The Third World War: The Untold Story

There were two other important consequences. The countries of Western Europe had been the better able to harmonize their policies towards the outside world the more these differed from those of the United States. They seemed to feel that West European positions were only to be announced as such when it could be shown that in so doing Europe was flexing its independent muscles and showing to the world that it did not necessarily have to behave as a satellite of the United States. This too had largely had its origin in the sharp opposition of the respective Middle East policies, and when that particular difficulty was on the way to being overcome it became easier for Europe to think in terms of a joint effort with the US to promote the interests of the whole Western world. But once it was decided to make the effort, the means of co-ordinating the defence of these Western interests were found to be greatly lacking. They were occasionally discussed at the so-called Western summits such as that which took place in Guadeloupe in 1978, but these meetings did not include all those who felt they should be included and moreover had no continuing machinery to see that such decisions as were made were carried out effectively. The usual answer to such criticism was that consultation within the Atlantic Alliance could take place over the whole world. This was formally true to the extent that consultation sufficed. Action, however, was another matter since the area of responsibility and operations of the Atlantic Alliance was specifically limited by its treaty to Europe and the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic area, thus excluding many of the countries and regions in which the more acute threat to Western interests was now being perceived. Here, too, new machinery was required and the need for it was partly met just in time before the onset of the Third World War.

The Western summit of 1982 not only attempted to formulate the policies to be followed by the Western world generally with regard to the safeguarding of essential supplies and the use of its economic predominance as a means of influencing world events and deterring further Soviet adventurism, but also took the first tentative step to set up a framework to which action on the lines of these decisions could be reported and further consequential decisions prepared. The mere extension of NATO’s areas, which might have seemed a simpler course, was not possible because not all its members were prepared to agree to it. So the alternative solution had to be adopted of a decision by those willing to participate in action outside the area to equip themselves with the necessary means of doing so. The Western Policy Staff was the rather cryptically-named organ to which at their summit meeting heads of government entrusted these new tasks and which in the event had just two years to begin to get into its stride before its utility was conclusively demonstrated.

The final cause of trans-Atlantic disunity — the difference in style and tempo — was more difficult to resolve. Over much of the period of the Atlantic Alliance there had been talk of completing it by an ‘Atlantic Community’, but this had never really amounted to more than conference rhetoric. The concept had been invoked when the Alliance was in trouble as, for example, after the Suez operation when relations between the United States and Britain and France were particularly strained. Resolutions were passed in favour of its creation but, in practice, nothing happened except two additions to the functions of the Alliance which were important in potential but never achieved their full impact. One of these was that the Alliance should concern itself with economic policy. This, however, was being handled in so many other international bodies that the NATO contribution to it never achieved significance. The other was more fruitful. The allies agreed that they would improve the consultation which took place within the Alliance about matters of common concern and this was extended from the original NATO area to all other areas of the world, with the severe handicap already mentioned that while it was possible to talk about out-of-area dangers it was still not possible within the Alliance, as part of the operations of the Alliance, to take concerted action with regard to them.