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With the military and political momentum seemingly on their side, the Soviets have little reason to negotiate seriously at Geneva, according to most of the panel participants. Kaiser predicted that they would "let us go through the agony of decision because it provides opportunities they have not had in the past." In this situation, said Joseph Biden, a Democratic Senator from Delaware, there is a vital need to maintain the credibility of the alliance so that the Soviets will realize they must talk seriously. Said Biden: "If the Russians saw God and God said, 'They're really going to deploy,' the Russians would negotiate." But West European panelists were not convinced. They feared that just as the West German election did not settle the controversy over Pershing Us in Germany, so NATO missile deployment itself, carried out gradually over a period of tune, will not necessarily persuade the Soviets to start serious bargaining. Said Michel Duclos, French Foreign Ministry counselor: "Their logical interest is to keep the water boiling, and they will continue to do so."
The panelists returned repeatedly to the West European and U.S. peace movements, whose protests and size serve to undermine the credibility of the alliance's defense policy. Said Congressman Foley: "The critics are arguing that nuclear war is bad. That is a ridiculous argument. We know that. The discussion should be on how to avoid nuclear war." West European youth are particularly troubled by what West German Editor Werner Holzer described as "a case of disappointed love with the U.S.," a process that began with the Viet Nam experience. But, Holzer noted, disappointment with the U.S. does not equate with attraction to the Soviet Union.
In fact, said Dominique Moïsi of France's Institute of International Relations, the debate over new nuclear weapons is taking place in an environment in which there is "no satanic mantle and no ideal, no evil and no angels." Said Moïsi: "How do you educate people to the dubious charms of the balance of power? We are in a different world—a mixture of vague idealism and a lot of cynicism regarding power politics, a dangerous amalgam that sees the two superpowers as equally mediocre. What we have lost is the sense of what we are defending, what makes deterrence worthwhile."
The loss of such values, Moïsi said, is not unique to Western Europe but a problem throughout the Western world: "The alliance is not just geography and weapons. Weapons scare people and geography does not bring us together. On the contrary, it leaves Europe in the hands of the Soviets." Foley summed up this new reality: "These issues won't be decided by an old boys' club of informed opinion. There's a whole new public out there." Sonnenfeldt rejected the image of the Reagan Administration as being ideologically opposed to dialogue and negotiation. "I find very little in your discourse about the sins of the Americans," he told the European participants, "to suggest that there is any understanding of the kinds of pressure that American Presidents and politicians of either party are under."