Divorce-Kennedy Style

There once was an old Russian peasant woman, probably Nikita Khrushchev's grandmother, and she kept about a dozen chickens. One chicken, Charlie was her name, was a petulant and ill-mannered creature, who posed the other chickens around and sometimes ate their food. If the old woman tried to punish her, Charlie just stopped laying eggs. So the crafty peasant woman taught the other chickens (whose names were Ludwig, Amintore, and Paul-Henri to peck Charlie, and she taught Charlie's baby chicks to form little circles around their mother so she couldn't move. The woman even told her son, who wrote a column about giraffes for the New York Times, to put up little signs in the barnyard saying: "Pride Goeth Before a Fall.

But when the other chickens went to peck Charlie, they pumped into the little baby chicks and started pecking them instead, and the baby chicks fell to quarrelling, and the other chickens fell to quarrelling, and Charlie ate all their food. And Charlie ate the crafty peasant woman's food, too. The chickens didn't read the signs because they couldn't understand English.

This homely little parable, which I take from "The Decline and Fall of Spruille Braden," might possibly hold some lessons for President Kennedy. So might the policy of Franklin Roosevelt, who tried to break Charles de Gaulle in 1943 and failed ignominiously.

Roosevelt's vendetta, however, differed in two respects from Kennedy's. First, F.D.R. only played around with a few French generals and admirals and with the American press. Second, at the time, Roosevelt could be excused for believing that France had ceased to exist. Kennedy, in the face of a France which very much exists, has gone much further in his tactics than Roosevelt ever did. To find a really suitable comparison it is necessary to go back to pre-Good Neighbor policy in Latin America. Indeed, Kennedy seems to have learned his manners from Teddy Roosevelt.

The question of tactics can be quite separate from that of objectives. It is even possible to agree with Kennedy that the U.S. should dictate European diplomatic policies, without condoning intervention in European domestic politics as a means to that end. The really embarrassing question is not whether the President should be trying to silence opposition but whether he has a chance of succeeding with his present strategy.

That strategy has included the following:

Item. About two weeks elapsed between de Gaulle's threat to blackball British entry into the Common Market and the execution of that threat. During this interval, Washington let it be known in Bonn that a delay in the ratification of the Franco-German Pact would be welcome to the United States. Such a delay, it was suggested, might give de Gaulle second thoughts about the blackball. Certain semi-official journalists were employed in this maneuver; it was possible to open any newspaper and read that the choice before Germany was between France and the United States. Although it was an obvious failure, this trick created a situation which Adenauer has not yet mastered.

Item. In that same interval, Premier Amintore Fanfani returned from a visit to the White House and told the Italian Parliament that the Franco-German Treaty was a "menace". He stated explicitly that the President of the United States felt the same way. It can therefore be inferred (and was inferred) that the speech was cleared if not written in Washington. Similar statements were soon heard from the Benelux powers.

Item. The Belgian Foreign Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, made a public plea after the blackball that negotiations be continued without French presence. This idea, which would have violated the statutes of the Market, has been attributed by persistent rumors to American instigation. A similar suggestion was made to the German Foreign Minister in an eleventh-hour note from Dean Rusk.

Item. After de Gaulle had vetoed British entry, the American press began murmuring about reprisals. These included encouraging Germany, Italy, and the Benelux group to deny the French certain concessions in the agricultural field, which are now being negotiated in Brussels. The formation of inter-allied nuclear units, staffed by all the NATO countries except France, has also been discussed. Warnings about a possible American military withdrawal from the Continent have appeared in certain widely-read columns. Finally, the same sources have spoken of economic and military assistance for those countries which oppose de Gaulle, and the opposite for his supporters.

It is important to note that Kennedy did not create either German political divisions or the resentment of the "little four" Market members against the "big two." On the contrary, these are facts of long standing. But never before have they been blessed and exploited by the Government of the United States. Those who employ such tactics should hesitate before accusing de Gaulle of hindering European unity.

That unity is based in large part on the Franco-German reconciliation. In 1945, Germany was a disarmed and bankrupt country. The Western zones were permitted to rearm only within the bounds of NATO, which was designed partly to restrain any possible West German hopes of regaining the Eastern zones and the Oder-Neisse territories by force. Without tying Bonn into NATO, the U.S. would never have permitted German rearmament. Similarly, the Common Market is designed partly to contain West Germany's prodigious economic growth. And the Franco-German Pact, which reverses several hundred years of history, is the strongest link between Bonn and the West, the surest guarantee against a revived German revanchism. Even advocates of British entry into Europe might think twice before trying to undo this link.

The same applies to wedges driven between the "big two" and the "little four." Franco-German preponderance in the Common Market, like the right of blackball, is written into the Treaty of Rome--Paris and Bonn between them dispose of 8 of the 17 votes in the Council of Ministers, and so on. Kennedy may regret this, but his recent tactics threaten to shatter the entire structure of Europen unity in the process of remedying features to which he objects.

If Kennedy is really determined to Stalinize West Europe, he may be able to find a few compliant "little four" statesmen to help him. But he risks defeating his own purpose with strong-arm tactics, and there is already evidence that a Belgian-Italian-German backfire has started to build up.

(This is the second in a series of four articles on Kennedy and deGaulle.)