Dear Allies,
I belong to that generation of Europeans that was taught at school to love you. This love has never lessened, although my deeper understanding of the historical relationship between our two countries has sometimes forced me to face up to somewhat disconcerting events. I am deeply conscious of the superiority of the free West over the dictatorships of the East and of the principle that democracy, even your version of it, is nevertheless the least evil of all political systems.
Fortified by these convictions, I have spent a great deal of my time and of my professional life studying the opposite camp, the Eastern bloc, in an attempt to understand why it is so resistant to the call of freedom. In the last eight years I have traveled continually, often in disguise, along the borders of the Soviet empire, in the most war-ravaged parts of the world: Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Laos, Iran, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa, Lebanon - along that line that has seen the successful expansion of the USSR and your repeated defeats.
It may sound paradoxical, but this pilgrimage among the guerrillas and the so-called refugee camps, instead of strengthening my convictions, has caused me to have serious doubts about the future of the West and even to question the nature of our friendship.
I, and many Europeans like myself, refuse to side with those pacifists who would like to block the installation of American missiles in Europe, with shouts of "better Red than dead." We ask ourselves with anguish which American president would ever find the strength, the opportunity, and the consensus to use these missiles in the eventuality of a Soviet attack on Europe and, more specifically, if that president would do so in the event of an attack with chemical or genetic weapons.
The Europeans ask themselves what foreign policy could the United States adopt in order to avoid such confrontations. After all, since the last war the technique of the "fait accompli" has proved a winner for the Soviet Union in almost every corner of the globe where Moscow has decided to intervene. The American position appears incomprehensible to us when we consider that, by the pressure of its war weaponry, the Soviet Union can win any war without fighting. We must remember that the Soviets, accurately interpreting Karl von Clausewitz, still consider war an extension of their political ideology and not a continuation of their economic policy, as the Americans do.
Broken promises
The whole European defense strategy centers around the assumption of eventual American intervention. But I have never met a single political or military leader, from Afghanistan - as yet unconquered - to Lebanon, who has not said to me: "The most common mistake is to believe in the promises of help from the United States." American promises have been treated with derision by people halfway round the world, and the latest examples are the king of Jordan and - indirectly - the Egyptian president. Even Saudi Arabia is hastily looking for a remedy, fearing that it has too long relied on an untrustworthy friend, not to mention Morocco, which has signed a treaty with Muammar Qaddafi.
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