"Pep Talks Are Not Enough"

Franz Josef Strauss, 66, Minister-President,of the West German state of Bavaria, Finance Minister of West Germany from 1966 to 1969 and conservative candidate who lost to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1980:

Even without the growing international threat from the Soviet Union's aggressive and expansive policy, even without the inhuman crushing of the Afghan people and even without the renewed Polish tragedy, it ought to be self-evident that the United States' partners should favor policies inspired by a spirit of friendship and cooperation. This applies more than ever since the senseless escalation of the Falklands conflict into a bloody war whose real victor--and not merely in regard to Latin America--can only be the Soviet Union.

Anyone who has closely observed the course of [the allies'] summit diplomacy and its results, however, cannot help noticing that the scale of the harmonious final communiques is out of all proportion to the actual results or even to the atmosphere of the talks. The economic summits of recent years have shown that growing domestic difficulties have made these meetings more and more a forum for mutual recriminations in which various governments try to shift their responsibility for national aberrations onto others. Hence it is to be feared that European governments will succumb to the temptation at the Versailles summit to mask their own economic failures by launching massive attacks against the U.S. policy of high-interest rates. It is therefore not necessary to possess the gift of foresight to predict that the meeting of the leaders of the seven most important democratic industrial nations will again end with wordy and reassuring declarations of intent, instead of with clear and forward-looking decisions.

Any such pep talks, plus psychological group training, are not enough at a time when rising inflation and growing unemployment are creating an accumulation of social dynamite that may upset the political stability of Western democracies. They are also not enough in view of the necessity for the West to react in appropriate form to Moscow's arms buildup, and to accept the accompanying financial sacrifices.

The NATO summit in Bonn will be the moment of truth for deciding whether Western Europeans--and above all West Germans in their particularly threatened position along the border with the Communist bloc--are willing to share responsibility, in political and economic terms, for the American President's policy of freedom and peace--not merely pursuant to a more or less obligatory solidarity, but in a spirit of genuine partnership on the basis of our common intellectual values and convictions. If the Western Europeans, as well as the West German part of the alliance, were to prove incapable of action despite the international challenges and despite President Reagan's reaffirmation of the U.S.'s willingness to reduce its nuclear potential, that would produce more than a shock within the fabric of the alliance.

President Reagan and his government might feel obliged to reshuffle and redeal the international deck of cards and to chart a new international course.

However, American policy does not depend solely on the progress and outcome of the NATO summit conference. Equally decisive will be an explicit and convincing effort to remove the spreading unease that some Americans feel about Western Europe and about the political future of West Germany. These doubts, together with the clear and probing questions as to whether American soldiers are still really welcome over here or whether our country wishes to proceed along a separate path between East and West, were what I encountered time and time again during my visit to Washington in March, in talks with politicians from both sides as well as with the man in the street. I consider it to be particularly dangerous that this insidious poisoning of West German-American relations has eaten its way from the political level into the consciousness of the American public. Impaired relations between politicians who are accustomed to think and act in a pragmatic manner can be put right very quickly. Once that kind of estrangement has taken place between peoples, it cannot be put right again for a long time.

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