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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 16, 1982
PAGE 11
Europe was fundamentally to keep Europe from being taken over or
dominated by the Soviet Union and thus putting its enormous
economic, technical, and other resources at the disposal of the
Soviet Union. NATO.!!! realistically intended
!2
prevent Europe
� being used against� United States, not
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insure Europe's
aid to the United States•••the European members of NATO are
illies intheir own self - defense, they are allies in no other
sense••••"
Clearly, (when NATO was formed) there was an understanding that
reflected some kind of mutuality of benefits, hence some kind of
mutuality of duties and rights. In assuming the obligation to
protect Western Europe from the threat of Soviet power, we
asserted and were usually accorded a right of leadership to
determine the manner by which Western Europe would be effectively
protected••••Western Europe [ in return] was not to place its
human and material resources, on behalf of which we had extended
our protective mantle, at the disposal of the Soviet Union.
Although never made explicit, this duty responded to the simple
logic of the situation••••
This is, admittedly, a rather harsh way of putting the social
contract that formed the basis of the Atlantic Alliance••••When
considered in terms of that understanding, it is easy to appre
ciate why the central problems now besetting the Alliance are so
grave. For these problems not only call the postwar compact into
direct question, but threaten to destroy it altogether.
On
the one hand, erosion of the credibility of the American
guarantee, consequent upon the loss of strategic superiority, is
seen by many who were once confident of American protection as a
critical change in the terms of the compact, a change that in
turn justifies departures on Western Europe's part from duties
once owed when protection was assured. On the other hand, those
departures can only have the effect on this side of the Atlantic
of weakening further the reasons for America to continue in its
support of the Alliance•
.!ill!
pattern of making Western Europe's
economy increasingly available to the Soviet Union must partic
ularl t have this weakenin � effect, --ror it strikes dTre"ctly at a
princ pal A.mer'Ican incentive for retaTnfiij the Alliance. At�he
outset inseparable from detente, this pattern has come to define
the essence of detente in Europe. Should it persist and grow,
and the European commitment to it is now very deep,
!h!,
result
may� be the destruction of the Alliance••••
The principal consequence is that an imperfect protection cannot
require more than an imperfect obedience. This is all the more
so in that we, not the Europeans, are the ones who bear primary
responsibility for permitting the shift in the military balance
that has resulted in an imperfect protection [ reflecting J ! posi
� that�� placed Western Europe in perhaps�� than
1t has placed itself. Now that Europe is in this position, we
w'Ill have to come to terms with it as best we can.
In the end, the most effective argument against pressing for can
cellation or indefinite delay of the pipeline has been that this