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A comparable campaign is taking place in Newbury, 53 miles west of London, where 96 U.S. cruise missiles are to be based in 1983. Labor Left-Winger Joan Ruddock has organized an antimissile drive—complete with lapel buttons, canvassing and a rock concert. Such efforts are hardly marginal: a recent poll showed that 56% of Britain's population opposes the deployment of the U.S. missiles. Says Ruddock: "The whole idea of theater nuclear weapons means that we will be annihilated to save the United States and the eastern part of the U.S.S.R."
In West Germany, perhaps more than anywhere else, a veritable cult of détente has led at times to an almost obsequious public attitude toward Moscow. "Many people in this country do not want to upset the Russians. There is definitely a pacifist mood," says Christian Democrat Deputy Manfred Worner. Admits a West German manufacturer in Munich: "If it were a choice between giving the Russians more influence here and even a limited war, we would opt for the Russians." A youth group affiliated with the Free Democratic Party last week opposed the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles, claiming that such a use of this weapon "represents only the interests of the U.S."
Throughout the NATO countries there is a widespread conviction that if the U.S. would just resume arms-control talks with the Soviets, Europe could get on with peace and prosperity again. The European press was quick to applaud Leonid Brezhnev's surprise call for a U.S.-Soviet summit at the recent Soviet Party Congress and his subsequent letters to Western political leaders expressing his interest in arms limitation. In stark contrast, President Reagan is often portrayed as a reckless warmonger intent on bombing the Soviets "back to the Stone Age," as the West German weekly Stern recently put it.
Only in France has the current seemed to run the other way. President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, after years of bending over backward to avoid offending the Soviets, has belatedly realized that his foreign policy was out of tune with public opinion. The French voter has become increasingly wary of Moscow's motives in the wake of Afghanistan and the outbreak of unrest in Poland. Consequently, the election-minded President has executed a swift about-face. Since France is not a member of NATO's military command, it has no direct role in the U.S. missile-deployment plans. Yet Frenchmen have been virtually unanimous in embracing a need for vigorous self-defense ever since Charles de Gaulle established the independent French nuclear deterrent in the early 1960s.
The French are becoming increasingly critical of the present European mood. French Pundit Raymond Aron, for example, accuses the Western allies of suffering from varying degrees of "self-Finlandization." Warns Aron: "What we are seeing today in Europe is what has happened so often before in the past. The great army arrives at the border with trumpets blaring and flags flying. The people take note of its strength, the sacrifice required to repel the army, then accommodate themselves to the new reality."