In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

AFTER THE INF TREATY: KEEPING AMERICA IN EUROPE Robert E. Hunter JLn recent years U.S. relations with Western Europe have been far from topping the list ofAmerican preoccupations and priorities. Perhaps success in providing for European security has bred indifference. Perhaps other matters — from terrorism to trade deficits — have crowded out concerns centered on the Atlantic Alliance. This period of American neglect is about to end, however. During the next decade sorting out what the United States wants and is prepared to do in Europe will necessarily rank high on the agenda of the administration that comes to power in 1989. Without skilled statesmanship, transatlantic problems will pose serious difficulties for the United States. These predictions stem from two major trends that are coming together to challenge confidence in the future of the Alliance. In Western Europe there has been nearly a decade of doubt concerning U.S. reliability . More important, a long-standing point of consensus in the United States is under strain: the U.S. commitment to be actively engaged as a fully fledged European power. Reykjavik Shock, Euromissile Ploy The watershed moment for questioning the future of the Alliance was the October 1986 superpower summit at Reykjavik, Iceland. The summit was remarkable not just because the U.S. president and his key advisers seemed ill-prepared to deal with complex subjects, but also Robert E. Hunter is director of European studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D. C. In 1977-79, he was director of West European affairs at the National Security Council. 151 152 SAIS REVIEW because Reagan was willing to take steps to reshape basic elements of the nuclear relationship between the superpowers. On the positive side, this led to a U.S. -Soviet agreement for the wholesale restructuring of the arms control agenda. That agreement now entails pursuit of a 30-50 percent cut in intercontinental-range nuclear weapons instead ofefforts only to slow the escalation of the arms race. In addition, no president could have been willing to trade away such quantities of nuclear weapons, spanning such a wide range of categories, unless he had made at least three assumptions: that the U.S.-Soviet nuclear relationship is basically stable; that the risks of a U.S. -Soviet nuclear war have declined sharply; and that the value of these weapons in diplomacy is less than it was even a few years ago. On the negative side, however, President Reagan was willing to negotiate away those very weapons on which the U.S. commitment to West European security has seemed to rest: ballistic missiles, at the very least, and all nuclear weapons at the very most. When he agreed with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev that long-range intermediate-range nuclear forces (LRINF) should be reduced not to 100 warheads on each side— the level agreed to beforehand by the Western allies — but to zero, he committed a pardonable lapse in alliance consultation; but by envisioning the elimination of entire categories of U.S. central strategic systems , Reagan struck at the core of alliance security. (Ironically, the shock in Western Europe at Reagan's proposals ultimately deprived him of the credit he deserved for boldness in U.S.-Soviet nuclear negotiations, which the allies had long urged upon him and his predecessors.) For the first time, a U.S. president appeared willing to dispense with tools long considered necessary to implement NATO's doctrine of flexible response: the threat of a U.S. nuclear riposte to aggression by Warsaw Pact conventional forces against Western Europe. In truth, this doctrine has been a suicide pact: that the United States would, indeed, risk "Chicago" for "Munich," as President Reagan told the North Atlantic Council in March 1988. Nevertheless, the United States has convincingly tied its destiny to that of Europe for most of the postwar era. At Reykjavik, Reagan's stance seemed to reject this fundamental doctrine. Yet it is one thing for U.S. academics or former officials to suggest that flexible response is not credible; it is quite another for the president of the United States, in word or deed, to echo those sentiments. Insofar as nuclear weapons...

pdf

Share