Robert Kleiman

London, England July 28, 1973   Henry Kissinger’s appeal for a bipartisan Watergate cease-fire on foreign policy issues to permit his work for a “lasting peace” to continue abroad, while the United States sorts itself out politically at home, strikes a chord in West Europe. On balance, despite many reservations, America’s allies rate the Nixon foreign policy and Mr. Kissinger favorably. Without forgetting the scars left by some of Washington’s hard-nosed methods in recent years — “We got the Watergate treatment too,” a high Common Market official commented — West European leaders are less concerned than Americans about the White House “horrors” and more horrified over the possibility of 3 1/2 years of Presidential paralysis overseas. They hope for Mr. Kissinger’s success in the efforts he reportedly has been making, with Mr. Nixon’s approval, to unite Democratic Senators and liberal Republican leaders, including his old patron, Nelson Rockefeller, on the next steps to consolidate détente with Russia and China and to revitalize the Atlantic partnership with West Europe. A return to the kind of consultation

24 May, 1973   The search for solutions to the problems that haunt American relations with the European allies recalls Gertrude Stein’s last words on her deathbed. “What is the answer?” she whispered. There was a long silence. “Then,” she finally asked, “what is the question?” The Atlantic Allies have been seeking answers to their problems with little success and it may be that they are asking the wrong questions. With something like this in mind, Jean Monnet’s Action Committee for a United States of Europe has proposed a new look at the issues by two “Wise Men” named by the United States and the European Community. Their function would be “to investigate, not to negotiate.” There has been too much adversary negotiation across the Atlantic, too much maneuvering and posturing in search of national or regional advantage across the bargaining table. Mr. Monnet’s aim is to put the problems on one side of the table and the two “Wise men” on the other to assemble an agreed data base, analyze the issues and draw

London, England May 23, 1973   Within days after Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947 called on Europe to unite for a joint attack on its problems, Foreign Secretary Bevin of Britain was assembling the leaders of the continent for a meeting in Paris to draft the response that led to the Marshall Plan and, later, to NATO, the Coal and Steel Community and the Common Market. If the response appears somewhat slower one month after Henry Kissinger’s April call for a comparable “new era of creativity in the West,” no one could be surprised. To unite to receive American aid naturally was easier than to unite to give aid to America, more blessed as that might be in the eyes of heaven and Richard Nixon. But there is another fundamental difference between 1947 and 1973. The Marshall Plan was not an act of pure generosity, but of enlightened self-interest; the United States expected to benefit, and did, from the stabilization and economic recovery of West Europe. The United States and a uniting Europe