View from the Balcony

President Ford opened his television press conference last Tuesday by soberly intoning: "The war in Viet Nam is over." In Europe, celebrations marked the ending of another war--V-E day, May 8, 1945. The three decades separating the Allied victory in Europe from the American debacle in South Viet Nam were already being viewed by some as a self-contained chapter of history, the rise and fall of the Western world's reliance upon the Pax Americana. One sign of the times was French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's announcement that France's 30th celebration of V-E day would be its last. Rather than sustain the memories of past animosities--and past alliances --Europeans should "open the way to the future and turn our thoughts to that which brings us together."

Although the point was not directly made, Giscard's exhortation to greater European unity at least partly reflected a widespread concern on the Continent about America's continued reliability as an ally. Judging by some recent Western European press coverage, it was not Saigon that fell but Washington. Day after day, headlines bannered, THE AMERICAN RETREAT, THE AMERICAN FAILURE or THE AMERICAN DECLINE. Occasionally, a qualifying question mark was added, as in the headline on the recent cover of West Germany's Der Spiegel: NO MORE TRUST IN AMERICA?

Continued Dispute. Almost inevitably, the debacle in Southeast Asia was seen in the context of other recent U.S. foreign policy setbacks: the breakdown of Kissinger's step-by-step Middle East diplomacy, Portugal's slide toward leftist rule and the continued dispute between NATO allies Greece and Turkey over Cyprus. The fear was not that Viet Nam had fatally sapped America's physical strength or irretrievably tarnished its moral authority but that the bitter experience of recent events might somehow have traumatized America's will. A front-page editorial in the Brit ish weekly Manchester Guardian bluntly put the question that seemed to be on everybody's mind: "Will defeat in Viet Nam tempt the Americans to tackle their own problems and let the rest of the world go hang?"

At least one observer suggested that Europe has given America some cause to do just that. "Europeans are amazing," said French Political Analyst Raymond Aron in a television interview. "In the last few weeks, I have been struck by how we put ourselves in the balcony of history. If a Communist Party seems on the verge of coming to power, we call it an American defeat. If the U.S. intervenes through the CIA, we then denounce American imperialism. If, for example, Portugal goes Communist, it becomes an American defeat rather than a European defeat. Obviously, Portugal is closer to Paris than New York. The consequences of a Communist government [in Lisbon] will be felt more in Madrid and Paris than in New York. But we are acting like voyeurs, counting the blows to see who is winning and losing and never asking ourselves what [our] responsibilities are."

Spartan Regimes. Several observers, including Aron, feel that the general mood of the Continent reflects the bias of many Western European intellectuals against bourgeois society and in favor of the spartan regimes of Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. In their eyes, the democratic societies of the West, despite their manifest freedoms, are associated with political corruption, economic crises, imported American tastes (by definition bad) and American values (by definition shallow). In contrast, Communist regimes are identified with social justice, economic security, cultural integrity and a bracing measure of discipline.

West German Defense Expert Lothar Ruehl shares Aron's exasperation with Europe's recent political lethargy. He believes that the ending of the Viet Nam War has at least shocked Europeans out of the comfortable belief that the U.S. will intervene anywhere and at any cost on their behalf. In a clear reference to the American retreat from Saigon, former Italian Premier Amintore Fanfani observed that the current "international situation is a warning to peoples who want to remain free to rely first of all on themselves, and not to tie their salvation exclusively to the help of friends, who are certainly faithful, but not always in a position to help half the world simultaneously."

Despite the talk of greater European self-reliance, there are few indications that the Continent is moving toward the kind of political cohesion that would turn slogan to reality. The Atlantic Alliance is in an embarrassing state of disarray: Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark have cut their defense budgets; Greece and Turkey are still at odds over Cyprus; and France's Giscard, his V-E day proclamation notwithstanding, refuses to attend the meeting of NATO heads of state that will convene in Brussels later this month. Almost despite themselves, the Europeans seem to be heading toward Brussels hoping to find warmth and comfort in the glow of a chastened President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The summit is being viewed conveniently, but also realistically, as the first sign that the U.S. is not slinking away.

Wholesome Dream. Maurice Couve de Murville, chairman of the French National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, has pointed out at least one possible consolation of the post-Viet Nam period: "It is always good to be dealing with a reality--and Viet Nam was not a reality." To many Europeans, Viet Nam was simply a morbid obsession that kept America from placing its energies where its foreign policy interests really lay--namely, in the wholesome dream of a strong, united Western Europe.

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