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Western Europe: Going Soft on the Soviet Union?
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13443 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1987 |
2,291 Words |
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Stephen Haseler
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As the conclusion of a Euromissile agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union draws closer, questions are being raised again in the United States about West European attitudes toward the Soviet Union. Skeptical (and pessimistic) Americans are becoming increasingly alarmed by what they see as Western Europe's flirtation with the disarming charms of the new Soviet leader, a condition that, it is felt, can only, in the age of glasnost, become more acute.
That some kind of evidence exists to justify this fear is obvious. Recent opinion polls from Western Europe show some ominous trends. A survey by the Allensbach organization (published in May) determined that only 46 percent of West Germans believed that the president of the United States was "really concerned about peace," whereas a surprisingly high 49 percent awarded this accolade to Mikhail Gorbachev. In another poll, for Der Spiegel magazine, in which West German citizens were asked to place President Reagan and Gorbachev on a "sympathy scale," Reagan achieved a weak 0.1, while Gorbachev scored 1.2. Polls in other Western European countries tend to reflect - in varying degrees - findings of this kind.
European foreign policy elites appear to be increasingly worried by the way Gorbachev's "peace initiatives" seem to have placed the United States on the defensive. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of London warned that Gorbachev might be beating Reagan on the world stage. Its most recent annual report argued that "time is running out for the Reagan administration to regain its equilibrium," and it compared the U.S. administration unfavorably with "the dynamic new leader" in the Soviet Union. The IISS attributes the problem to two things. First, Reagan's loose management style, which used to be a bonus for the president compared with President Jimmy Carter's but is now, peculiarly, seen as a minus. And second, the power and allure of what to many are seen as the genuine arms control proposals emanating from the Kremlin.
There is no doubt that important sections of European public opinion are reassessing their attitudes toward the performance of the two superpowers.
Yet, for all that, there remains a serious problem with the glib notion (held on both sides of the Atlantic, for differing reasons) that this reassessment is but the prelude to a new West European view of the world, a transformation of fundamental geostrategic attitudes, even an emerging neutralism.
Polling data - which simply (and only) reveal that Gorbachev is winning a propaganda battle with the Americans - should be treated with the utmost skepticism should their results be broadened out to depict any new and wider meanings. The foreign policy establishments in Western Europe have always been hostile to Reagan and American neo-conservatism (often for rather unelevating psychological reasons), and they can be relied upon to make the most of (and ask the right survey questions about) this initial phase of the Soviet peace offensive.
That European publics are prepared to keep an open mind about new Soviet proposals - particularly those that accept previously held Western positions, such as the zero-zero option in the INF dispute - is neither alarming nor distinct: The American public does the same. Nor is there anything dangerous about awaiting - again with an
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