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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 8, 1986 •
Washington and Moscow. This moral equidistance makes Americans
hopping mad. Former US ambassador to the United Nations Jeane
Kirkpatrick says that if freedom can no longer be distinguished
from despotism then the erosion of the foundations of Western
democratic civilisation is far advanced and the situation is
really serious.
The back page editorial in the June 30 US NEWS & WORLD REPORT reflects the
mood in the U.S. toward cutting commitments to Europe, forcing the allies
to do more in their own defense:
The U.S. is assuming too much of the military and financial
burden for NATO•••• Some $140 billion, or about half our
military budget, goes to Europe,where we have our largest
overseas conventional forces committed--340,000 troops out of a
total of 540,000 overseas•••• This would be justified were
Europe the weak and ravaged continent it was in the 1940s and
1950s, facing a huge Red Army in the east. But Europe in 1986
is thriving and strong.
It has nuclear weapons.
It has a
population larger than the Soviet Union's and a GNP one and a
half times greater••••
The disproportionality of the American effort in Europe is
aggravated by the failure of Europeans to help elsewhere. The
U.S. has had unilaterally to assume the burden of global
defense against worldwide Soviet aggressiveness.
Europeans
even seek to veto the use of U.S. forces based in Europe for
actions outside the NATO-treaty area--witness the European
opposition to American retaliation against Libya. Europeans
must do more to maximize their capabilities to defend their own
territory••••-
Some 150,000 troops should be phased out of Europe over a five
to-10-year period and reoeployed as'"an-additioncirstrategic
reserveTn the United States, able to move to the world Is
trouble spots.
It is 1udicrous for Secretary Shultz to be
scraping about for $150 million to help the Philippines when we
are spending 1,000 times that in Europe where the United States
is least vulnerable•••• It is time for the U.S. to bite the
European bullet.
- - -- -- -- -- - - -
Paul Belien, who works on the foreign desk of the GAZET VAN ANTWERPEN
(Antwerp, Belgium) wrote a special piece for the April 23 WALL STREET
JOURNAL about Europe's "moral equivalence" which Americans find so
frustrating.
Using the analogy of Europe as a frustrated frog crouched
between an ox (peaceful U.S.) and a bear, he attempted to explain the
nature of Europe's frustrations with America:
Many West Europeans today dislike the U.S•• It would be wrong
to conclude, however, as Americans sometimes do, that they like
the Russian bear.
They do not.
The problem with Western
Europe today is that it dislikes America as much as the Soviet
Union.
The problem is one of equation, known as moral
equivalence in U.S. intellectual circles.
They are equated
because of their proportions. The difference in their.nature
is merely circumstantial•••• It explains the sympathy West
Europeans have for little Nicaragua in America's backyard,