Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, September 18, 1979
Page 11
ON THE WORLD SCENE
KISSINGER TELLS EUROPEANS: "DON'T COUNT ON US;" THE FRENCH LAUNCH NUCLEAR
"TRIAL BALLOON." The after-holiday political season in Europe has opened
with a flurry of activity.
In early September, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told
a NATO study group meeting in Brussels that Europeans could no longer
count on the United States to guarantee their security. NATO's strategic
security philosophy, he said, is based on an out-of-date American nuclear
doctrine to which he had contributed while in office and which is no longer
valid because of growing Soviet power.
American nuclear doctrine, which rests on "assured destruction"
of Spviat
cities, industry and population, is no longer valid, Kissinger said, be
cause of "the total vulnerability of the United States." (Kissinger's
spoken words "total vulnerability" were downgraded to "limited vulnerabil
ity" in the official transcript typed up afterwards.)
Addressing a top-level experts' conference in Brussels on "NATO--the Next
30 Years," the former secretary of state said: "Don't you Europeans keep
asking us to multiply assurances we cannot possibly mean, and if we did
mean should not want to execute, and if we did execute would destroy
civilization. That is our strategic dilemma into which we have built
ourselves by our theories and the encouragement of our allies. It is not
a declining will, but an objective problem. Of course a President will
threaten, but will he do it?" (The phrase, "but will he do it?
11
was
changed to "but is it a realistic course.")
NATO's unity, of course, has been based for 30 years on the premise that
the United States would do it--would, in other words, treat an attack on
Europe as an attack on the United States. In 1962 Charles De Gaulle de
cided the U.S. never would risk losing New York to save Paris and declared
that France would go its own way in defense. The other allies have con
stantly asked the United States for reassurance on that point and received
it. Now Kissinger seems to be retracting it.
"I have contributed some of these theories so I am not casting any blame,"
said Kissinger. "I have sat around the NATO Council table in Brussels and
elsewhere and have uttered the magic words that the U.S. military commit
ment remained undiminished which had a profoundly reassuring effect, and
which permitted the /allied/ ministers to return home with a rationale for
not increasing defense expenditures. And my successors have uttered the
same reassurances. And yet if my analysis is correct these words cannot
be true, and if my analysis is correct we must face the fact that it is
absurd to base the strategy of the West on the credibility of the threat
of mutual suicide."
Kissinger urged a rapid overhaul of U.S. doctrine, substituting a "counter
force" strategy that would concentrate on strategic Soviet military tar
gets. At the same time, there would be development of a new system of
"Eurostrategic" nuclear weapons in western Europe, which would be inte
grated into such a strategy. These would counterbalance the monstrous
SS-2Q's the Soviets have targeted on major European cities.