A Cold Shoulder

The peremptory reception the most senior American diplomatic and defense officials gave to the foreign and defense ministers of West Germany may have served to communicate the irritation of the Bush Administration, but it is by no means clear that it served to strengthen the North Atlantic Alliance.

With the chilly reception that they provided, the Americans seemed intent on communicating two decisions: that there will be no further concessions on the complex issue of short-range nuclear weapons based in Europe, and there will be no negotiations with the Soviet Union on the reduction of these battlefield-nuclear weapons until after negotiations on the reduction of conventional and chemical weapons in Europe are completed. The fact is, however, that it is not for Washington to make these decisions. It is for NATO. And NATO will be doing just that at the summit scheduled for the end of May.

In press briefings by American officials following the meetings with the visiting West German officials, their trip was dismissed as an extension of German domestic politics, and the impression was left that the American leaders were annoyed, if not angered, to be mixed up in such things. That response fails to recognize that NATO is an alliance of democracies, and that domestic politics are the essence of democracies. The response of Chancellor Helmut Kohl to German public opinion is one of the complex realities of NATO.

Kohl is struggling to preserve a fragile coalition between his Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats of Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. In response to a rising tide of public opinion, Kohl has changed his own position on the battlefield-nuclear weapons and let Genscher prevail with his impulses to accelerate diplomatic openings to the Soviet Union.

The Americans were not pleased. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney felt he had gone far enough in meeting Kohl’s political problem by agreeing last week at the NATO meeting of defense ministers to postpone the modernization of the Lance short-range nuclear missile until after the German elections. Secretary of State James A. Baker III apparently thought the United States had made clear to Bonn that an acceleration of the battlefield-nuclear weapons negotiations with Moscow was out of the question.

The trouble with such a response is that the time has long since passed when the United States can dictate NATO policy. So it would have been better to welcome the sudden visit of Genscher and Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg, to have listened respectfully, to have reminded them of American policy--to the extent that policy is in place--and to plan together for the further consultation that will come with all of the allies commencing on May 29. Not just the German public is pressing for an acceleration of disarmament talks.