ATOMIC’ DIPLOMATS PLAY WITH WAR-SUIC IDE
| By Maurice Leuven
“PARIS. -- The lowering of the danger has brought to the surface the: natural -antagonisms dividing the capitalist nations, The ruthless nature. of competition over profits is once again becoming evident... For: more than ten years after the end of the last: war, the United States dominated completely an exhausted, alms~seeking, politically servile Europe, The economic recovery of Europe: has now up-= set the balance on which the Atlantic Pact was erected, Germany, Belgium, -France have experienced such prosperity that the latter country was able to come to the rescue of. the dollar in 1963, But Michel Bosquet, writing in the Nouvel Observateur [November 26], has shown that: ‘the prosperity in: the. European countries was. accompanied — by- colonization of American’ capital, . Reducing: ‘them to humiliating » ~ dependency «- cel
JIn addition,» ‘the ‘United States, which had to underwrite the. costs of Atlantic armaments virtually alone, looks with jaundiced ~ eye at a European economy in position to compete, thanks in part to Lower defense budgebs. During the Spiegel crisis, the “insufficiency" of Germany's military expenditures was brought out as well as American demands for greater participation. by Germany in paying for the expenses of the Atlantic Pact. On November 18, Walter Rostow, of the. U.S.State Department, discussing the. problems in dispute among the’ NATO: partners, pointed dn. ‘passing: ‘to the. need for (Sauitable sharing of: the: “burden of costsy:
Thus at ‘the heart of the debate. is to ‘be found, on the one. hand, the struggle of the United States to maintain and reinforce its. domination asa "super imperialism" over the rest of the capitalist world, and on the.other hand, the European resistance to, this drive... The weakness of the means of European resistance on this level’+- well shown by Michel Bosquet (to reject American capital means seeing it: go to a neighboring country, thus fostering inter- European. competition) -- shifts the. struggle from the economic to the political field, or, more exactly, tends to incite setting up a’ . political shield for the economy,
mae ‘The simplest solution would obviously be to organize Europe as :a politico-economic. unit in face of the United States. := But the national frontiers still serve in the entrenchment of complex. inter- ests handed down by history, and, even on a European scale, the con= stitution of a super imperialism is proving impossible, Those who played, as against de Gaulle, the role of pure Europeans rising above all chauvinism (such as the MRP [Mouvement Républicain Populaire]), really sought, with Robert Schumann and the European Coal and Steel Community, to impose the supremacy of France over "defeated" Germany. De Gaulle has continued along this line more than might seem; and, the relation of economic forces in Europe being irreversibly | in favor of: Germany, it is through his nuclear "striking force,” ©
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employed as a political weapon, that de Gaulle seeks to impose French leadership in the mystique of European super imperialism, .
Germany's opposition in this area goes without saying. It is reinforced by the backing of the United States in which French operations are tripped up through limited concessions to the five other countries of little Europe. The most spectacular of these concessions today is the Multilateral Nuclear Force or MLF, Its importance lies less in setting up crews of mixed nationalities on twenty-five ships -- submarines later -~- carrying rockets with nuclear war heads, than in controlling their possible use: "the finger on the atomic trigger." The representatives of the USSR are correct when they say that this is a stage in the dissemination of atomic arms, not the contrary,
The United States cannot agree to European unity unless” it remains under American. political as well as economic control, —One can apply to England, which is hostile to the MLF, the reasoning that Raymond Aron ascribes to de Gaulle concerning the atomic "protection" forced on capitalist Europe by the United States: there is "no reason for paying for what circumstances have led the United States to grant gratuitously." England, of course, is satisfied with paying less than a national striking force would cost, while de Gaulle, seeking a diplomatic atomic weapon, charges the French more than it would cost to participate in the MLF.
The welter of contradictory interests is nevertheless threaded by a common aim: to find the political means of gaining the biggest share of capitalist profits -- the division of markets playing its role in these rivalries,
The military problems go beyond this.
Atomic weapons have ruined “the. whole ‘elassic strategy to such an extent that the biggest problem has. become to figure out who, in controlling them, can "dissuade" the most without ever resorting to them. There is no guarantee that the reply to that question is im proved by reducing to two-the number of those possessing these Apocalyptic arms, Thus it is certain that the Chinese.bomb, by mak~ ing the Americans back up in Vietnam, had-a more peaceful. effect than the Russian bomb. The danger lies in the capacity of holders of atomic bombs to start a war-suicide. This is conceivable only on the part of capitalist regimes condemned by history. The Gaullist argument hinges on the possibility of the United States abandoning Burope rather than engaging in a war signifying self-annihilation; that is, on the likelihood of the U.S. drawing back from a warsuicide. The Gaullist strategy of “absolute retaliation" is the con» cept of war-suicide in which the eternity of France would resemble the pyramids of Egypt.
In the final analysis, atomic arms play the role of dissuasion against revolution in the tatlantict world, particularly in Europe. The clash between the striking force of France, NATO or the MLF are
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thus secondary. Those who insist on our choosing between one or the other only reveal their own choice among different monopolists, or their own political ignorance. The problem for revolutionary militants consists not only in paralyzing the atomic trigger finger of “their own imperialist rulers, but also -- by ending alliances of the _ NATO type -- in ending the right of the "allies" to intervene against ‘social movements culminating in revolution on the territory of any one of them. It is a question of standing in the turbulent area between. the poles of today's terrorist dissuasion, And to do so until the American proletariat itself disarms one of these poles, that of its own imperialism, thus eliminating the final risk of war-suicide.
“The task is enormous, but not impossible. The period of Atlantic squabbling opens possibilities for workers offensives against ‘all ‘the partners, enemy No. 1 for each of them being in their own country. France is a weak link; to overturn de Gaulle is a realis= tic perspective. One of the thémes of a common front should be that such an overturn would signify the atomic neutralization of this country.
NEVILLE ALEXANDER IN “