Basic HTML Version
rPASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 8, 1986
PAGE 13
Soviet efforts on the economic front are equally impressive. The Kremlin
appears ready finally to normalize relations with the 12-member European
Community, the world's largest trading bloc comprising 320 million people.
Until now, Moscow has refused to deal with the EC as a unit, only its
individual member states.
But the EC, which expanded in January to
include Spain and Portugal, is simply too formidable a power for the
Kremlin to ignore any longer.
In turn, the European Commission, heading the EC, has expressed definite
interest in closer bilateral relations between it, the Soviet Union and
the individual members of Comecon, the Eastern European equivalent of the
EC. In fact, the Commission has hammered out a trade proposal between the
EC and Romania.
A similar relationship between Brussels and another
Comecon country is expected soon.
The rift between the U.S. and Western Europe, which Mr. Gorbachev (despite
denials) seeks to exploit, continues to widen.
Notice this report, by
Hans Wilhelm Vahlefeld, written in and translated from the RHEINISCHER
MERKUR/CHRIST UND WELT (Bonn), May 24, 1986:
From B for (US ambassador in Bonn Richard) Burt via K for
Kissinger to W for the WALL
STREET JOURNAL
American
dissatisfaction and impatience with Europe are on the increase.
When the Americans. closed ranks round President Reagan after
the US bombing of Libya anti-American protest marches were all
they saw of Britain, Germany and Italy on their TV screens••••
Slowly but surely Americans in all camps--politicians and
intellectuals, the elite and the nameless--are losing patience.
Western Europe is well on its way to becoming a millstone round
Aiiierica's neck.--
---- -- --- - -- --
Highly-paid media star Hen�y Kissinger brought this crisis of
the Western alliance to Europe's attention (not for the first
time, incidentally) in an essay in the 13 May WASHINGTON POST
excerpted in London by THE OBSERVER two days earlier.••• Dr.
Kissinger says America ought to withdraw some of its forces
stationed in Europe to serve as a strategic reserve based in
the United States and capable of rapid deployment to any of the
world's hot spots.
America could then pursue its global
responsibility undisturbed••••
for. Kissinger••• [further] advises Europeans to close ranks and
\ � et up a European defence community.
US Ambassador in Bonn
Richard Burt agrees, recalling the power imbalance between the
United States and every Western European country.... To heal
the wounds that have been inflicted on the alliance, •••the
Americans have resurrected the idea of a United States c5'r
Europe and its military twin:-Ehe,tlropean - Defence community."
Otherwise';' they argue, the" gWbetween American power and
European impotence would steadily widen and the foundations of
the alliance would be unintentionally pulled from under those
v ponsible••••
The disappointment with Europeans felt by US intellectuals and
politicians could be transformed into unbounded irritation if
Europe were to morally equate Americans and Russians, implying
that there is nothing to choose in ideology and methods between