New NATO, New Continent

It was one of those weeks that future scholars might well single out as a watershed in postwar history. NATO was meeting for the last time in Paris. No longer would the long black limousines, flags fluttering from their fenders, thread their way along the elegant Avenue Foch to the organization's austere glass-and-steel headquarters. Charles de Gaulle had withdrawn France from NATO's military commands and ordered NATO forces to leave French soil by next April. Consequently, the military arm of NATO was moving to a village in southern Belgium; the civil arm to some prefabricated buildings near Brussels' airport.

International Order. Far more was ending than NATO's attachment to a lovely city or France's military cooperation with the rest of the West. Seventeen years after its founding as a bulwark against Soviet aggression, NATO itself was undergoing a profound change. It was a reflection of the new mood sweeping Western Europe. Wearied by burdensome defense spending and convinced that the Soviet threat had all but vanished, the Continent's statesmen were seeking ways to eradicate the last lingering memories of the cold war. In Bonn last week, Europe's venerable integrationist, Jean Monnet, proposed that the Common Market set up joint institutions with the Soviet bloc. At last week's Western European Union meeting, Britain's former Defense Minister Duncan Sandys called for sharp reductions in the West's military strength on the Continent, insisting that "the Russians have no more desire than the West to involve themselves in disastrous conflict."

West Germany's Christian Democrat parliamentarian Helmut Blumenfeld went further. Said he: "For the first time since World War II, there is the possibility of establishing peaceful and lasting, if not permanent, international order in Europe." And for the first time in its history, as NATO met last week, the talk was more about detente than defense.

New Direction. After two days of discussions, the foreign ministers of the 15 NATO powers agreed unanimously to a communique that only months ago would have been unthinkable. There was not one word about military strength. Instead, its members called for the removal of "barriers to freer and more friendly reciprocal exchanges between countries of different social and economic systems." Further, members pledged to "continue their efforts to secure better relations with the So viet Union and the states of Eastern Europe in political, economic, social, scientific and cultural fields."

It was a document that could easily bring a snort of satisfaction from Charles de Gaulle, who had, after all, been the first in the business of building bridges to the East. The rest of NATO found it all the easier to lean his way because of the new direction in West German policy. After years of intransigence in East-West relations, the Federal Republic under the new grand coalition of Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger was doing things that not even De Gaulle could undertake. In its first policy statement to the Bundestag last week, Kiesinger, after placing top priority on good relations with both France and the U.S., pledged friendship for Poland, declared his desire for a better understanding with the Soviet Union, and eased Germany's tense relations with Czechoslovakia by renouncing Hitler's 1937 claim to the Sudetenland.

He even hinted that West Germany might soon be prepared to ignore the old Hallstein Doctrine and grant diplomatic recognition to the Eastern countries. "In the past, Germany served as the bridge between Western and Eastern Europe," said Kiesinger. "We should like to perform that role again."

Soldier's Duty. Thus when West Germany's new Foreign Minister Willy Brandt arrived in Paris for the NATO talks, he came as the representative of a thrusting, questioning government. De Gaulle received Brandt for an hour's chat, praised the Chancellor's address, invited Kiesinger to come to Paris next month. In an unusual display of geniality, De Gaulle authorized Brandt to tell the press that the meeting had been "tres cordial."

For all the heady talk of detente, it was still the duty of NATO to think about the possibility of war. After all, the cold-eyed planners could note, Moscow last week announced an 8.2% in crease in Soviet defense spending for next year.

In any case, planning for war had become a nightmare. The French were making it clear that even in wartime, they might not be available as partners of the West. Now France reserves the right to opt out of any conflict if she feels that the war does not concern her. Thus NATO planners cannot count with certainty on the supply lines that run across France or on the French airfields, hospitals and support facilities that over the years have been built there with NATO funds for NATO use.

As the first move toward repairing the damage, the 14 NATO military members formed a new high council to study a whole new defense system: the Defense Planning Committee. They also set up the new seven-nation Nuclear Planning Group, of which West Germany is a key member. The group's mission will be to select targets, deploy NATO's 7,000 warhead nuclear force, and recommend when, if ever, to fire in anger. But the ownership of the weapons and final decision to fire remain with the U.S. The hope is that the new committee will satisfy the West German demand for full-fledged treatment in NATO, while at the same time retaining absolute U.S. nuclear control. That way, the Russians cannot easily use the NATO arrangement as a pretext for refusing to sign a nuclear nonproliferation treaty--in itself an important move toward further detente.

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