The Third World War: August 1985

In this last sentence Minister Baronzov had a point.

CHAPTER 7: Summit and Aftermath

Preparations for a summit meeting continued, but, by tacit mutual consent, at a rather slower tempo than that originally demanded by Moscow. As a first step the US and Soviet Foreign Ministers visited their respective allies in Europe. The Secretary of State found Western European opinion torn between two opposing anxieties. In spite of the North Sea, West Europe was still heavily dependent on Middle East oil. From this point of view, therefore, they hoped that the United States would secure the reopening of the oil route by firm action in the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and Southern Africa. But they were reluctant to advocate this too openly because they feared the obvious American rejoinder: ‘If you want the oil as much as we do, come and help us get it.’ Very few of them had any significant capability for military action outside Europe. Most of them pleaded the old argument that NATO’s area of responsibility was limited to Europe and a defined area of the North Atlantic — north of the Tropic of Cancer — and that the action was likely to lie outside those limits. They were faced, not for the first time, with this basic inconsistency between the terms of the Alliance and the real situation on the ground. The line of demarcation on the continent of Europe was better defined and had a history of thirty-five years of stability, due to the concentration of NATO defence on the maintenance of that line as inviolate. But if the causes of tension were outside, where no clear lines existed, and if the tension spread around the world until Europe was encircled by conflict, could the states of Western Europe afford to stay in their tight little laager?

Alternatively, the question was put with some irony from the American side: if the Europeans can’t or won’t help to keep the oil producers free and the sea lanes open, will they do more in Europe and the Atlantic so that US reinforcements can in some part be diverted from Europe to other areas more immediately at risk?

At this point the other latent anxiety of the Europeans began to show itself more clearly. If the US, with direct or indirect help from Europe, took a strong line with the Soviet Union or its Middle Eastern or African supporters, and if this action were successful, would not the Soviet Union be tempted to restore its overall situation and acquire a major bargaining counter by attacking in Europe? This might be particularly tempting if US forces in Europe were to be reduced, or if it was known that fewer US reinforcements were available.

Europe’s will to win and power to make decisions were further sapped by internal developments. The Community, now enlarged to include Spain, Portugal and Greece, had taken some steps towards the common production of military equipment, but had not yet acquired the institutions necessary for the formulation of a common foreign policy or for more effective pooling of military forces in the field. Moreover, Western Europe had not yet fully decided how to live with Euro-communism. In Italy the Communist Party had gained ground by its reputation for restoring law and order, but its very success, and its participation in government, made it more vulnerable to the corruption of power. On the other hand, being now about as powerful as it wanted to be in Italy, without having full responsibility for all the country’s problems, the Party was no more inclined than before to a Soviet takeover, and therefore maintained, in those uneasy years of peace, a reasonably satisfactory degree of Italian participation in NATO.

In France, on the other hand, now under a Popular Front government, the balance of political forces was more precarious. The French Communist Party was still divided between those who maintained the purity of dogma above all and those who saw a modicum of flexibility as required both to keep alive the floundering unity of the left and to win back more votes from the post-Gaullist right. France’s ambivalent attitude to common defence seemed still to suit most political persuasions, but there was much greater divergence on how to handle the crisis of the early 1980s. The nuclear power programme had been limited by environmentalist protests, and even in its reduced form the stations were not fully on stream. Possessing very little native oil, France was heavily dependent on imported energy. With the East-West frontier now bisecting the Middle Eastern suppliers, would oil be more securely acquired by private deals with the USSR and Egypt, or by backing the US counter-offensive to re-open traditional routes? Or would a crafty combination of the two be best — negotiations tous azimuths, as it were?