Storm over the Alliance

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superpower—one of two—with worldwide interests; its allies are regional powers with commensurately limited interests. Says Christoph Bertram, director of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies: "The attitude toward an international problem on the part of a medium and small power is to seek to live with it. The attitude of a superpower is to seek to change it."

Washington logically perceives the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as being part of a global challenge. For the allies, Afghanistan is a distant land where events should not be the cause of a new cold war between East and West. Thus the allies view the tough U.S. response to the Soviet invasion as an overreaction that has unnecessarily provoked Moscow. From their regional perspective, the European allies fear nothing so much as they do an angry U.S.S.R. and a deterioration of U.S.Soviet relations. Warns Schmidt: "You don't want to scare the Russian bear. It could feel cornered and lash out."

So far, Western Europe has hesitated to retaliate against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by imposing truly painful measures on Moscow, like the embargo of high technology exports. Some see this reluctance to offend the Soviets as the start of Finlandization, a term derived from the fact that Finland is so thoroughly intimidated by the neighboring Soviets that it dares take no action that might offend them. In the opinion of Raymond Aron, a leading French political analyst, the process has already begun in Europe. Says Aron: "Finlandization starts in the mind. If a nation acts powerless and terrified, that's called Finlandization."

Probably no factor has more impeded America's ability to lead the alliance in the current crises than the disdain that allied leaders have for Jimmy Carter. He is generally regarded as being inept and naive, and as a politician who has demonstrated his inability to set a foreign policy course, stick by it and execute it. "Zigzag" and "flipflop" have become part of the scornful lexicon of European diplomats. Among the examples most often cited: Carter's push to have the neutron warhead deployed in Western Europe, winning the support of a reluctant Helmut Schmidt, only to postpone the project indefinitely; pressuring West Germany to reflate its economy and then dropping the notion; shocking Tokyo by announcing that U.S. forces were to be withdrawn from South Korea, only to backtrack later on.

Carter's handling of the hostage matter is the latest case in point for the Europeans. In their eyes, he first was tough, then soft, then tough again. While the White House can argue persuasively that these changes made sense because of the evolving situation, the switches dismayed the allies. Had they quickly followed Carter's initial tough policy, notes the ambassador of a European country, the allies would have been caught by the change: "We would have been out on a limb and you would have sawed it off. That's why we're a little wary of being told now that we have to be tough."

The allies have been especially alarmed by Carter's unsteady management of U.S.-Soviet relations. While the President has consistently advocated human rights and sought nuclear arms curbs, his manner of pursuing his policies has vacillated. Carter's SALT proposals of March 1977 shocked