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The war drags on in Viet Nam, though the continuing peace talks in Paris, however sterile to date, have muted some of the strident anti-Americanism that gripped Europe during the Johnson years. Racial strife and political assassinations in the U.S. have diminished America's image in European eyes. U.S. technological superiority and widespread domination of Europe's industry have stirred understandable resentment. Also, France is no longer alone in doubting that the U.S. would be willing to subject itself to Russian nuclear retaliation by launching ICBMs in response to a Soviet attack on Western
Europe. Says Britain's Defense Minister Denis Healey: "It is most important for the President to maintain European confidence in the American commitment to defend Europe. If confidence in the U.S. guarantee is maintained, Europe will be much more enthusiastic over U.S. talks with the Russians."
TIME Senior Correspondent John L. Steele completed last week an exploratory trip that traced the President's itinerary in advance. The Western Europe that Nixon will find, Steele reports, "is economically prosperous, politically divided, and both intensely curious and a little wary about the new President of the U.S." He adds: "The visit is welcomed, because it is seen hopefully as a sign of renewed attention to the Western alliance after years of enforced concentration on Viet Nam. One finds keen satisfaction that Nixon chooses to come here early in his White House tenure, before his policies toward Europe and the world have fully jelled."
Economically, Western Europe is booming as never before. Even Britain, beleaguered by chronic trade deficits, seems on the verge of turning a balance of payments surplus this year for the first time since 1962. Yet Europe's political leaders stumble from crisis to crisis. Prime Minister Wilson is widely distrusted in Britain, where even the trade-union movement, his onetime power base, has been alienated by the Labor government's efforts to hold the line on wage increases. In France, De Gaulle's facade of infallibility was battered by the riots and strikes of last May and the ensuing threats to the franc. Chancellor Kiesinger finds himself assailed by a student New Left and a nationalist right equally impatient with West German dependence on Washington. Italy's Premier Rumor has just formed a new government that may be the last gasp of Italian middle-of-the-road politics. All this has led to "the end of optimism," in the words of a London-based senior U.S. diplomat. Despite widespread pessimism, however, Western Europe since 1945 has obviously transcended the primitive destructive passions that regularly tore it apart for centuries.
Belgium: Missiles and Margarine