Europe: The Grandest Tour

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In a recent speech before the American Society of International Law, Ball traced the "persistent rivalry among the individual nation-states of Europe" through three centuries of war, then recapitulated the U.S.-inspired moves toward Western European and Atlantic unity since World War II: the Schuman Plan and the Coal and Steel Community, the European Defense Community and NATO, the Treaty of Rome and the Common Market. "This then," he said, "was the prospect in the early part of the 1960s—a Europe making massive strides toward unity with the strong prospect that its geographical boundaries would be expanded to include the United Kingdom and certain other European nations—a Europe growing prosperous with its burgeoning Common Market under the protective umbrella of NATO."

But in a few galling years, said Ball, France has managed to "transform the Common Market into a mere commercial arrangement," shut Britain out of Europe by whim, deny Germany participation in nuclear control "so as to preserve its own exclusive position as the sole nation with nuclear weapons on the Western European continent," and force the restructuring of NATO "in order to achieve freedom of political maneuver that could permit it to deal, to its own advantage, with what it has described with a curious impartiality as 'the two great hegemonies.' "

Ball's conclusion: "Such a Europe [as De Gaulle envisions]—a continent of shifting coalitions and changing alliances—is not the hope of the future; it is a nostalgic evocation. It would not mean progress but a reversion to the tragic and discredited pattern of the past—a return to 1914, as though that were good enough, and with the same guarantee of instability—yet made more dangerous, not less, by the ideological drive of the Soviet Union and the existence of nuclear weapons."

Former High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy shares Ball's fear of the Gaullist proud tower. "Nationalism breeds nationalism," McCloy told the Senate last week, "and if we do not watch our step, we shall find Europe again engaged in a struggle for national dominance with cross-alliances." In Britain, Whitehall skeptics are more succinct; to them De Gaulle's Europe is one that stretches "from the Atlantic to the Urinals."

Alternative to Theology. By contrast to Ball's rigid view of the shape of tomorrow's Europe—and to a large extent thanks to Charles de Gaulle—there is a new view of Europe burgeoning in Washington. Last week ex-White House Adviser McGeorge Bundy advocated before the Fulbright committee that West Germany accept the Oder-Neisse frontier with Poland and renounce its claims to Heimatsrecht in the lost territories of Silesia and East Prussia. His sentiments were reinforced by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in testimony last week on Capitol Hill. In reply to a question by Bobby Kennedy, McNamara gave hopeful credence to a rumor that had originated in Berlin, to the effect that the Russians might withdraw five of their 20 divisions in return for a quid pro quo by the U.S. "Would we be willing to lessen our presence in Europe and perhaps make some changes in NATO?" asked Kennedy. Said McNamara: "The direct answer to your question is yes."