How America Looks at Europe

FOR the past five years, with America's energies and fears focused on Viet Nam, Washington pretty much took Europe for granted. Now the Administration is noticing the Continent in a way that suggests that Europeans may soon want a new era of benign neglect. "Maybe we've all been under a delusion," mused one State Department official recently. "We thought that Nixon's 'Year of Europe' would denote an approach of sweetness and light, coupled with the main attention being paid to the Continent. I think Europe will get prime attention, but seemingly it won't be all sweetness and light."

In the view of many experts, the U.S. today has the worst relations with the Continent since World War II. To J. Robert Schaetzel, former Ambassador to the EEC, the situation has become nothing less than a "dialogue of the deaf"--which probably means a lot of shouting in 1973 and beyond. After years of seeming inattentiveness, there is no doubt that Washington has suddenly noticed Europe--with a vengeance. Indeed, even well-informed Americans are somewhat baffled. For years Americans were accurately known as better Europeans than the Europeans themselves. Whatever happened, they now ask, to that great dream of helping to build a strong, unified and prosperous Europe, which has guided U.S. foreign policy since World War II?

Essentially, the dream remains unchanged; in fact, it is being realized. But as with all dreams when they begin to become real, the effects can be unsettling. To the U.S., the most disturbing effect is of course economic. Shortly after the devaluation of the dollar last month, President Nixon instructed Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz to get a "fairer shake" for U.S. trade, even if he had to threaten protectionism. Faced with a massive and seemingly irreversible balance of payments deficit, the U.S. has begun to demand trade and monetary concessions--and to question whether Western Europe is carrying its share of the common defense burden.

"Nursing our economic wounds, preoccupied with domestic issues, uncertain of our position in the world," Schaetzel claims, "we have become more annoyed with our allies than with our enemies." Nonetheless, he adds that the U.S. is not solely to blame: "All of the countries have become egocentric."

Says Raymond Vernon, director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs: "The U.S. thinks of itself as if the wily Europeans have somehow got the better of us, as though we've had too much of the burden and cost and been weakened. There's a sense of being put upon. Many European leaders, however, see us as a country of overriding strength."

An old American complaint about Europe recently renewed is that it is unrealistic. Princeton Professor Edward Morse, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that, despite the almost universal agreement in Europe that any reduction in the present level of U.S. troops on the Continent would leave everyone worse off, Europe has confronted none of the consequences of withdrawal.

Meanwhile, Washington is faced with the problem of dealing with a Western Europe that, in one respect, is both a single economic unit and in another, a multitude of conflicting political voices. Not that the U.S. is always of one mind. Indeed, sometimes Washington seems to want a United Europe that will take over the burden of its own defense, and at other times it seems to fear a Europe that would be powerful enough to do so.

Relations between the U.S. and Europe are complicated by the personal equation. President Nixon was outraged by European government protests of his December bombing of Viet Nam. His sense of having been unfairly judged played a major role in his decision not to visit Europe, at least in the first half of 1973. British Prime Minister Edward Heath's refusal to protest the bombing probably enhanced a personal relationship with Nixon that was already regarded as easy and smooth. The President is also on good terms with both Georges Pompidou and Willy Brandt, although the White House has never been particularly comfortable with the Brandt government.

In Washington's estimate of Europe's political future, the biggest question marks concern France and Italy. The current elections in France are being watched with growing trepidation. "The Gaullists have often been frustrating, but we basically understand each other," says a high Administration official. "The Socialist-Communist coalition is something else altogether." Washington fears that a Socialist-Communist victory in France could also enhance the opportunities of the large, disciplined Communist Party in Italy, a country with a chaotic political life.

Affection. Perhaps the largest plus in American-European relations lies in the genuine affection--albeit now tinged with a degree of envy--that Americans feel for the Continent. Jet travel has enabled many Americans to renew and appreciate more deeply their heritage abroad. "But that antiquated, slightly patronizing American attitude toward Europe as 'the place where we have our roots' is finished," says British Author Ludovic Kennedy. No one calls it "the old country" any more.

Today the average informed American views Europe as a wealthy, technologically advanced, comfortable and somewhat expensive society that has somehow learned how to get the most out of life without sacrificing its values. There is still a lingering sense of romance in the American view of Europe, and a frequent notion that somehow the Europeans are less hysterical about sex; but the notion of European sexual wickedness compared to American purity is fading with the consciousness that most European countries are, in fact, far less "permissive" than the U.S. today.

The Rev. Dr. Eugene Smith, of the World Council of Churches, finds a considerable religious ferment in Europe, although "it just doesn't take the same form that it does in America. The deepest grappling with faith," he says, "takes place in the secular context--the theater, literature and film. Secularism has gone much further in Europe than it has in America." At the same time, he notes a surprising degree of "tribalism" in the minds of many Europeans. When the World Council allocated $500,000 in 1970 to support African liberation movements, for example, it received virulent criticism. "The European churches," he says, "have not faced in adequate depth the latent racism in their societies, though racial feeling is not nearly as strong in Europe today as in America."

Says Steven Brenner, 25, a young Chicago manufacturing executive: "They provide more services for their people. They may not have more than we do, but they seem to make better use of what they have." Ilus ("Ike") Davis, former mayor of Kansas City, adds: "Europeans in some ways have made a better adjustment to living together in cities than we have. They have found a compromise between respect for and use of the craftsman and the need for mass-produced goods. They have developed a reserve which makes living together more bearable."

That does not mean, of course, that Americans closely follow European affairs. Quite the contrary. Since the passing of De Gaulle, Adenauer and Churchill, there have been no giant European personalities who really attract their attention, although Brandt appears to be much admired, still largely for his reputation as West Berlin's courageous mayor. There is a tendency for Americans to be crisis oriented, and the crisis in recent years has been Viet Nam, not Europe. Americans also like the exotic and, with Viet Nam over, Asia beckons once again in more appealing ways than before.

Still, Europe has crept back into the headlines and into America's consciousness, if only as that nagging economic issue. In the minds of many Americans, devaluation has been lumped with such other troubling pocketbook matters as wage controls and the high cost of food. But, contradictions being inescapable in these matters, despite the gripes about those "ungrateful Europeans that we bailed out of two wars," more Americans than ever are going to Europe, both to visit and to settle. In 1971, more than 1,000,000 Americans made their home in Europe, and more than 2,100,000 traveled there in search of profit or pleasure. The numbers are bound to increase. In sum, Europe still has a special meaning for the U.S., as a symbol both of past and present, both for practical business and, in a curious way, for escape.

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