New Imperatives for the Old Alliance

Abstract

So wrote Robinson Jeffers, a native American poet of the mid-twentieth century. Of course the Alliance's mission is not just the same mission which has been assumed in the past-only to be performed better henceforth. It is that, but more. Nor is it just a military mission-past or future-though such missions remain important. The risks to the survival of freedom are qualitatively different now than in the past, and the impending tests of our vital and legitimate interests will be new and harsh. Thus the threefold task of survival, of meeting harsh tests of legitimate and vital interests, and of leadership in a disorderly world which is increasingly overshadowed by the essentially autarchic, military power of Soviet Russia-all these must be accomplished without actual resort to military force, if at all possible. That task is, broadly stated, the principal new imperative for the Old Alliance. More precisely, the first new imperative is to complete the restructuring of the central military forces of the Alliance in light of the actual strategic nuclear balance. This is a process which has been slow. The second new imperative is to prepare ways to forfend unduly harsh tests of certain vital and legitimate interests which lie beyond the traditional locus of the Alliance. One condition which is not new in the Alliance is that it remains necessary to start with the United States. This is so even if the Western Europeans must now assume a more decisive role in the world beyond Europe and not just in trade and finance. America cannot force a wider role on any European nation, but