Europe's Superpower Problem

EUROPE'S SUPERPOWER. PROBLEM Ronald Steel N,ever do European leaders feel more lonely or neglected than during a superpower summit. A party to which they are never invited, a summit drives home to them their dependency on decisions made by others. The Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in December 1987 underscored this inescapable European dilemma. On the one hand Europeans were pleased that Americans and Russians were finally talking together in a civilized fashion after several years of mutual denunciations. The shrill antiSovietism of Reagan's first term made them more nervous than confident about U.S. leadership of the Atlantic Alliance. But the deal codified in Washington — where both sides agreed to scrap their medium-range land-based nuclear missiles— triggered alternate hopes and anxieties. While the Europeans welcomed the withdrawal of weapons that could destroy Europe if ever used, their pleasure was tempered by a concern that without such weapons the long-standing nuclear guarantee of the United States to Western Europe might be weakened. The double anxieties are nothing new in the Atlantic Alliance. From NATO's beginning nearly forty years ago Europeans have wobbled between fear that a trigger-happy United States might drag them into a nuclear war with Russia, and the opposite fear that Washington might one day abandon them. These apprehensions came to a head during the Reagan administration. The muscle-flexing mood of Reagan's first term, marked by evangelical denunciations of Moscow's "evil empire," and a considerable expansion of U.S. war-fighting potential, provoked Ronald Steel, professor of international relations at the University of Southern California , is the author of Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Pax Americana, and other works. 137 138 SAIS REVIEW accusations of "cowboy" leadership in Washington. Reagan's ruminations about a possible "limited" nuclear war confined to Europe, together with his dream of a space shield to insulate the United States from Soviet missiles, revived long-standing European anxieties about being a battleground for the superpowers. But Reagan's second term, when the anti-Soviet firebrand had suddenly , it seemed, become an apostle of peace, was no less disquieting for the Europeans, although for different reasons. At Reykjavik in December 1986 Reagan and Gorbachev speculated on ways to scrap their entire nuclear arsenals— a frightening prospect for Europeans who had come to believe that their security depended on nuclear deterrence. That nothing came of these speculations— in part because Gorbachev demanded that Reagan in return abandon his space defense program, the Strategic Defense Initiative — did not reduce their complaints that dangerous decisions were being made over their heads. The Reagan-Gorbachev meetings dramatized the fact that the superpowers have interests that transcend their hostility and may even transcend the bonds of their respective alliances. Washington and Moscow are linked not only by their conflicting goals but by their common problems . Both are frustrated in their aspirations to global leadership, both have less control over their alliances than they would like, and both are engaged in a military potlatch that is crippling their economies. Gorbachev's policies of perestroïka cannot succeed unless the military's voracious appetite is capped. Similarly, the United States must now sharply curb the military expenses that play a major part in dangerous U.S. budget deficits. The INF Accord The accord reached between the two leaders in Washington last December reflected their parallel interests and marked a striking breakthrough in the arms race. The superpowers agreed, for the first time, to eliminate an entire class of missiles. The Soviets pledged to dismantle all SS-20 missiles targeted on Western Europe (and also on Asia) in return for U.S. withdrawal of Pershing II missiles capable of hitting the Soviet Union from European bases. This agreement removed a cloud from Europe and thus was greeted by the general public with enthusiasm. But for defense elites it created a different cloud. To their minds the Pershing Hs, from the very beginning, served a double purpose. They were there not only to counter the Soviet SS-20s targeted on Western Europe but also to ensure that the United States would be drawn into any nuclear war in Europe from the very start. EUROPE...