27. CALLS TO WESTERN EUROPE
To a man and woman, the West European leaders joined the chorus of
approval of the results of the Moscow summit. But their minds
retained twitching filaments of scepticism. Mitterrand frankly warned
Reagan that the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty provided
no safeguard against the USSR’s superiority in conventional forces. The
French, British and West Germans recognized the ultimate desirability
of progress toward an agreement on strategic missiles but asked
Reagan to move beyond his preoccupation with nuclear missiles.^1 Mit-
terrand put words into practice and secretly ordered an expansion of
France’s chemical weapons programme.^2 The closer that Reagan drew
to Gorbachëv, the deeper the anxiety in NATO capitals that Western
Europe might end up vulnerable to Soviet bullying or even invasion.
East–West conciliation was involved definite perils.
The American President knew there were few European leaders
whom he could entirely trust. While Mitterrand was firm in his desire
to resist the Soviet threat to Western security and to retain the Ameri-
can military presence in Europe, he disliked the Strategic Defense
Initiative and the attempt to bankrupt the USSR. His country resolutely
stayed outside NATO. He also led the Socialist Party – hardly a political
organization that appealed to Reagan. West Germany’s Helmut Kohl, a
Christian Democrat, was a likelier partner for the American adminis-
tration, and he certainly had a keen awareness of the menace from the
Warsaw Pact on his country’s borders. His sole consolation, as he told
Mitterrand, was his belief that the Soviet economy’s condition was
beyond the possibility of any serious improvement.^3 But he was really
no more sympathetic than Mitterrand to the Strategic Defense Initia-
tive, and had expressed public support for it only under pressure from
Shultz.^4 Kohl also took a longer time than Reagan to feel he could use-
fully bargain with Gorbachëv, whom he dismissed as an ‘an orthodox
communist’ heavily under the influence of Kádár and Jaruzelski.^5 He