LETTER TO CHARLES BRIGGS FROM DONALD E. NUECHTERLEIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01370R000200320010-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 3, 2008
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: September 20, 1984
• Content Type: LETTER

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United States Federal Executive Institute
Office of 1301 Emmet Street
Charlottesville, Virginia 22901-2899
Personnel Management 804-296-0181 (FTS 938-1295)
September 20, 1984
In Reply Refer To:
LEGISLATIVE LIAISON
Mr. Charles Briggs
Director, Office of
Legislative Liaison
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505
8
3~
A belated warm thank-you for the excellent program that you and your
colleacrues nut on for my foreign policy seminar on August 24. STAT
and did excellent jobs of discussing the Agency's functions SLAT
and products, and you were superb in giving us insights into the Agency's
relations with Congress during this crucial period when the country is
deciding the intensity of the U.S. national interests in Central America.
I am also indebted to and your Training Staff for excellent STAT
logistics and planning. Our Federal officials came away with a real
appreciation of the Agency's functions and caliber of personnel.
You may be interested in the enclosed article of mine that was published
recently in The World Today (Chatham House, London) entitled: "The
Widening Atlantic: NATO at Another Crossroads." A longer version will
appear in the September issue of the Foriegn Service Journal (which I don't
have yet), but this will give you the thrust of my view on U.S.-European
relations in the coming years.
Donald E. Nuechterlein
Professor of International Affairs
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CON 132-10-1
February 1984
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ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
TE
WORLD
TODAY
EDITOR: CHRISTOPHER CVIIC
EDITORIAL SECRETARY: LUCY SETON-WATSON
August-September 1984 Vol. 40 Nos. 8-9
The widening Atlantic:
Nato at another crossroads
DONALD NUECHTERLEIN
FOR those who live in free societies, George Orwell's gloomy predictions about
the nature of existence in 1984 have proved to be unfounded. When he wrote
in the early post-1945 period, he had good reason to be pessimistic: Europe lay
in ruins, Britain was the only democracy to survive Hitler's massive onslaught
on western civilisation, and the political mood in western Europe bordered on
desperation. In Italy and France, Communist parties came close to achieving
dominant power through the electoral process and general strikes; Britain,
Orwell believed, would eventually succumb to an authoritarian mode of
government led by the far left of the British Labour Party.
Three and a half decades later none of this has occurred, and western
The author is Professor of International Affairs at the Federal Executive Institute in Char-
lottesville, Virginia. He has published several books on American foreign policy. His forthcom-
ing book, America Overcommitted. US National Interests in the 1980s, is to be published by
the University Press of Kentucky. Professor Nuechterlein contributed an article on convergence
and divergence in the North Atlantic relationship to the May 1983 issue of The World Today.
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322 THE WORLD TODAY August-September 1984
Europe's democracies are probably stronger than at any time in the twentieth
century. The Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain have
renounced fascism in favour of parliamentary democracy, and no nation in
western Europe has seriously contemplated turning over political power to an
indigenous Communisj party. All of them have become more prosperous
economically than at any time in their history. Why, then, are Europeans
pessimistic about the future?
At root, Europe's unease and foreboding result from a perception that
people and governments are not in charge of their destiny and that a major war
will occur and destroy the gains made since 1945. This is a relatively new
phenomenon. During the 1950s and 1960s, Europeans believed there was
little likelihood that war would occur because the United States held a clear
superiority of power-especially in the field of nuclear weapons-and it was
therefore assumed that the Soviet leadership would not risk its own destruction
by launching an attack westward. Even in the 1970s when there was nuclear
parity between the Soviet Union and the United States, Europeans did not fear
war because the superpowers had concluded a strategic arms limitation agree-
ment and were launching an era of detente in their political and economic rela-
tions. Movement towards detente between the superpowers had begun in the
late 1960s and seemed to be firmly established in the Helsinki accords of 1975.
This feeling of confidence about the future came to an abrupt halt in 1979,
however. Five years later we find deep concern on both sides of the Atlantic
about the possibility of war and the use of nuclear weapons.
