Plain Words

The U.S. is more concerned about President Charles de Gaulle's stubborn efforts to revise the character of Europe's defenses than it lets on. So is De Gaulle's Western European partner, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

The communique issued last week after meetings in Bonn between Adenauer and French Premier Michel Debre implied as usual that differences had been reconciled and agreement reached on the importance of NATO as "the basis of European security." But according to confidential diplomatic reports, it was not like that at all.

Dispatch from Grenoble. Even as the two men rode into Bonn from the airport, Adenauer began denouncing De Gaulle's policy of building an independent national defense as "catastrophic." Said Adenauer: "For eleven years I have been explaining to Germany that the future can only be in a united Europe, that its defense cannot be assumed by an independent army and that therefore Germans can only be soldiers of the West--the Atlantic organization. And now if De Gaulle tells the Germans that the integration of Germany into Western Europe and NATO doesn't mean anything, you will launch Germany into nationalism and neutralism. If you want to make a third force in Europe, independent of the U.S., with a French atomic bomb, then the Americans will end by leaving Europe, and then we shall have everything to fear."

That afternoon Debre was still trying to explain that De Gaulle really wants to strengthen rather than weaken NATO when a messenger brought in a dispatch. Adenauer read it and, says a Frenchman, stood petrified, "a hard look in his Mongolian eyes." It was a news agency report of De Gaulle's speech at Grenoble demanding a veto for France on allied use of the nuclear bomb anywhere (TIME, Oct. 17). Pointing at the offending passage, he asked Debre: "What does this mean? If Khrushchev unleashes his rockets on us, must the allies remain paralyzed until France makes its decision?"

It took all Debre's persuasiveness to calm the Chancellor down. What De Gaulle meant, he argued, was that he did not want to start a war and was asking for a French veto to be sure no one else did. If the West was attacked, naturally there would not be time to invoke a veto, and De Gaulle was not asking for such a privilege.

At the end of a long dinner, Adenauer was sufficiently mollified, but his toast was a pointed answer to De Gaulle: "One must rise above national egoisms. The German people are convinced that they have started, with the French nation, on a way that will allow them to get away from narrow nationalism. Europe can survive only if it is incorporated in a vaster community, the Atlantic community." Debre replied soothingly: "It is important that the French should have the feeling that there is no peace, no freedom, no future, if France and Germany do not defend the same cause."

Letter from Washington. Adenauer was not ready to leave the issue papered over. In the midst of the talks next morning, he suddenly pulled out a letter from President Eisenhower. The letter, as Adenauer read it, said that integration of military command and close cooperation between Western European countries and the U.S. are the two principles of NATO policy. As a necessary condition for maintaining the U.S. presence in Europe, it fixed an indispensable minimum proportion of European to U.S. troops within NATO. This minimum, the letter said, had not been maintained.

This was a clear reference to De Gaulle's withdrawal of most French troops from the NATO command for service in the Algeria war.

The French were floored. "American troops," declared Debre, when he had pulled himself together, "are absolutely necessary in Europe, and we want to avoid anything that could lead to an American withdrawal."

Far from smoothing over differences, the Bonn meeting emphasized the real discord De Gaulle has brought to the Western alliance by his dream of a new French grandeur and his demand for an atomic striking force of his own. The answer may well be a plan proposed by SHAPE Commander Lauris Norstad last week to create a nuclear deterrent force within NATO made up presumably of land-and sea-based units manned by Europeans but commanded by Americans.

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