Perspectives on the Alliance

BOOK REVIEWS 215 The real consequences of Vietnam lie beyond our historical horizon. They will confront us in future crisis, when we must choose to act, or refrain from action. Our choice then will be made on the basis of perceived learned experience. As we cast back, will we seek out the "lessons" of Vietnam, and the inevitability of failure, the certainty of frustration? Norman Podhoretz understands well the significance of historical reinterpretation . It is a pity, a thousand pities, that he chose the relative ease of a polemic to the greater power of historical analysis. —Michael Vlahos Perspectives on the Alliance Once again the state of the Atlantic Alliance is a fashionable topic of debate in the pages of newspapers and journals on both sides of the Atlantic. The anxious commentaries coming in recent weeks from academics, journalists, and policymakers reflect a spectrum ofviews ranging from those who eulogize NATO to those who proudly acclaim its durability. Among the latter, Great Britain's James Callaghan emphatically states in the Times (London) of February 19, 1982, that "there is no prospect of the alliance breaking up." At the other extreme, Immanuel Wallerstein, whose recent work on this subject includes an article in Foreign Policy 40, 1980, writes in this issue of the SAIS Review that "the end of NATO is near." (Adding, for good measure, "so is an acute depression.") Most assessments fall somewhere between these extremes, yet on the whole the consensus is pessimistic. Flora Lewis, who writes the "Foreign Affairs" column in the New York Times, sums up the prevalent attitude in the "America and The World 1981" issue of Foreign Affairs by saying that "the alliance has never been so gravely troubled and so uncertainly led." Despite thirty-five years of relatively tension-free prosperity in Europe, for which NATO is greatly responsible, the overwhelming tone of this literature on the alliance is one governed by fear. Fear of a new cold war, of thermonuclear war, of Finlandization, of American and West European isolationism, and of Soviet expansionism. Since the alliance is at heart a military one, it is the "Euromissile" issue which is at the center of the current NATO crisis. The purpose of NATO from the beginning was to solve the problem of how to tie U.S. power to West European security and thereby avoid a third world war which, in a nuclear context, could be the world's last. The military balance in Europe has been shifting in favor of the Soviet Union, however, and what was in December 1979 a unanimous NATO agreement to modernize its theater nuclear forces has given way to dissension as misunderstandings multiply among the allies. Stanley Hoffmann1, writing in the fall 1981 issue of International Security chooses to downplay the schism between Western Europe and the United States by citing "NATO's December 1979 TNF decision, and comparable French pol1 . Stanley Hoffmann, Chairman of the Center for European Studies at Harvard and author of Primary or World Order: American Foreign Policy Since the Cold War among many other works. 216 SAIS REVIEW icies." Hoffmann classifies U.S.-West European differences as a series of "nuances and disagreements" centering on five issues. The two most important "nuances" are the Reagan administration's intensely bipolar world view, and its emphasis on a resurgent neo-nationalism designed "to restore American pride and prestige." Most analysts agree with Hoffmann that the rift between the United States and Western Europe can be traced to the increasingly unfavorable balance of power in Europe: Most disagree that the different reactions to this state of affairs among the Allies represent "nuances and disagreements." Pierre Lellouche, head of the European Security Program at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales (IFRI), Paris, writing in the Spring 1981 issue of Foreign Affairs on the topic of "Europe and Her Defense," states that "Europeans enter the 1980s experiencing, for the first time since the cold war, a deep sense of concern—and even fear in some quarters—for the preservation of peace on their continent." The twin foreign policy crises of Afghanistan and Poland, coupled with the basic "inertia" of European governments toward their own defense have caused the...