There are three reasons, I believe, for the sharp change of mood since
1979. First, the Iranian crisis led the European and American governments to
draw different conclusions about the Soviet threat to the,Persian Gulf area,
and what should be done about it. Second, Soviet deployment of theatre
(intermediate-range) nuclear missiles (SS-20s) aimed at west European cities
caused European governments to worry about nuclear intimidation by the
Kremlin. They therefore asked a sceptical United States to build and thereafter
deploy similar weapons in western Europe.' Third, American political leader-
ship was criticised in western Europe for being either inept in dealing with the
superpower relationship (during the Carter Administration) or too bellicose
and thus dangerous in managing European security (during Ronald Reagan's
tenure). Let us examine these factors.
The fall of the Shah of Iran in January 1979 had a profound impact on
the regional power balance in the Middle East and South-West Asia. Some
Europeans and Americans thought the Carter Administration could have
prevented the collapse of the pro-western government there and its replace-
ment by a hostile Islamic regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. Others
believed that even if the Shah were ousted, there remained a good possibility
that a moderate government might emerge that would be nationalistic but not
anti-western. The central issue, however, was the policy of the United States
government after the Khomeini regime accepted responsibility for imprison-
s For background, see David S. Yost, 'START, INF and European Security', The World
Today, November 1983.
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ing 52 American Embassy personnel in November 1979, and after the Soviet
Union sent its forces into Afghanistan a few weeks later to put down a re-
calcitrant Marxist government.
Europeans and Americans drew different conclusions from these events.
European governments, by and large, urged the Carter Administration to
show restraint in dealing with Iran and the Soviet Union. From a European
perspective, the taking of American hostages by a revolutionary government
in Iran was unfortunate, but no cause for war or other military action. The in-
vasion of Afghanistan could be understood, many Europeans said, as a Soviet
attempt to deal with an unstable country on the Soviet Union's doorstep and
constituting a security threat to 50-60 million Soviet Moslems living across the
border. Political and some economic pressure, not a military buildup in the
Indian Ocean, was the way many European political leaders thought Carter
should respond to the Soviet military move into Afghanistan.
President Carter ruled out a military response to the Iranian seizure of
American diplomats and adopted severe economic and political sanctions
against the Khomeini regime. He also imposed an embargo on grain sales to
the Soviet Union to show displeasure over the invasion of Afghanistan. Euro-
peans were reluctant to adopt economic sanctions because of their need for
Iranian oil and exports to Iran. They were also unwilling, particularly the
government in Bonn, to agree to trade sanctions against the Soviet Union and
eastern Europe; but they went along with political gestures such as withdrawal
from the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. President Carter, under increasing
pressure at home to exhibit toughness instead of prayers on behalf of the
hostages and military power instead of political posturing in response to the
Soviet buildup in Afghanistan, decided on a military rescue mission in Iran
and a naval show of strength in the Indian Ocean. The ill-fated rescue mission
in April 1980 caused great unease in Europe because it demonstrated that Mr
Carter had become desperate for an end to the hostage crisis and might
therefore use force against Iran.
The expansion of American military power in the Indian Ocean was not
criticised by European governments, but neither was there much inclination to
identify with growing American concern for the deteriorating political situa-
tion in South-West Asia, for example, by sending European naval and air units
there. Indeed, President Carter's declaration in January 1980, in his State of
the Union Message to Congress, that the Persian Gulf area was a 'vital interest'
of the United States and would be defended by American forces if necessary,
caused great unease in European capitals because it raised the prospect of war
in the Middle East and the likely interruption 'of Europe's vital oil supply.
American official opinion, on the other hand, was moving steadily in the
direction of tougher measures, including military moves, to deal with the
Iranian government and warn the Soviet Union not to be tempted to use
force in the Persian Gulf region. European fears were heightened in the
summer of 1980 when Ronald Reagan became the Republican nominee for
President and promised to rebuild American prestige around the world after
what he described as its ruinous decline during the 1970s.
