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On the question of international debt, Healey feared that the "Western banking system can only survive in the recession by lending ever more money to bad debtors, and is bullied into doing so by central banks and international institutions, whose function was supposed to guarantee their prudence, not their profligacy. The scale of the debt problem looks bigger than we anticipated." Healey proposed what he called "the first law of holes, [which] is that if you're in one, stop digging." It was a general metaphorical recommendation for the West to move away from the monetarist policies of the past few years, which Healey blamed for "putting us in a very deep hole indeed."
Conclusions. In its closing meeting, the conference came together in a joint session. If there was unanimity on any point—beyond somewhat reluctant agreement that NATO's missile deployment should go ahead—it was that the alliance signally has failed to explain, much less convince a skeptical public of the wisdom of its defense policies. Sir Nicholas Henderson, the former British Ambassador to the U.S., called this "one of the most urgent needs in the transatlantic arrangement." Said he: "If you are to defeat neutralism, anti-Americanism, pacifism in Europe, you must try to explain in what way you think that the Soviets can use their nuclear superiority in Europe. Public opinion does not believe that the Soviets now are going to even threaten to use nuclear weapons to achieve political purposes."
As a corollary to the public relations problem, there were wistful calls for what François-Poncet called "inspired leadership": opinion polls on both sides of the Atlantic show public support that could be mobilized for the Atlantic Alliance. As the alliance's leader, it was widely agreed, the U.S. must be more sensitive to the gusts of anxiety that shake Western Europe, and the Reagan Administration must moderate its language on East-West issues. At one point during the conference, Senator Tsongas told Richard Burt, "If you assume that the next battlefield is the European heart and mind, to coin an old Viet Nam expression, if that is where the fight is now, how does one rationalize the rhetoric which is giving the Soviets an advantage in that battle? What assurance can we give the Europeans that between today and the day of deployment the President will be advised to be sensitive to the European perceptions?" Burt shot back, "We have a problem in Washington and it is the lack of consensus ... we do not have on these issues a bipartisan approach any more."