The transatlantic crisis

Vincent Ryder

President Carter is in trouble within the Atlantic alliance over his foreign policy. Of course he is. Why should he be different from his predecessors? Things will almost certainly be patched up over the next few weeks. Then later this year, or next year, we Shall have another transatlantic crisis. It is not the periodic bouts of mutual exasperation that matter — an alliance is not a love Match — but the fact that the partners seem to. understand each other less and less as time goes on.

At one level, the script of this transatlantic soap opera has not changed much s,Ince Eisenhower's days in the White 1-1,cuse. The names change but the simplistic Plot does not. There is a muddle over some PchoY. In Washington and European capitals there are earnest comings and goings, strained meetings between allied ministers and private bitching about each other's c°InPetence. 'Split looms' signals are ho.isted to the headlines. The President's ability to handle anything more comPlicated than putting on his shoes is put in doubt. Even the old snide jokes are recycled. (Martian to Eisenhower: 'Take me to Your leader.' First Republican: 'Carter is a c',‘Ie-term President.' Second Republican: term?)

but when is he going to start his termr)

„ Then there is an allied summit meeting, like the one being arranged for Washington nbext month. Everybody, or nearly every2dY, agreed that things have been "raightened out and that improved Methods of consultation will ensure that it does not happen again. And then it does.

Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford were all accused at some time or other of allowing relations with Europe to fall into disarray. Each had his own com plaints about all, or some, European leaders. There is nothing surprising about it. Splits would have loomed at intervals even without such political distortions as Vietnam and Watergate, Suez and Skybolt.

Alliances, however necessary, are clumsy things. They do not grow old gracefully.

Member countries change character as the years go by. Their interests do not converge to make them think, speak and act as one. Nor, in a free alliance, should they.

It is, of course, preferable not to have more than one good row going on at any one time. In the past year Mr Carter has posed challenges to Bonn on four of Germany's principal interests: relations with the Soviet Union on human rights; economic policy; nuclear exports and the neutron bomb. The first three sprang from basic commitments Mr Carter took with him to the White House. The neutron bomb was an idea that became a dispute because Mr Carter was not paying attention.

The motives behind the first three were respectable enough; the execution has been less so. It was a tactical error to make an open challenge to the Soviet leadership on specific human rights issues, though the fact that it produced the opposite effect to that intended (as Bonn had feared) reflects more discredit on the Kremlin than on the White House. It is all very well to nag Bonn to take economic risks to help the world out of recession — everybody else does — but it lacks weight when the President cannot nag Congress into accepting his own economic plans.

There are very real risks in the worldwide spread of nuclear technology. British ministers had been bleating about it for years. Nobody took any notice. Mr Carter decided to shake things up a bit, by drastic proposals that would knock holes in European energy plans and in German nuclear exports. Perhaps he was deliberately provocative. Perhaps he really had not thought out the effect on Europe. Whatever the case, he was slowed down by European opposition. Three initiatives and three slow-downs. It a all looked rather unimpressive, and there I was no shortage of pundits in Europe to point it out.

Meanwhile, less publicly, European governments dithered for months about the neutron bomb. They knew all about it last year. President Carter, instead of quietly adding it to the nuclear arsenal already in Europe — how many European politicians know what is in that stockpile? — tried to make its deployment a joint decision. His mistake was in feeding the idea through the alliance's military liaison network, and failing to monitor it when it started to build up into a political issue. Bonn and London fiddled about — anything to avoid taking a lead — and by the time they had made up their minds Mr Carter had changed his. So Europe and America are back to accusing each other of blundering and indecision, which is more or less where we find them at the end of each episode of the transatlantic soap opera.

There is no point in complaining that rows keep breaking out — they will for as long as the alliance lasts — and there is no reason to suppose that the next one, or the one after that, will be the death knell. The real danger to the alliance is more insidious and is only fitfully illuminated by the open disputes.

It is that Europe and America seem to be steadily losing their understanding of each other's political processes and compulsions, or losing their willingness to take account of them. The political systems on each side of the Atlantic may look pretty much as they did a decade ago but both have actually changed character, and neither side is making much allowance for it. The Americans do not recognise the extent to which, among other things, the partial development of the European Community has created new sensitivities without, as yet, creating the power structure that would convert them into policies. If they did, they would not Venture into such spectacular misreadings of the European scene as Dr Kissinger's unlamented 'Year of Europe' and President Carter's assumption that getting agreement on the neutron bomb was a routine exercise in medium-level consultation.

The European allies still operate on' the premise — which they no longer really believe — that the incumbent in the White House is the creator of American policy, and by extension the man preeminently

responsible for the policies of the alliance. It was true some years ago. Now it is just a European excuse for ducking out of hard decisions, like the neutron bomb. We are a long way from Good King Ike's golden days. American power in the world has, relatively, diminished. American power in America has diminished markedly. The President, any president, reigns but no longer rules. Vietnam and Watergate meant power had to be shared with the barons.

There is now no clear focus of political authority on either side of the Atlantic. The reasons are deeper than any individual leader's shortcomings and they are likely to be with us for some years yet. It is a situation that makes the alliance more necessary, rather than less, while making it harder to sustain its effectiveness. The real problems of operating the alliance are complicated and messy and dealing with them is not half so much fun as pitching abuse at Jimmy Carter. But they are manageable, given the political willingness to deal with things as they are and not as they used to be, and they are dangerous only to the extent that leaders on either side of the Atlantic fail to recognise that a West afflicted by internal political uncertainties needs all the protection the alliance can give it.