Transatlantic trepidation: Europe reacts to the new Reagan presidency – archive,1981

Transatlantic trepidation

By John Palmer in Brussels
22 January 1981

No inauguration of any modern American president has been viewed in Europe with such ambiguity as that of Mr Ronald Reagan. Behind the official words of welcome and the delegations of support for the administration the United States’ European allies harbour serious misgivings about the future of US/European relations.

The attitudes of western Europe to a “strong” US have always been contradictory – but rarely more so than today. On the one hand, most governments are anxious to see Washington pursue a more consistent and self confident international foreign policy. On the other, the Europeans are not willing to revert to the relationship of subservient client states which obtained in the immediate postwar period when the US clearly ruled the waves.

The Europeans criticised the Carter administration for vacillation and inconsistency but remained reluctant to conclude that not just the power of the US presidency but that of the United States itself was in decline. To do so would have been to ask themselves questions about the longer-term direction of European foreign and defence policy to which no one had – or for that matter still has – any credible answers. The almost universal assumption in European capitals is that after a brief “honeymoon” period, serious frictions will develop between the US and the European members of Nato over defence policy and with the Common Market over foreign and possibly, commercial, policy. Some Nato strategists even fear that arguments over arms spending targets and also the deployment of cruise nuclear missiles could weaken the alliance during a period of potentially serious confrontation with the Soviet Union.

In fact, the dispute over cruise may, contrary to earlier predictions, prove more bruising than the well-publicised transatlantic split over increased defence spending. The incoming US Defence Secretary, Mr Caspar Weinberger, has recently said that he is “not hooked on targets” in a seeming reversal of Washington’s insistence that the Europeans meet the target of a 5% annual increase, after inflation, in arms spending for the next four or five years.

The economic slump has made that target “inoperative” for most European Nato states in much the same way that it may make nonsense of Mr Reagan’s promise to simultaneously boost US arms spending by 7% next year while cutting taxes and holding down the Federal budget deficit.

On the other hand, the Europeans do not like what they hear of Mr Reagan’s attitude to renegotiating SALT II, particularly the assumption that Washington might not even want to broach the subject with Moscow for another six months. Most European governments feel that this delay includes a far too big risk of the entire agreement being derailed. They believe that the already widespread opposition to the deployment in western Europe of cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles would be further encouraged by any Washington “go slow” on SALT II.

Even those European diplomats who reject Dr Henry Kissinger’s recent criticism of European attempts to develop their own initiative” on the Middle East admit he had a point when he asked whether, in the long run, Europe could have a common defence policy with the US without at the same time having a common foreign policy.

For the moment the Europeans intend having it both ways: persisting with their own foreign policy ideas independently of Washington while maintaining a common defence policy in Nato.

But to the extent the Europeans have to define their own foreign and even defence policies in future, on their own rather than with the Americans in Nato, the greater the risk of transatlantic misunderstandings, and even conflicts.

European ambivalence towards US foreign and defence policy is paralleled by apprehension about the direction of economic and trade policies. They will obviously delay final judgment until they see the actual shape of policy and who will be in the new policy-making team. Exaggerated hopes are placed in figures such as the new secretary of state, Mr Al Haig, to prevent frictions in the alliance developing into something much more serious. But most Europeans have a gut feeling that the four years of a Reagan presidency will place grave strain on the Atlantic alliance and will challenge the Europeans to think, and act, increasingly, for themselves.

Schmidt welcomes new administration

From our own correspondent in Frankfurt
31 January 1981

With relations between Bonn and Washington on a more even keel, the West German government is looking forward to close consultations with the Reagan administration. Chancellor Schmidt told parliament in Bonn yesterday that the prospects for working out an overall concept based on a division of labour with the Americans had never been better.

He praised the American secretary of state, General Haig, for his “courageous words” on the defence efforts by America’s allies and especially West Germany. He wanted to thank General Haig because Bonn had not always been treated in such a way by Washington.

Mr Schmidt expressed his satisfaction that the “3% argument” had been pushed aside by the Americans in the debate about defence efforts. The Nato decision to raise defence spending by a real 3% a year proved a persistent irritant in relations between Bonn and Washington during the final months of the Carter presidency.

The foreign minister, Mr Hans-Dietrich Genscher, will go to Washington early in March for talks with General Haig. He will urge the Americans to maintain military parity with the Soviet Union.

He was adamant that the Nato decision to deploy medium-range missiles in western had to be fulfilled. “Whoever calls this decision into question, calls the Alliance into question,” he declared.

Neutron bomb plan raises storm in Europe

By Patrick Keatley, diplomatic correspondent
6 February 1981

Warnings that the introduction of the neutron bomb would lower the threshold of an all-out nuclear war were issued by leaders in Britain, Sweden and West Germany yesterday.

In the House of Commons, Mr Michael Foot described as “an extremely serious and dangerous suggestion” the statement by President Reagan’s defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger, that he was considering production of the “enhanced radiation weapon” for use by American and other Nato forces in Europe. Mr Foot asked the prime minister: “Do you not agree that one aspect that would be very dangerous for everyone in western Europe would be that it could reduce the level of the nuclear threshold?”

Mrs Thatcher said the weapon would be designed to deal with the “massive concentrations” of tanks in the Soviet Army and other Warsaw Pact forces. It was “very unlikely such weapons would need to be based here.”
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