EUROPE: FROM COMMON MARKET TO UNCOMMON CONFEDERATION

When President Bush visits Europe this month to attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meetings he will observe two opposing tendencies--Western Europe growing together, Eastern Europe moving apart.

These developments carry the seeds of potential disruption with the revival of some of Europe’s age-old disputes, but they also offer long-term opportunity to build a genuine European settlement.

Such a possibility would need to satisfy the security needs of the Western Alliance and the Soviet Union, and at the same time strengthen the nascent plural societies beginning to emerge in Eastern Europe. With both parts of divided Europe on the move, the current thaw in East-West relations will accelerate changes already taking place.

The future is unclear but it is not too soon to begin thinking about how those changes can be influenced to secure the best interests of all the people of Europe.

Allow me to outline the view of one non-official European. The creation of a single market in the countries of the 12 member states of the European Community by the end of 1992 is an event of the greatest economic significance. The intention is to establish a commercial policy on a continental scale. Myriad national regulations governing foodstuffs, automobiles, construction and other industries will be mutually recognized as valid by all member states; capital movements will be freed; public procurement policies will be made more open. By these and other decisions a more free market will be created. Many obstacles will still remain such as currency problems, taxes and excise duties which neither governments nor public opinion will be willing to solve by yielding national sovereignty. Nevertheless, the general direction toward unification is irreversible and by the end of 1992 several giant steps will have been taken.

Some Americans fear the creation of “fortress Europe”; I believe this to be inaccurate. Although there will be tensions, for example over agriculture, the community is not protectionist in origin or outlook. Hard bargaining and the knowledge that our joint interests are overriding will keep these problems in perspective, while the spread of protectionism will be held at bay as long as the world does not slide into recession and our systems can provide jobs in a period of rapid change.

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is altogether a different case. The supply side of these economies cannot meet a huge pent-up consumer demand. So far, perestroika shows few signs of the benefits that Mikhail S. Gorbachev looks for. He has a long row to hoe before the Soviet Union can consider itself a part of the world economy in any competitive sense.

There will be little time and few resources to devote to foreign adventures, and if Mr. Gorbachev can save money on defense without endangering Soviet security he will do so. His announced intention that within two years he will cut Soviet forces by 500,000, will withdraw 50,000 troops from Eastern Europe and will reduce the number of tanks in East Germany by 10,000 may mean that he has absorbed Walter Lippmann’s dictum that a wise foreign policy must be solvent; there must be a balance between military, economic and political commitments and a state’s effective power.

But this praiseworthy attempt at a more realistic balance carries its own dangers. We have already seen that the relaxation of Moscow’s centralized grip over its republics has led to instability in Latvia and Georgia, while the tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan could easily be repeated on a larger scale between the states of Eastern Europe themselves, where the East-West thaw is uncovering ancient animosities frozen for 40 years.

Long disputed borders are emerging as a source of friction. So are complaints by minority groups about their treatment. Claims by Eastern European countries to annexed territories are being revived. These grievances, silently nursed for decades, are now reinforced by a thirst for basic human rights and democratic practice. Together they form a potentially explosive compound.

All of these questions, inseparably bound up with the Soviet Union’s estimate of its own security needs, will come to the fore in the next few years--and looming over all will be the future of the two Germanys.

Western Europe exorcised ancient Franco-German hostility with the creation of the European Community, to which West Germany anchored itself by freely taken decision. Now it is the turn of Eastern Europe to discover its own path forward from outdated nationalism and the West should stand ready to assist.

Henry A. Kissinger has challenged us (Opinion, April 16) to delineate a concept for Europe’s future. In response I offer mine: Our goal should be the creation of a Grand European Confederation open to any country in East and West Europe, but not including the Soviet Union. Its core structure might initially be an agreement between the European Community and those other countries--whether members of the Soviet Bloc or not--that wished to join and would fulfill defined conditions about human rights and a minimum level of democratic practice.

The confederation should start work in such areas as the provision of common public services, the protection of the environment, the freer movement of workers and, as confidence grows, move to other issues.

Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact would continue to exist, with no alteration in the present status of the two Germanys, although I would expect as the years went by differences would lessen and the military pacts would become less important. Such a concept would need frank, prolonged and detailed discussion with the Soviet Union, in which the United States would have an essential role. Nothing would be possible until the Soviet Union was reassured about its own security, while the presence of the United States is essential--initially to safeguard Western Europe, and then as time passes, as a guarantor of the European confederation’s peaceful intent.

The signs are that the forthcoming NATO summit will spend much of its time discussing the modernization of nuclear weapons, a subject of wide disagreement.

Is it too much to hope that somewhere on the agenda a space might be found to discuss ideas on which a positive and constructive concept for a new Europe might be founded?