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324 THE WORLD TODAY August-September 1984
The second factor which changed the generally optimistic mood of Euro-
peans about their security situation emerged in 1981-2 when the time ap-
proached to implement a 1979 decision of Nato to deploy theatre nuclear
weapons. This triggered a massive and sometimes a violent response from
European 'peace' groups and great unease among a majority of the people. It
is useful to recall that the proposal to match the Soviet SS-20 deployment with
a Nato Euromissile was initiated by European leaders (specifically West Ger-
man Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt) out of concern that an American President
could not realistically be expected to counter a Soviet missile threat to Euro-
pean cities with strategic weapons launched from the United States. Although
American military planners were convinced that a Soviet nuclear attack on
western Europe would be met with a submarine-launched nuclear retaliation
on Soviet territory-thus maintaining nuclear deterrence-President Carter
agreed to build Pershing II mobile missiles for deployment in West Germany
and to install ground-launched cruise missiles in Britain, Italy, the
Netherlands, Belgium as well as West Germany. European and American
leaders agreed that actual deployment of these theatre nuclear weapons would
depend on the outcome of further talks between the United States and the
Soviet Union to limit, and perhaps reduce, the number and types of nuclear
weapons each side would build in the 1980s. There was an assumption that the
SALT II treaty, negotiated by the Carter Administration, would be ratified by
the American Senate.
When it became clear to Europeans in 1981-2 that a new arms limitation
agreement between the superpowers was unlikely to be achieved and that the
United States would go ahead with deployment of Pershing II and cruise
missiles, the reality of the 1979 Nato decision burst upon Europeans like a
thunderstorm. Instead of feeling more secure in the knowledge that the
deployment of Euromissiles would diminish Moscow's ability to intimidate
their governments with the SS-20, the projected deployment of Pershing and
cruise missiles in the autumn of 1983 brought forth protests from people in all
European countries except France (which has its own nuclear deterrent and
decided not to use American missiles). The massive anti-nuclear movements
in Germany, Britain and Holland were aided by skilful Soviet propaganda
which painted Soviet missiles as benign self-defence weapons, while depicting
similar American weapons as war-like and dangerous for European security.
Left-wing and some moderate opinion in Europe viewed the United States,
not the Soviet Union, as the principal threat to peace because of its intention to
implement the 1979 decision to match Soviet deployments. The anti-nuclear
movement in West Germany succeeded in March 1983 in electing a small
block of representatives (the Green Party) to the Bundestag, and by the end of
the year the German Social Democratic Party had decided to shift its pro-
defence policy and adopt an anti-nuclear statement as part of its platform.
Similarly in Britain, the peace movement caused the Labour Party to change
course and adopt an anti-nuclear programme-directed not only against
American nuclear forces in Britain but also against Britain's independent
nuclear deterrent.
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Reaction in the United States to these events was one of bewilderment.
Although a nuclear-freeze movement (not abandonment of nuclear weapons)
had gained considerable support in 1982-3 and resulted in Bills being con-
sidered in Congress, there was little public support for an abandonment of the
nuclear deterrent policy and the weapons to support it. Even American Roman
Catholic Bishops, who came close to calling for the scrapping of nuclear
weapons in a pastoral letter in 1983, received little public support for their
view. In American conservative and moderate circles, however, the impact of
the anti-nuclear movement in Europe had an unsettling effect.
On the one hand, Reagan Administration policymakers seemed dismayed
that the United States was being painted by Europeans as the villain threaten-
ing their homeland with destruction, while they saw the United States as
reducing the likelihood of war because the Euromissiles would improve Nato's
deterrent capability. Many American political leaders were astonished in
1983 to find the Soviet Union making inroads into the moderate European
thinking and nudging it toward neutralism and pacifism. Belated efforts by
Washington to show flexibility on the number of Pershings and cruise missiles
it might be prepared to deploy, in exchange for Soviet concessions on the
number bf SS-20s deployed, lowered the temperature of public debate only
marginally in Europe. That debate also strengthened the American conserva-
tives' belief that western Europe was `going soft' and was no longer interested
to oppose the Soviet threat. Even moderate American opinion, especially west
of the eastern states, wondered whether it was worthwhile to keep 350,000
American servicemen and their equipment in Europe if the Europeans pre-
ferred. to accommodate to Soviet power.
