclearization. The governments fear, as columnist Jenkins put it, “the nightmare of a Europe made safe for conventional warfare.”

No matter what is said in the final communique, European leaders will surely spend a good deal of their time at the meeting trying to impress their concerns upon Reagan and other American officials.

Reagan moved to meet some of those concerns in a speech to Europe last week over a U.S. Information Agency network. He tried to reassure Western Europe that the United States has no intention of abandoning it to its own defenses.

“We Americans will do our part in keeping the alliance strong,” he said. “Our troops will stay in Europe, a guarantee that our destiny is coupled with yours. We will keep our forces, including the strategic nuclear umbrella, strong and up to date.”

“Simply put,” he continued, “an attack on Munich is the same as an attack on Chicago.”

Rhetoric Won’t Be Enough

But such rhetoric will not be enough to dispel all the uncertainty in Europe. The issues are too complex, too entangled, too confusing and too contradictory.

There are three main issues: nuclear defense, the role of the United States and relations with Gorbachev’s Soviet Union.

-- On denuclearization. Reagan’s advocacy of a space-based defense against nuclear missiles and his evident willingness at the October, 1986, summit conference in Reykjavik to endorse a ban on all nuclear weapons shocked Western Europe into realizing that nuclear defense was no longer sacrosanct. Then, the INF treaty, though publicly accepted, troubled many European leaders who looked on it as a possible first step toward a nuclear-free Europe.

This feeling has galvanized some leaders, such as President Francois Mitterrand of France, to press for a renewed commitment to nuclear deterrence. The French believe that nuclear weapons have an efficient and moral purpose: to frighten the Soviet Union out of ever invading Western Europe. Mitterrand, who wants to push this message, will be the first French president to attend a NATO summit since Charles de Gaulle withdrew his military forces from NATO command in 1966.

The West Germans, on the other hand, know that once the United States and the Soviet Union remove their intermediate missiles, the only American and Soviet missiles left in Europe will be short-range ones, with a range of 300 miles or less. The obvious target for such missiles in case of a war, the Germans believe, would be armies fighting on either West German or East German soil.

Reluctant About NATO Plans

For this reason, West German leaders have been receptive to Gorbachev’s latest proposal to ban short-range missiles. In line with this, the Germans have been reluctant to go ahead with NATO plans to modernize the short-range missiles now on West German soil. The United States and others had hoped that the final summit communique would endorse NATO’s commitment to modernize such weapons. But these hopes have been abandoned in the face of opposition by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Western Europe, of course, is afraid that, without nuclear weapons, its regular armies would be overwhelmed by those of the Soviet Union and the East Bloc. Almost everyone in Western European governments, including the West Germans, agree now that a pact on reductions in conventional arms should precede any talks on short-range missiles, but many fear that it may be difficult to hold to this sequence in negotiations.

-- On the role of the United States. Although there is a growing feeling in Europe that it must do more for its own defense, there is also a growing fear that the United States may withdraw many of its 326,000 troops. Europeans can hear echoes of disgruntled talk in the United States about the cost of keeping troops on European soil.

Warnings have come lately from prominent Americans. In a private conference on defense in Munich early this month, Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci said the United States might withdraw its troops from West Germany if all nuclear weapons were banned from West German soil.

If the weapons were eliminated, Carlucci said, “We would be weakening the capability of our military forces to carry out their mission.

“Then,” he added, “it is incumbent on me and other officials of the United States to look at whether indeed we could keep the forces here.”

Warned Europe

In an interview published in the International Herald Tribune earlier this month, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned Europe that the numbers of American troops there depend on Europe’s will to fight a war itself. If Europe only looks on the American soldiers as a guarantee that any attack on them would trigger a nuclear reprisal from the United States, Nunn said, then there was no point in keeping very many there.

Using the defense image known as “coupling” to describe the involvement of the United States in Europe, Nunn said: “If NATO can fight a conventional war for 30 days, it will strengthen deterrence and be powerfully coupling for the United States. But if we feel that our forces in Europe are only serving as a tripwire to link us to the big bell of U.S. strategic nuclear forces, that situation is decoupling.”

But, although there is a fear that any slackening of European defense will drive American troops away, there is also a fear that any strengthening may do the same.

The French, although they want American missiles and troops to remain in Europe, have long advocated that the Europeans strengthen their own defense. To this end, the French have started moving closer to West Germany on some defense matters, creating a joint brigade and a joint council of defense.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has criticized these French-German moves, insisting that they weaken NATO. But the French believe she is also worried about something else.

“She is afraid that if we do too much on defense,” said a French official, “it will chase the United States away. We do not agree.”

-- On relations with the Soviet Union. Defense issues have been complicated by the popularity of Gorbachev throughout Europe and the seductiveness of his call for the abolition of dreaded nuclear weapons. It is hard for governments like that of West German Chancellor Kohl to buck this appeal.

On top of this, doubts have been raised about the usual assumption that Soviet and East Bloc conventional forces would overpower NATO conventional forces in any battle. Recent studies prepared for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and for the Western European Union, a seven-member alliance that focuses on security and defense questions, maintained that the technical superiority of NATO equipment and the obsolescence of Warsaw Pact equipment even the balance. Levin said that this kind of comparison made more sense than the usual “bean count” of soldiers and weapons.

Many European officials doubt the reliability of these reports, but it is still difficult for most of them to imagine Gorbachev, while dealing with so many internal economic problems, trying to mount any kind of invasion of Western Europe. With Gorbachev preaching peace, with Reagan embracing him, with European Communist parties in disarray, the thought of a direct Soviet threat is practically inconceivable nowadays.

Another Threat Possible

But another threat is possible, officials insist. A denuclearized Western Europe could be pressured to follow the will of a powerful Soviet Union even if no troops crossed any border.

“It’s not so much the threat of military invasion,” said the French official who deals with Soviet matters, “as it is the fact that the shadow of military might can make a difference.”

As Europeans ponder these issues, they also wonder whether they are really entering a new political era, one of changing, uncertain relationships. Pleas like the one from former French Premier Chaban-Delmas for “the construction of a new political and military architecture in the context of a renovated Atlantic Alliance” raise more questions than they answer.

What is ahead? A denuclearized Europe? A neutralized or eastward-looking West Germany? A Germany moving in different directions at the same time, toward both East Germany and France? A closer French association with NATO? An increasingly Gaullist France trying to create its own European entity? A Britain torn between a special relationship with the United States and its need to move closer to France and West Germany?

Europe is not sure about the answers to such questions. It is not even sure which are the most relevant. But it is suddenly in the mood to ask all of them all at once.