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eration of th e Community's ex–
tremely controversia! Common
Agricultura! Policy (CAP).
The United States, dependent
upon increased sales of its agricul–
tura! bounty to pay for burgeoning
oil imports, would like to see the
CAP barriers against food imports
greatly reduced. According to the
U.
S. argument, virtually the entire
CAP program of subsidies to Euro–
pean farmers is financed by the
duties charged on imports of U. S.
farm products.
The French, prime architects of
the CAP, dogmatically declare,
however, that they would rather
wreck the entire Common Market
than tamper with the CAP structure.
The French farmer is still a pow–
erful voice in French domestic poli–
tics. To fail to protect him from
lower-cost U. S. farm goods would
be suicida! for any politician in
France.
The brewing controversy over
confiicting trade policies caused a
leading American weekly business
magazine to editorialize: "The stage
is set for the outbreak of a trade war
4
with all the protectionist devices, ex–
change controls, tariffs, and quotas
that made the 1930's a nightmare."
other thorn in the side of the
Atlantic partnership is the
divergence of views over
military matters, specifically the fu–
ture of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). The United
States would like its European allies
to pick up more of the tab for
NATO costs to reduce Washington's
balance-of-payments outflow. Euro–
peans argue that they already pro–
vide - and pay for - nearly 80
percent of NATO'S manpower. The
West German government, in addi–
tion, pays for approximately half
the cost of stationing the 220,000
U. S. troops and their dependents
on German soil.
Perhaps the most serious dis–
agreement of all between the U. S.
and Europe - and one which has
arisen primarily in the past year - is
the totally different approach on
both sides of the Atlantic in at–
tempting to solve mutual problems.
The United States, being a single
power, upholding witb Canada "one
pillar" of the oceanic alliance, quite
naturally prefers a single approach.
Its officials prefer to treat monetary,
trade and military problems in one
overall package.
On the other side are the Euro–
peans (and the French are adamant
on this point), who demand that
these three spheres of problems be
clearly delineated and dealt with
separately, point by point. Other–
wise, they claim, the Americans
might use the threat of a massive
troop pullout from Europe as a le–
ver to wring major concessions on
money and trade matters. Th e
French press has openly labeled
such a "linkup" of issues as " troop
blackmail."
As if to confirm their deepest
fears, President Nixon, in his "State
of the World" message on May 4 of
this year, warned the Europeans
that it would be unrealistic for them
to expect U. S. military protection
and política! support for European
unity to continue, while at the same
time, they maintain and increase
taritf barriers against
U.
S. exports.
PLAIN TRUTH October 1973