Defense or D

Can an alliance created for defense find new life by seeking detente? That issue faced the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as it met in Rome against a backdrop of leftist riots and rallies that proclaimed "Nixon, boia [Nixon, hangman]!" and "Al-Fatah vincer`a [Al-Fatah will conquer]!" NATO was created in 1949 to defend Western Europe against Communist military aggression. But when the foreign ministers of the 15 NATO members met last week, they invited their Warsaw Pact opponents as well as nonaligned European countries to join with them in a search for ways to reduce tensions in the center of the Continent. Said U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers: "Within NATO, the objective of improving East-West relations should stand equal to our commitment to our common defense."

Double Duty. In the past the Soviets have been unresponsive to Western suggestions of mutual reductions because their troops in Eastern Europe perform double duty--providing a forward defense for the motherland and enforcing allegiance to Moscow. This time, however, many NATO ministers were hopeful that the Soviets would be less hostile to what the alliance's planners unpronounceably call MBFR (for mutual balanced force reductions). Reason: the ministers thought that the Soviets might show themselves receptive in order to ensure the participation of NATO countries in a pet Soviet project, the European Security Conference. The Soviet goal in such a conference is undoubtedly to confirm existing borders in Europe and to undermine the rationale for NATO by offering guarantees against aggression in Europe. But the ministers had badly misreckoned. In a swift riposte, Tass, the Soviet government news agency, described the idea of mutual troop reductions as "absolutely unacceptable to the Socialist countries."

The Soviets feel no compulsion to reduce their own forces, since they are apparently convinced that the U.S. will pull out large numbers of its 310,000 NATO-assigned troops next year. The Western European countries, which also expect U.S. cutbacks, are unlikely to fill the anticipated gap. Britain might be willing to make a slightly larger contribution. So might West Germany, but Bonn could not raise more troops without jeopardizing Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, aimed at easing his country's long-strained relations with its eastern neighbors. The decline of NATO's defense zeal could well impede its progress as a force for detente. In fact, the main virtue of NATO's invitation was that it shifted the pressure for the next move to the other side.

Following the NATO conference, Rogers flew to Madrid, where he faced another set of problems. The difficulties centered around the negotiations for a new military agreement to supersede the 1953 joint statement. In return for continued U.S. use of the Polaris submarine base at Rota and airbases at Torrejon and Saragossa, Spain has been demanding a renewal of the pledge of American protection along the lines of the one in the existing agreement stating that "a threat to either country would be a matter of common concern." Because of the cautious mood in the Senate about U.S. commitments abroad, the Nixon Administration is hesitant about again granting such assurances.

Spanish Surprise. For a long time Washington has been hoping to assuage Spain's fears by trying to enroll the country in NATO, despite objections by the alliance's European members to the inclusion of Franco's totalitarian regime. To Washington's surprise, the Spanish are now insisting that they no longer want to belong anyway. When Spain's Foreign Minister Gregorio Lopez Bravo visited Washington recently, President Nixon told him in a private session that the U.S. was trying to get NATO membership for Madrid. "Spain is not interested in joining NATO," interjected Lopez Bravo. Taken aback, Nixon replied: "May I ask why you say that? Your country has always been interested in joining." Replied Lopez Bravo: "Things have changed. NATO is different now. All of southern Europe is now vulnerable to attack. We have to look somewhere else."

For Spain, "somewhere else" means the Maghreb countries of North Africa. Working with France, the Spanish, who are worried by the westward thrust of Soviet seapower, are trying to forge an economic and military alliance with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya that would protect their Mediterranean shores.

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