Disarming Threat to Stability

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S.P.D. members of the Bundestag signed a declaration supporting an antimissile demonstration that drew 300,000 protesters to Bonn. Schmidt described the defection as a "declaration of war" against his policies; he has threatened to resign if his S.P.D. opponents succeed in garnering a majority of votes against his missile policy at a national party congress. The vote's outcome is critical, and not just for Schmidt's career: if the new missiles are not deployed in West Germany, it is unlikely they will ever be installed in any other Western European nation.

While it is too early to say just how much pressure Reagan's proposal will take off Schmidt at home, it should certainly help convince the Europeans that Washington intends to negotiate seriously when U.S. and Soviet delegations meet in Geneva Nov. 30 to open the new round of arms-reduction talks.

The growth of the antimissile movement tends to obscure the fact that Western Europe as a whole remains committed to NATO and a close association with the U.S. Every survey of public attitudes toward the Western alliance shows solid support, ranging from 57% up, for continued membership in NATO. According to a recent poll in West Germany, 50% of those asked thought cooperation with the U.S. should be "closer," while a mere 2% favored warmer ties with the Soviet Union. Only 6% wanted a withdrawal from NATO, and 56%—one of the highest scores in three decades—said they "liked" Americans.

But such reassuring noises are misleading. The replies to more precise questions reveal the shocking degree to which the alliance is confronting a potentially disastrous change in public opinion. According to a London Observer poll, 53% of Britons would now like to see the U.S. withdraw its bases from their country. Other surveys show that higher defense spending—which the U.S. has asked of NATO allies—is favored by only one-third of Britons, 15% of West Germans and fewer than 10% of Belgians and Dutch. Opposition to the new U.S. missiles in the countries where deployment is planned ranges from 39% in West Germany (29% favored the missiles, and the remainder were undecided) to 68% in The Netherlands. Most revealing of all: asked if they would prefer to avoid war even if it meant living under a Communist regime, 48% of West Germans responded yes; only 27% preferred to fight.

The massing flock of doves produced by these doubts and fears must not be labeled simplistically. For the most part, the protesters are not "neutralists," a term that implies abandoning NATO for an uncommitted stance equidistant from the two superpowers. Nor do they all qualify as pacifists, since many favor the defense of their continent with conventional armaments. Only in Britain and The Netherlands do most missile opponents favor unilateral disarmament, a voluntary gesture that assumes, with immense naivete, that the Soviets would be inspired to come forth and do likewise.

As the 300,000 people who marched through Amsterdam last weekend showed dramatically, the movement draws its strength from a broad cross section of society, much as the U.S. anti-Viet Nam protests did: housewives, professionals, academics, clerics and union members. "Today's situation is probably more serious than the crises and friction we've had in the alliance during the past 30 years," says