NATO: A Question of Leadership

As he opened the regular weekly session of the West German Cabinet, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s unsmiling face was grimmer than ever. “Meine Herren,” he began, “we have a very serious development for the world. For the good of everyone we must hope that President Eisenhower recovers quickly.” Said a Frenchman: “My God, first it was the Sputniks, and now this. It looks as if God is on the wrong side.”

All over Europe, the emotional impact of Ike’s cerebral occlusion was shattering. Eisenhower, hope of the West, the man to whom all were looking to meet and match the Sputnik challenge, had been struck down. In Paris the NATO Council, acting on premature reports that there was no possibility of Ike’s attendance at the Prime Ministers’ meeting expressed'”satisfaction” that “Vice President Nixon would lead the U.S. delegation,” and voted to go ahead with the conference as planned. But privately, European members of the Council admitted that they had done so partly to give the lie to Soviet propaganda that the NATO allies are nothing but U.S. satellites. “If Premier Menderes of Turkey were taken ill,” said one delegate, “we could hardly postpone the meeting. Nor can we decently do so because of President Eisenhower’s illness.”

In France, the thought of a U.S. delegation headed by the Vice President aroused active hostility. (“He is not one of us,” complained a French official. “He doesn’t know France, doesn’t speak French, probably doesn’t even drink wine.”*) Even in NATO capitals where there is growing acceptance of Nixon’s ability, it was an article of faith that a summit conference without Ike would lose much of its impact. Said a German Foreign Office spokesman: “You cannot delegate prestige.”

The fact was that, though they fully expected useful military and technological decisions to come out of the summit meeting, such decisions seemed to Europeans of secondary importance. “Since Suez,” said one Londoner last week, “the whole Western alliance has been hungry for stronger leadership—a leadership that can come only from the U.S.”

Many associated the lack of that leadership with Ike’s reduced work schedule, and last week’s stroke dashed their hopes that Ike was recovering his earlier vigor. “The leadership of the West,” lamented De Volkskrant of Amsterdam, “is in the hands of a great but sick man who cannot accomplish much more than the purely representative duties of his office.” Said a member of Germany’s Bundestag: “Can a man who is fighting frailty of body avoid frailty of leadership?”

For above all, Western Europe hoped that the summit meeting could counter and reverse the decline in Western prestige since Sputnik. In this time of anxiety, the West looked to the U.S. to provide a new sense of strength and resolution. The NATO allies would rather have it from Ike. whom they hold in admiration and familiar affection. But if Ike is incapacitated, they are quite ready to accept it from Nixon. The summit meeting would fail only if the U.S., whoever spoke for it, failed to provide that leadership.

* Nixon prefers Scotch, does not usually serve wine in his own home, but sips it dutifully when offered at ceremonial functions.