Diplomacy: Listening to the Allies

Bush is off to Europe amid hints that the U.S. missile stance is softening

"Short of the President's trip abroad, it is the most important mission undertaken by this Administration." That, in the slightly exaggerated words of a Reagan Administration insider last week, seemed to sum up the sense of anticipation in some quarters surrounding Vice President George Bush's journey to Europe. After weeks of growing anxiety among the Western allies, caused by the hard U.S. line in negotiations with the Soviets over intermediate-range missiles, a long-planned vice presidential trip suddenly became a belated counteroffensive against recent successes scored by the Soviet peace offensive in Western Europe. Said Bush on the eve of his departure: "Our strength lies in unity, and we are unified in what essentially is a strong moral position—banishing a whole new generation of intermediate-range nuclear missiles from the face of the earth."

With those words, the Vice President fired his opening salvo in a hastily arranged twelve-day, seven-country public relations blitz calculated to win the hearts and minds of the growing number of Western Europeans troubled by the missile issue. Their major concern: that U.S. rigidity in negotiating an arms control agreement with Moscow would mean almost certain deployment of 572 U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe beginning at the end of the year. Bush's task is formidable. He will strive to present a "flexible" U.S. commitment to arms control while asking the Europeans to support the original U.S. bargaining position, President Reagan's controversial zero option. Under that proposal, NATO would not deploy any new missiles if the Soviets agreed to dismantle completely their total of 333 SS-20 missiles already in place.

Though Bush is carrying no new initiatives with him, he is charged with hearing out Western European fears and counterproposals. "We will not be proposing any specific fall-away positions," Admiral Daniel Murphy, the Vice President's chief of staff, explained last week. "But there may well be discussions of alternatives hi order to get their views." A strong message from the allies, say White House sources, could prompt the U.S. to re-examine its missile position. "We have tabled a very good proposal," said Bush of the zero option, but he added that Washington was prepared to entertain new suggestions from the Soviets that "will reduce the threat to the lowest possible level."

As aides attended to last-minute details of Bush's itinerary, the whirlwind of activity over the missiles was already well under way in Europe. In Bonn, Paul Nitze, 76, the chief U.S. negotiator in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks with the Soviet Union in Geneva, dropped hints of his own that the Administration was edging away from the zero proposal. After Nitze met with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Defense Minister Manfred Wōrner, a senior West German official said: "The word used most often by Nitze was flexibility, with balance spoken more softly afterward."