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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JANUARY 11, 1985
PAGE 11
or nuclear blackmail. But on the ground, European defense should
become� the next decade even a more predominantly European
responsibility. America should particularly encourage efforts at
increased French-German military cooperation and eventual inte
gration. France has a historic awareness of a European identity
while West Germany chafes under Europe's partition•••• The even
tual fusion of these two national forces would represent a giant
step toward a politically more vital Europe, yet� Europe that
would be less at conflict with the Soviet Union than a Europe
hosting �-rarge American army. --A gradually reduced American
ground presence would create pressure from even the existing
Eastern European regimes for a commensurate Soviet redeployment,
thereby gradually creating a more flexible political situation.
The following are additional comments extracted from Mr. Brzezinski's
lengthy FOREIGN AFFAIRS article. In it he stresses the roles that economic
aid in general and West German policies in particular can play as a magnet
to the East European states.
The last four decades•••reveal an important strategic lesson:
what has come to be seen as the legacy of Yalta--namely the par
titioned Europe--can only be undone either in Soviet favor••• or
to Europe's historical advantage 12.Y the emergence of� truly Eu
ropean Europe capable both of attracting Eastern Eurooe and of
diluting Soviet control over the region. America does not have
the power or the will to change basically the situation in East
ern Europe, while crude and heavy-handed Soviet efforts to intim
idate West Europe merely consolidate the Atlantic connection••••
As it happens, the existing stalemate is increasingly resented by
all Europeans. The Germans--no longer dominated by feelings of
war guilt, less mesmerized by the American ideal, distressed by
the failure of Europe to become an alternative to divisive na
tionalisms--are naturally drawn to a growing preoccupation with
the fate of their brethren living under an alien system. The .!!2=
tion that the destiny of� united Germany depends .2.!!� close re
lationship with Russia is not��� in German political tra
dition. Frustration with the nation's division is giving it a
new lease on life.
Moreover, for Germany especially but also for Western Europe as a
whole, the East holds a special economic attraction. It has been
the traditional market for West European industrial goods. As
Western Europe discovers that in its fragmented condition it is
becoming less competitive with the high-tech economies of America
and Japan, the notion of�special economic relationship with the
East becomes particularly appealing. The fear that America may
be turning from the Atlantic to the Pacific has in this connec
tion a self-fulfilling and a self-validating function: it justi
fies a wider economic, and potentially even�political, accommo
dation between an industrially obsolescent Western Europe and the
even more backward Soviet _bloc, a logical consumer for what West
ern Europe can produce.
More.than� Europeans, the East Eurooeans, no longer expecting
American liberation, long for� genuine Europe, which would free