Western Europe Nervous About Nuclear Security

By Christopher Redman/Luxembourg

Puzzled Americans watched with concern four years ago as hundreds of thousands of West Europeans protested the deployment of the U.S. intermediate- range missiles that the allied governments had requested. Now, with the U.S. and the Soviet Union inching closer to an arms deal that would remove both American and Soviet missiles from Europe, some allies are upset by the development. Last week Kenneth Adelman, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency director, summed up American exasperation with Europe's apparent inconsistency. Said Adelman in an interview with the West German weekly Stern: "We have a perception that they complain when we deploy missiles, and complain when we talk about pulling them out."

Back in 1979 NATO warned Moscow to scrap its new SS-20 missiles aimed at ) Western Europe or it would match those intermediate-range nuclear forces with U.S. weapons. The Soviets refused to budge, and NATO, in the face of widespread protests, began deploying cruise and Pershing II missiles.

NATO commanders claimed that their new weapons strengthened the alliance's strategic doctrine of "flexible response," which calls for the use of INF and battlefield nuclear arms if NATO armies are threatened with defeat by superior East bloc conventional forces. Allied governments welcomed the U.S. missiles as clear symbols of America's continued commitment to Europe's defense. Nevertheless, NATO stuck to its original offer: if the Soviet SS-20s targeted on Europe were ever removed, the new NATO missiles would go.

Now the sincerity of that proposal is on trial. Last week the Soviets submitted a draft treaty at arms talks in Geneva that calls for the elimination of both American and Soviet medium-range Euromissiles in the 600- to-3,000-mile range. In addition, Moscow offered to destroy all its shorter- range Euromissiles in the 300-to-600-mile range. The Europeans thus find themselves being asked to accept a deal that gives them more than they bargained for. "We said we wanted cuts," mused a top NATO official. "Now we've been invited to put our missiles where our mouths are."

Senior alliance defense experts met last week at NATO headquarters in Brussels to coordinate the West's response to the latest Soviet offer. At the same time in Luxembourg foreign and defense ministers of the seven-nation Western European Union (WEU), a defense forum made up of Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, huddled to review the security implications of the Soviet offer.

Attractive as the proposed cuts are to the general public, many European politicians fear that removal of all American INF missiles would leave dangerous holes in the U.S. nuclear umbrella. For their part, NATO commanders warn that an INF deal would leave them overly reliant on tactical missiles and battlefield nuclear weapons to deter superior East bloc forces. If NATO were attacked, the limited range of these weapons would prevent deep strikes into Soviet territory and would probably make West Germany the nuclear battleground.

The Europeans must now decide whether to please the superpowers and their own public opinion and accept the Soviet proposal or to press for a less sweeping deal that would leave some U.S. missiles in Europe. Britain and France, the only European countries that have independent nuclear weapons, favor the medium-range agreement but want to retain a U.S. presence in the form of shorter-range missiles. West German Defense Minister Manfred Worner also takes that position. But such a proposal is politically complicated because NATO currently has only a handful of shorter-range missiles. Any attempt to deploy more weapons would doubtless cause a rerun of the 1983 antimissile protests. The Soviets might walk out of the arms talks, blaming their failure on NATO's decision to install more shorter-range weapons.

In Luxembourg the Europeans failed to arrive at a common position, largely because the West German government is still divided on the issue of new deployments. In addition, the WEU countries are refusing to be rushed into a quick decision. "We are not going to be bounced by the Russians," said British Representative Lynda Chalker. Conceded Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German Foreign Minister, who is a zero-option supporter: "We must not act under pressure."

Many West Europeans feel that the Reagan Administration is in a hurry to cut an arms deal to help restore presidential prestige in the wake of the Iran- contra scandal. Europeans have noted that some respected American arms experts, including Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and even Administration Arms Adviser Edward Rowny, have recently criticized the Reagan Administration's position. Still, European defense experts believe the allies will eventually agree to some treaty. Says a NATO diplomat: "The writing is on the wall. What Europe must do now is press for the best possible conditions." Europeans would like to link cuts in nuclear weapons to reductions in Soviet chemical and conventional forces, even if that means complicating a deal on INF.

Last year's Soviet-American summit in Iceland, during which Reagan and Gorbachev came close to a bilateral agreement on the future of nuclear weapons in Europe, and the current progress on an INF agreement have created a new European concern about looking out for No. 1 in defense matters. "What we have learned in the past year," says a British analyst, "is that European and U.S. security interests need not always coincide. From now on Western Europe will have to think hard and do more for its own defenses."

At the WEU meeting the Europeans emphasized the "importance of further strengthening the European component of the North Atlantic Alliance." They stopped short, however, of declaring independence from the U.S. Said the final communique: "The presence of U.S. nuclear forces and the presence of U.S. troops in Europe remain indispensable for the security of the whole alliance."