Storm over the Alliance

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Crises in Iran, Afghanistan drive wedge between America and its friends

The dispute had become one of the most serious crises in the history of the relations between the U.S. and its allies. Tensions on both sides, which have been mounting for months, last week broke into the open, to the great dismay of allied capitals and the obvious delight of Moscow. If not brought rapidly under control, the growing storms could weaken the very ties that have enabled the leading nations of the free world to act in concert on security issues since the end of World War II. A major Soviet goal in the past three decades has been to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies with the hope of crippling the American military presence in Europe and U.S. security influence in Japan. Ultimately at stake, therefore, could be a shift in the global power balance. Just how the crisis is managed will challenge all the leadership skills not only of Jimmy Carter but of the heads of government of America's main allies as well.

What touched off the immediate uproar was the Carter Administration's open dismay over what it regards as the lack of backing by the allies for Washington's responses to the twin crises of the American hostages in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the long run, the Afghan crisis is almost certain to be the more difficult for the allies to confront with a common policy. While the U.S. will continue pushing for relatively tough countermoves, its partners will hesitate, feeling that the issue is peripheral to their own security. What is more, the allies doubt that the U.S. has the power to take effective action in that part of the world.

Most of Washington's attention, however, was focused last week on the unrelieved plight of the 50 American hostages in the U.S. embassy in Iran. And it was on this matter that sparks were flying with the allies. Since the start of the month, the White House stand on Iran had become increasingly tough. In a televised press conference late last week, Carter tightened the economic and political sanctions against Iran that he had announced on April 7 and declared that "we're beyond the time for gestures; we want our people to be set free." In a clear warning that military action against Iran was a real possibility, Carter said that the "availability of peaceful measures, like the patience of the American people, is running out."

Carter's tone at the press conference was generally conciliatory toward the allies. Though he admitted that he has "sometimes been disappointed at the rapidity of action and the substance of the action" that they have taken, he concluded that by and large "they have performed adequately." But the word "adequately" implied all that really needed to be said about the Administration's view of how the allies had behaved.

Carter's campaign to prod the allies into action began with another television appearance, this one extraordinary by any measure. Acting more like an embattled President going over the heads of a balky Congress to the people of America than a statesman dealing with sovereign allies, Carter personally took the U.S. case directly to the West European public. Interviewed by correspondents from British, French, Italian and West German television networks, he talked bluntly about