Western Union

ATLANTIC

January 1949

on the World today

AMONG Europeans of several nationalities in Paris, there is a feeling of irritation over the enthusiasm of America’s barking of Western Union. Three years ago there was anxious concern, particularly in London, lest America should discourage Western Union. The fear arose out of William L. Clayton’s opposition to exclusiveness in trade. This was held to be the only bar against European development. of the Continent as an entity.

Western Union is the brain child of Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who is now lukewarm toward the crusade which he himself christened. The fact is that Mr. Bevin did not mean Western Union in the sense that it gathered. To millions it connotes a superstate; to other millions, at least a federation. Both would call for a rigid political system wilh elements of sovereignty contributed by the member nations of Europe.

But Mr. Bevin, whose mind is perhaps more insular than that of any of his predecessors, has no intention of backing that kind of unity in Europe. Nor has the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who is now engaged in wriggling out of the “federate or perish” phrase which he once uttered in a rhetorical moment. The tepid reaction of both statesmen reflects the second thoughts of many Britons, in spite of the leadership of Winston Churchill in the crusade for Europe. Most of them talk European only to buttress the claim for military and economic support from the United States.

A tremendous amount of spadework is necessary to restore even the old relations of European nations, let alone improve upon them. Plainly the war broke down the fabric which used to hold together the continent of Europe in a commercial and financial connection. Some countries were under Hitler’s heel, some were free; and the traumatic effect of this contrast is still noticeable.

But there are other divisions that remain to be healed. The war put the European states in hothouse beds, either of economic subordination to Germany or of self-containment. After Nazi tiermany was defeated, economic nationalism continued, as much from fear as from habit. Should Britain leave the watch industry to France, and make the trucks for both? Why no! The British must have a precision instrument industry for their own security.

Moreover, the connections of commerce and trade had been broken off, even within the nations. Town and country dealt with each other mainly through black markets. The greatest of the changes resulting from the war was the eclipse of the pound sterling as the medium of exchange for Europe.

In short, the task of restoring Europe to its old eminence is bound to be long and laborious, incapable of execution by either short cuts or new alignments like Western Union.

Europe words loaders

In the job of repairing Europe, the major lack that strikes the transatlantic observer is one of leadership. This is the greatest deficit that Europe suffers from. It must realize that it is an entity — and that realization is still distant. The condition is not so serious that leadership could not cure it, but at present there is no reconstructive mind in Europe of a quality that impresses Europeans. The mind had perforce to he American, and its expression was the Marshall Plan.

The organ in Europe for carrying out the Marshall Elan is called the OEEC (Organization of European Economic Coöperation). It is comparable to our ECA (Economic Coöperation Administration). Sixteen nations have their representatives on OEEC. In the main they are civil servants with so little authority that Ambassador Averell Harrimtfn, who is Paul Hoffman’s chief representative in London, has to spend most of his time in the various capitals urging action among the national policy-makers.

It was a great disappointment to ECA that OEEC was not a policy-making body. To be sure, there is a governing body of ministers, but this meets irregularly, and is not a working group. The hope is that there will be a revamping of the OEEC to make it more decisive, if only out of courtesy to the American effort, which is managed on the American side by an administrator with Cabinet rank and by an ambassador, taken out of the-Cabinet for this specific purpose, who heads a sort of economic diplomatic service.

Another disappointment felt at the inception of OEEC was that the Sixteen expected the Cnited Slates to apportion the Marshall Plan appropriations. This system would not have built up the integration of Europe that was sought; furthermore, the Sixteen would have been competitive bargainers for American bounty — a situation more conducive to rivalry than to mutual helpfulness.

The allocation of the first year’s Marshall Plan aid is now in OEEC hands, and it is a great step forward in eominentalism and mutual helpfulness, but this assumption of responsibility was due to Hoffman’s and Harriman’s pushing and prodding rather than to the enterprise of the Europeans themselves.

America cheeks the performance

Indubitably the measuring rod for further appropriations under the Marshall Plan will be evidence of integration. Europe must provide Congress with a show of achievement. If only Europe would realize this! In nothing is the American taxpayer more determined than in his refusal to finance another Operation Rat hole. To be sure, there will be subsidies so long as the shadow of the Russian Bear hangs over Western Europe, but the financing of the Marshall Plan might be seriously impeded by lack of evidence of performance, and performance is now seen in terms of integration.

Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, one of the most foresighted statesmen in Europe, and chairman of the OEEC governing board, would like to see the Benelux experiment applied to all Europe. He says that when Benelux was in course of creation, he was pestered by experts bringing to him one difficulty after another. They made it hard for him to do the tasks that fell to his lot as Premier.

Accordingly, after consulting the Hague government, Spaak told the experts that they were brought together to overcome obstacles, not to refer them to the home governments; he felt that the politicians would deal only with the agreed result. From then on, Benelux started to make headway, and Spaak commends the approach to his fellow statesmen who are struggling for a wider integration.

An American commander-in-chief?

Economic unity is merely one aspect of a community for Europe. With the menace of Communist aggression hanging over European countries-, military unity needs to be promoted, but even here, in the sphere of elementary self-preservation, cohesion is a will-o’-the-wisp. An alliance is in effect already among the Low Countries and Britain and France.

When the military committee sitting in London named Lord Montgomery as the head of the defense council for Europe, there was criticism on all sides. Montgomery is a British hero, but in other count ries he is reputed to be totally lacking in statesmanship. Much better fitted for coalition command is Lord Alexander or Lord Tedder, for both of whom other nationalities retain a keen regard and admiration.

