THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE
DR. ADENAUER has triumphed; Mr. Dulles's cri de coeur has been answered, and the Western alliance has in one sense been greatly fortified by the complete victory of the Christian Democrats in West Germany's federal elections. But in what sense ? It is an unqualified good that West Germany should have a government that is both strong and democratic. It is, in terms of East-West politics at least, equally good that the economy of West Germany is vigorous, virile and expanding. And it is good that this strong govern- ment and expanding economy should be led by a man who believes that West Germany belongs to the Western alliance, who shares with that alliance the belief that the way to peace is through collective defence, and who does not believe that the way to German unification is through aggression.
The next stage may also be good, but it cannot be so simple. Dr. Adenauer's return to power has two significances for his western neighbours and his transatlantic friends. It means, first, that the extremists in German politics have been disowned by the German electorate. But it also means that the growing strength and prestige, the restrained but resolute policies against the East, the statesmanlike but successful bargaining with the West that are the Chancellor's personal achievements for post-Potsdam Germany have been confirmed by the electorate. If extremist nationalism has been defeated, moderate nationalism has achieved a resounding victory. Economically and politically, West Germany is now the strongest country in continental free Europe. In these con- ditions, she cannot for long be content with the status of a second rate power even if, which is scarcely the case, western security could afford such a state of affairs or Washington would permit it.
Short, then, of a Russian demarche so thorough that it dispelled the prevailing international tension, broke the hostile ranks of East and West in Europe, and resolved the problem of German unification in some way that left everybody safe, West Germany must soon be admitted as a full partner in the Western alliance. She must be given a sovereignty equal to that of her neighbours, and must start to rearm. If she is not permitted to do so within the Western house, sooner or later she will do so outside its walls.. Dr. Adenauer would be the last man to choose such a course; it leads diametrically away from the place for Germany in .Western Europe which he has sought, worked for and nearly found during the last four years. But he would also be the first man to see, in the interests of Europe as much as Germany, that there is no place in the present scheme of world affairs for an unattached, unarmed state lying between the might of the Red Army in East Berlin and the eastern frontiers of France.
Thus unless the Russians call a very different tune at Lugano to the one they have keen calling in Pankow, the rearmament of West Germany cannot be delayed indefinitely. Indeed, whatever the West Germans may do about it, the Americans are not likely to remain inactive much longer. And whatever the Americans may do about it, the fact is that to rearm West Germany is the only sensible way of proceeding. Nothing has yet happened since the death of Stalin to alter the hypothesis on which NATO was built, that the stronger the West- is the more likely are the Russians to take Western policies seriously. Furthermore, Russia has said clearly and loudly that the rearmament of West Germany is the develop- ment in the West by which it would be most impressed, which it is prepared to do most to avoid, and which it fears even more, perhaps, than the American atomic stockpile.
This is the most powerful of many powerful arguments in favour of West German rearmament. But it is also one among Many powerful reasons for rearming Germany under safeguatds. The rearmament of Germany will help to keep the peace only to the extent that it does not itself constitute a new threat to the peace. A German " defence force " could threaten the peace in a number of ways. It could be used to bring about the unity of the two halves of Germany, whose compelling mutual attraction is now only contained by the attachment of one half to Russia through the Red Army, and the attach- ment of the other to the West, at present mainly through the person of Dr. Adenauer. It could be used, if the two halves should by some chance be united by negotiation, to recover the lost territories beyond the Oder-Neisse. It could be used to dominate France and to blackmail America; and the fact that, 'Under a Chancellor who is now seventy seven years old, it would not be so used is no security for the future. All these possibilities exist, and they do not cease to exist even though they are discussed most often by neutralists and fellow travellers.
So the wheel has completed its circle. The sequence that was started by Mr. Acheson when he suggested three years ago that Germany should take her place in NATO, that was given a new direction by M. Schuman's conception of a European Defence Community, that was suspended by the fears of the French Assembly and the preoccupations of successive French cabinets, has now, by the re-election of Dr. Adenauer's party. by an absolute majority, been brought to its logical conclusion. Some system; which guarantees that the armed strength of West Germany can be used, but used only for peace, must be adopted by the Western alliance. If this was true when the European Army was first conceived, when the strength of West Germany was no more than a promise and the weakness of France was little more than a fear, it is inescapably true in the Autumn of 1953. For now the strength of Germany and the weakness of France are facts. facts which are heavily underlined by the fall of De Gasped in Italy and the uncertain future of America's physical commitments in Europe.
• Once again it is Dr. Adenauer who has seen all this most clearly. During the recent elections it was the Chancellor, more cogently than his political opponents, who isolated and pointed an answer to Russia's justifiable fears of a rearmed Germany. He suggested that the rearmament of West Germany within a tight regional control of the kind evolved under the European Defence Community is the only solid foundation for a security guarantee to Russia. For he knows that under any other circumstances Germany would one day be in a position to rearm on her own account, outside any control that would effectively be exercised by East or West. From this point, Dr. Adenauer has argued, the Defence Community, once it was firmly underwritten by the NATO, could be " brought into a treaty relationship " with the regional alliances of the Eastern bloc beneath a " superstruc- ture " to be developed in the United Nations: This superstructure, he hinted, might eventually be used to achieve not merely a balance in Europe, but a reduction in the armed strengths of East and West.
It may be argued' that, given the relative strength of Germany and her continental neighbours, the EDC (that is, a six-power, purely continental organisation, loosely affiliated to the twelve power North Atlantic Tteaty Organisation) would in fact operate so that Germany and not the other five powers was in effective control. But if this is true, the answer is not to reject the principle because it does not work, but to evolve a new application of the principle, perhaps by changing the nature of NATO itself, which can be made to work.
It may also be argued that, with French politics in their present critical state, all talk of the EDC or any other arrange- ment which would require the active connivance of France in the rearmament of Germany is so much pie-in-the-sky. This problem must in the last resort be solved by France and America. Dr. Adenauer can help, perhaps, by using his greater political strength to meet Paris part of the way on the outstand- ing issues. Britain can help by exploring further ways, perhaps even other ways and other concepts, which would produce the same result in terms of controlling Germany's armed contingents while involving Britain more intimately in that control. But Britain's and Germany's most important contribution is to say and go on saying, to France and to America, that there is no visible alternative to the general idea incorporated in the European Army treaty. France must realise that the rearmament of West Germany is inevitable. America must realise that to rearm Germany without a control over her armaments would be as wicked as it was wild.
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