Europe Feels No Urgency on Conventional Defense

The growing discontent in the U.S. Congress over Western Europe’s recalcitrance on defense matters is paralleled by a growing unease on this side of the Atlantic. Can things so deteriorate that the United States will withdraw its troops from Europe? This idea has been kicking around persistently in North Atlantic Treaty Organization capitals.

Meanwhile, NATO nations have spent a year debating “burden-sharing,” a notion so dear to many politicians in Washington. Evidence up to now suggests that European governments are reluctant to increase their spending for defense. William Howard Taft IV, the U.S. deputy secretary of defense, is touring European and Far East capitals to press the U.S. point of view on this delicate issue. He will bring back to Washington friendly words of understanding. But no more.

Surprising as it may seem, current defense worries among Western Europeans are not mainly a response to Washington irritation or threats. Europeans are concerned about what is happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain and its possible consequences.

Debate on the conventional defense of Europe has been pursued with no real sense of urgency. The withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons will take years. The conventional forces imbalance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact will also take years to be corrected. And no sane person on this continent really believes that the Warsaw Pact will attack Western Europe, although nobody can rule out some form of blackmail like another Berlin crisis.

The current worries are of a different kind. The strikes in Poland now ending might reoccur and degenerate in some form of upheaval, when Eastern Bloc discontent will explode again. Unrest could quickly spread to Hungary and other communist states. Freedom is contagious. If the Soviet army intervenes, nobody can predict what will happen, even inside the Soviet Union.

Suddenly a wholly new, very unstable situation could upset the politico-military stability that has prevailed in Europe for the last decade. Hence burden-sharing does not seem the urgent issue, and the consultations among European capitals on how the Western countries could assume a larger share of their own defense after the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear weapons have made little progress.

Paris and Bonn have publicized recent joint maneuvers by a Franco-German brigade in Central Europe. French President Francois Mitterrand has invited Italy and Spain to join the venture, and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has talked about the possibility of a unified European army.

The problem is that the Franco-German initiative is not taken seriously anywhere, except perhaps by a few optimists in Paris and Bonn. Rome’s reaction has been wholly negative. Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti relies more on the reduction of the two blocs’ forces than on building up new military structures.

The “European army” lacks European advocates. Prospects of larger spending on defense, particularly on conventional defense, are not more promising. The continental NATO allies are reluctant even to raise the issue in their parliaments. The plain truth is that people do not feel--or rather have not felt until the recent Polish events--an imminent danger, nor the necessity of facing it. The traditional argument that the Warsaw Pact’s conventional forces are largely superior to NATO’s has little impact on public opinion. Polls in several European countries reveal that more than 50% of the people--in some instances by a big majority--believe that Mikhail S. Gorbachev wants peace more than Ronald Reagan. So what if the East Bloc is militarily stronger?

From discussions over the last three months with leaders in a number of Western European capitals, I am convinced there is no chance that Europe’s defense budgets will be increased significantly in the foreseeble future (with the exception, perhaps, of Great Britain). Hopes rely heavily on the final outcome of negotiations with the Warsaw Pact countries to obtain an asymmetric reduction of their forces. This difficult game might, in the end, defuse the problem of European defense and make unnecessary a consistent increase of spending in conventional forces. Much depends on the success of Gorbachev’s new policies.

Behind the feeling of anxiety now detectable in European public opinion about the situation in Poland and Eastern countries is a fear that if the Eastern communist governments lose control, the Soviets might decide to intervene militarily. We could have again, on our continent, “darkness at noon.” If the situation deteriorates and the Soviet leadership does not react, then Gorbachev’s powerful opponents who grasp the real dimension of the game may seize the opportunity to topple him. Unrest and destabilization in the Soviet Union would suddenly undermine the future for Western Europe.

For now, however, European nations do not want to raise the risks of instability by increasing their defense expenditures. I understand their recalcitrance; while no one roots for new deaths and new uprisings behind the Iron Curtain, there is far less danger in letting U.S. senators continue to grumble.