But even a European with the requisite personality would not be able to command in Europe, for the Europeans have not at the moment the psychological unity which would enable them to subject themselves to the military leadership of a European.

All Europe looks to the United States for military security as well as economic salvation. Westtern Europe wants to be associated with the only dynamic that exists in opposition to the Muscovite dynamic — the United States. The gravitational pull exercised by America is terrific, and it is only partly due to the pull of Russia. Many Europeans of note say that the one way to make a European military organization cohere is through an American commander-in-chief.

How the United States will put teeth into the Vandenberg Resolution pledging “association" in the defense of Western Europe will be a major issue in the Eighty-first Congress. Whether the appointment of an American commander-inchief is one of the answers is a debatable matter.

What is clear beyond doubt is that merely to arm the divided nations of Europe would be to add weakness to weakness and to risk a loss of American equipment and American money similar to the loss the United States already has sustained in China.

According to General de Gaulle, national armaments constit ute only a modern Maginot Line, and he pleads for a continental general staff, using manpower in Western Germany as elsewhere for the composition of a continental army. He agrees with other leaders in Europe that the leadership should be American.

The Atlantic Community

The answer to the security problem, therefore, is an Atlantic Community. The Atlantic, as Waller Lippmann put it as early as 1944, is “the inland sea of a community of nations allied with one another by geography, history, and vital necessity.”

It is not necessary as yet rigidly to systematize the Community, though a preliminary compact is politically requisite. For the time being, it would be sufficient to give enabling authority and to guide the military committee in London, to appoint an American commander-in-chief if it is not feasible to have a European, and to mobilize European manpower with American equipment under American training.

For this purpose the French seem already to be available. They could be trained either in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic in superguerrilla tacties — in accordance, of course, with a coördinated plan of Western defense.

There is reason to think that this is the kind of preparedness that the military committee in London have in mind. And for a simple reason. Obviously the recovery of Western Europe under the Marshall Plan —our supreme goal - will be impossible if a sizable portion of the economy is to be diverted to rearmament.

But it is quintessential to arrange matters beforehand so that there is a nucleus of force in the free world well organized and firm enough to exercise a compelling attraction all along the Atlantic periphery. That is the way to ensure peace as well as to prepare for war.

The American shield

Military integration is the immediate goal, and Western Europe would like the United States to supply the shield of a military defense behind which Western European countries can gain enough confidence for recovery. Investment in the future is inhibited in Western Europe as long as the Russians are able to stifle confidence.

With the American shield assured, prodding and pushing can be done without trepidation. Western Europe expects it. It welcomes intervention, though the intervention must be exercised with statesmanship. Nothing is so surprising to sober-minded Europeans as the American queasiness over intervention in the use of American aid.

France: the question mark

The great question mark hanging over the Atlantic is ihe deteriorating situation in Franco. Until the French situation has been stabilized, all planners for European order have their fingers crossed. It is fear of what may happen in their country that has persuaded many Frenchmen to see in European federation a means of absorbing the insoluble problem of France. On the other hand, federation with an unstable France would doom Western Europe to French weakness.

Franco’s position in Europe is crucial. Just as the dethronement of the pound sterling ended British influence on the Continent, so the sickness of France has undermined the unifying influence of France.

It is a disheartening experience to see at first hand the inability of the French to stabilize their economy. In no other country is “the muddle of the middle” so evident. The coalition of the middle is impotent, giving the impression of caretakers in government offices. The French seem to be awaiting a denouement with a fatalism that both Americans and Britons find completely incomprehensible: a denouement between Communism and Gaullism.

The explanation goes to the roots of modern French history. No nation has a better tradition of individual achievement. But government, instead of counteracting the individualism of the people, has merely accentuated it, out of a fear of a strong executive which goes back to Napoleon III, and which was reinforced by their experience with Marshal Pétain.

This preference for a weak executive enabled the Communists to put over the constitution of the Fourth Republic which makes legislature as well as executive so weak as to invite anarchy. The tradition of an unstable currency goes along with the tradition of an unstable executive. On top of that, the long reign of Radical Socialist governments, the voice of the French peasant, has established a tradition against ihe taxation of agriculture. Inflation has become the sloppy alternative of fiscal leadership.

Only the United States has the means to help France: by pushing and prodding the French government to arrest the inflation and by assuming the leadership of an Atlantic Community based upon the direction of French manpower into a continental defense that would not tolerate civil war in the rear. The stakes are tremendous.

WESTERN solidarity

Toward Germany Europeans are of the opinion that we must get used to the existence of two Germanys as well as two worlds. Space is the great need, as the French see it, between the Soviet Union and the West, so as to avoid the shooting war which could arise any day from an accident or a feeling of desperation in Moscow.

No pessimism is tolerable in a world where faith can and must move mountains, and there is enough in the European scene to sustain one’s faith. Nothing could be more exhilarating than the Anglo-AmericanFrench solidarity on Berlin, nothing more helpful to our foreign policy —a policy aimed at creating an equilibrium with Russia after “containing” it. Both France and Britain are necessary allies in creating this balance of power with the Soviet Union. Assuming, as Europe does, that ihe Soviet will not seek a shooting war, a balance of power is the only instrumentality which will impose on Moscow the necessity of living and letting live.