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Other voices sounded equally serious alarms. Said Richard Burt, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs: 'We are in the midst of what best can be described as a grand debate over the very essence of the Atlantic Alliance—its purpose, its shape, its structure... 1983 could well turn out to be the most important year in the history of the alliance." Specifically, Burt saw the determination and credibility of the alliance at stake in the controversy over how to implement the so-called double-track decision to deploy U.S. nuclear-tipped Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe by year's end, if, as feared, no progress is made at the U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations in Geneva. "The United States," said Burt, "would be willing to risk its own territory for deployment, and I think that is not well enough understood in Europe. We do have a strategy and we do have forces and we do have people conditioned, prepared to take risks and to expose the American homeland to attack ... It is in part through the threat of escalation and full American involvement that we help to promote stability and deterrence in Europe."
A majority of the participants, in some cases reluctantly, shared Burt's view of the challenge. Said Douglas Kurd, Britain's Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: "If we fail to carry out what is still a valid decision, [the message of] weakness and incoherence . .. could be very dangerous and possibly fatal."
Former French Premier and Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, a Gaullist, noted that the conference was taking place "in the context of a crisis in the Atlantic Alliance." For Couve de Murville, 76, the fundamental problem was less the missile debate than the lack of agreement or even understanding between the superpowers on the balance of forces in the world, "which has been the basis of East-West relations for 15 years." There was a consensus that the U.S. must clarify very soon whether it is seeking to regain the nuclear superiority it enjoyed through the 1960s, as Washington's rhetoric occasionally suggests, or whether the U.S. is committed to the concept of parity with the Soviets.
There was also wide agreement that what Schmidt called the U.S. Administration's "loose talk" and confrontational approach to Moscow should be curbed, if only to ease the anxieties of Europeans, who are already tempted by a widespread pacifist movement that sees the U.S. as at least as great a threat to peace as the Soviet Union.