The third factor-negative European views of American political leader-
ship-was already apparent in the late 1960s and 1970s; but it became a
serious political issue after the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in
November 1980. Whereas Americans voted in that election for stronger
leadership in foreign policy than that exhibited by President Carter, Euro-
peans were astonished that a man who had never served in Washington and
held what they believed to be extreme views would now exercise the power of
life and death over them. The image of Reagan as a `trigger-happy Hollywood
cowboy' was carefully nurtured by Soviet propaganda, and his strong speeches
to conservative political groups were taken as policy statements about
American government intentions. Little was reported in Europe about his
eight years as Governor of California, the largest state in the union, during
which he displayed remarkable skills for compromise and seeing the reality of
situations-despite his conservative rhetoric. Many thoughtful Europeans
failed to recognise that the United States had neglected the modernisation of
its defence forces during the 1970s and that Ronald Reagan's election signalled
a public recognition that national security depended on a strong and confident
United States. This is not to say that many Americans, like Europeans, were
not surprised by some of the strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist speeches
made by Reagan and some of his key lieutenants; but Americans more than
Europeans recognised the distinction between the President's rhetoric and his
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326 THE WORLD TODAY August-September 1984
actions. For example, during the crisis in Poland, where the Soviet Union felt
its security was threatened, Reagan did not press this issue to the point where
revolution might have broken out and spilled into other east European countries.
The real problem in Atlantic relations today is the correct European assess-
ment that President Reagan is not interested in detente with the Soviet Union
on the basis of conditions that prevailed in the 1970s. There may be a fun-
damental divergence in American and European views on this issue, and if not
resolved soon this erosion of consensus in basic Allied interests could result in a
withering of the North Atlantic alliance. Stated bluntly, a majority of the
American people are not willing to accept a military and political accommoda-
tion with the Soviet Union if this means Moscow has a free hand to support
revolutions throughout the world and to use political intimidation and trade
to undermine the resolve of the west to maintain a strong military alliance.
Conversely, a new generation of Europeans has emerged since the Second
World War that is simply not prepared to limit its postwar economic and social
gains either by spending more on defence or by risking Soviet displeasure over
Nato's policies. American opinion across the board has hardened since 1979 in
its view of the Soviet Union while European opinion has tended towards ac-
commodation with the Soviet Union-at least on maintaining trade and
cultural ties.
Disagreements over American policy towards Iran, the Soviet Union's inva-
sion of Afghanistan and the deployment of Euromissiles are, therefore, not the
main issues in the Nato relationship; the fundamental issue is whether to con-
front the Soviet Union over its arms buildup and aggressive behaviour or,
instead, accommodate Soviet superiority in military power and influence in
Europe. Nato very likely would have faced this problem today even if Jimmy
Carter had been re-elected American President, because the American policy
during the last year of his Administration was moving towards a large
American defence buildup and a much tougher policy towards the Soviet
Union. It should be remembered that Carter had an even more ambitious pro-
gramme than Reagan for building and deploying the huge MX missile as a
means of matching Soviet gains in land-based inter-continental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs). The central problem in the transatlantic relationship, then,
is not the specific President who occupies the White House but the growing
divergence in American and European public attitudes about how to deal with
the Soviet Union and maintain the security and freedom of western Europe.
The outlook for the Atlantic alliance is, therefore, not as favourable as it was
five years ago. Indicative of the trend was a proposal made in the American
Congress by Senator Sam Nunn in June to cut American troop strengths in
Europe if the European governments do not provide more conventional arms
for Nato defences. Although defeated, the measure won wide support among
American lawmakers. Unless European and American leaders are able to
reduce the growing divergence in public attitudes on Nato defence policy,
1985 may present the alliance with a crisis that could shatter 40 years of peace,
prosperity and confidence in the future.
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