By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 23, 1998; Page A16

BERLIN, Nov. 22—Germany's new left-wing government is facing its first serious clash with the United States by proposing that NATO break one of its central strategic doctrines and pledge that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition government plans to press its case for the change at a key meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels Dec. 8 and 9. Germany will argue that a new overall strategic doctrine being prepared for NATO, to be unveiled at the alliance's 50th anniversary summit conference in Washington next April, should rule out the use of nuclear weapons before any foe to prove that Western powers are serious about moving toward nuclear disarmament, according to senior German officials.

The initiative has shocked and angered the Clinton administration, which recently was assured that the new German government, made up of Schroeder's Social Democrats and the environmentalist Greens, would maintain continuity in Bonn's foreign and security policies. U.S. officials warned that such a dramatic shift in deterrence strategy -- one that has kept the nuclear peace for more than 50 years -- could gravely undermine faith in NATO's military commitments.

But German officials say fundamental changes in NATO's nuclear doctrine are long overdue now that the Cold War has ended and the threat from the Soviet Union has vanished. They argue that bold initiatives such as a no-first-use pledge are necessary to dissuade other nations from pursuing nuclear arms and to encourage threshold powers such as India and Pakistan to renounce any recourse to weapons of mass destruction.

Officials say they expect debate over the proposal could dominate discussion at the upcoming NATO ministers meeting and lead to an acrimonious public debate among the allies over the coming months. "I have signaled to NATO Secretary General Javier Solana that we want to talk about this, because we see things differently," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the newsmagazine Der Spiegel. "We must discuss it openly in the alliance without creating the impression that Germany is going its own way now."

The no-first-use pledge was quickly enshrined in the governing program hammered out by the Social Democrats and the Greens after they ousted the conservative alliance led by chancellor Helmut Kohl in the September national elections. Both parties have crusaded for nuclear disarmament in the past, but they played down the issue during the election campaign to avoid arousing controversy with Germany's allies.

Two weeks ago, Germany stunned the United States, Britain and France -- NATO's three nuclear powers -- by breaking ranks and abstaining on a U.N. motion on nuclear disarmament put forward by neutral countries at the world body. German officials acknowledged that endorsing the disarmament proposal would have triggered a major row with its leading allies, but they said the new government wanted to serve notice it was serious about campaigning to have NATO renounce first use and to diminish the alert status of the alliance's nuclear weapons.

With many of NATO's governments now run by leftist parties, the influence of political factions within the alliance that want to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons has grown significantly. Canada, in particular, already has declared its support for incorporating a no-first-use ban into the new strategic concept that is supposed to chart the alliance for the 21st century.

Reserving the option of initiating a nuclear conflict has been a cornerstone of NATO's deterrence strategy for decades. Allied military commanders say that sustaining doubts in the mind of any adversary about NATO's willingness to escalate to the nuclear level is an important psychological tool. They claim its purpose remains crucial in the post-Cold War era because Russia still has tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on alert status.

U.S. officials said Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has expressed serious concern in her discussions with Fischer about the perils that Washington perceives in making any changes in NATO's nuclear doctrine, but her appeals have gone unheeded.

"We believe the Germans are using flawed logic and phony arguments," a senior U.S. policymaker said. "If we adopted a no-first-use policy, it would not only harm our deterrence strategy, but would encourage rather than dissuade other countries to go after nuclear weapons."

He dismissed the German position as "misguided and even dangerous" while NATO is groping for a new sense of cohesion as it embraces members from former communist countries and pursues risky peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. "Anything that departs from the status quo on the alliance's nuclear doctrine could wind up feeding the aggressive tendencies we are trying to contain," the U.S. official said.