A New Course for Britain and Western Europe

A NEW COURSE FOR BRITAIN AND WESTERN EUROPE Hedley Bull X he policies being pursued by the United States under the Reagan administration seem to me so dangerous and misguided that it is now vitally important that Britain and her Western European partners should take steps to reduce their dependence on America and defend their own interests and points of view more vigorously. In the United States today it is widely held that the Western European allies have failed to awaken to the threat posed by the Soviet Union to the world balance of power. While the United States has taken steps to restore the military balance that was neglected during the 1970s and to oppose Soviet encroachments around the world, the Europeans are said to have failed to give it the support it is entitled to expect. In Europe, where the United States has responded to an initially Western European request to balance a Soviet nuclear thrust directed specifically at Western Europe, this has been greeted with demonstrations of public hostility so great that it has been possible to proceed with plans for a new theater nuclear force deployment only by returning to the very path the United States has wanted to forswear: making the deployment of new weapons conditional on the outcome of negotiations with the Soviet Union. In the Third World—and especially in the Middle East, where the interests of the West are everywhere threatened by Soviet advances—the European allies are said to be dragging their feet, where they are not actually (as in the case of the European Community's attitude to the Hedley Bull has been Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and Fellow of Balliol College since 1977. He taught previously at the London School of Economics and the Australian National University and has held visiting appointments at a number of American universities. His most recent book is The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Macmillan and Columbia University Press, 1977). 41 42 SAIS REVIEW Palestine Liberation Organization) giving aid and comfort to the West's enemies . Western European countries are said to be doing all these things because they have sunk into a slothful state of mind, in which they prefer economic gain and a comfortable life to facing their responsibilities. The growth of Soviet military strength does indeed pose a threat to the world balance of power on which our whole system of international relations rests, and it is in Western Europe's interest that the United States should not allow a Soviet global preponderance to come about. It does not follow from this, however, that Western Europe's interests are to be identified with those of the United States, wherever Washington and Moscow clash around the globe. For one thing, it is an interest ofWestern Europe's (one shared, perhaps, with all mankind) that the superpowers conduct their competition with one another in such a way as to keep at bay the risk of nuclear war. Some of the recent actions of the United States, and rather more of its rhetoric, have given the impression, even if wrongly, that the commitment to do this has weakened in Washington. The effect has been to mobilize against America one of the most powerful emotions at work in Europe today, the fear of nuclear war. For another, Western Europe has no particular interest in the preservation or restoration of an American preponderance or superiority in world affairs (even though itwould be bound to prefer an American preponderance to a Soviet one, if this were the only choice). We need to remember that from 1945 until at least the end of the 1960s it was not the Soviet Union but the United States that was closest to being the preponderant world power, able to play, in some respects, the role of an imperial or suzerain power rather than that merely ofa leading participant in a balance-of-power system. Even today, it is only ifwe compare the military statistics for the Soviet Union and the United States in isolation from other factors that we can persuade ourselves that the former has overtaken the latter in power terms...