The Climax at Geneva

...The dynamic of power, mathematical power divorced from ethical considerations, is the one argument to which the Communists respond...

...He may also have recalled Secretary Dulles's earlier insistence that the Geneva Conference was a four-power affair, with no great-power status for Communist China...

...The quibble over who were or were not inviting powers soon lost all meaning, and Chou En-lai emerged to play a major, perhaps the decisive, role in the Indo-China negotiations...

...The fact remains that, at the restricted session on Wednesday, June 16, Chou En-lai for the first time seized the initiative...

...But Chou En-lai lingered on...

...Molotov could now afford to go home and rest for a time...

...After a series of fruitless tete-a-tetes, Eden, his patience apparently exhausted, suggested that, unless Molotov could produce something more acceptable, they all "admit failure" and go home...

...Whereas Molotov made the most of differences within the Western camp, the Americans, by refusing even to speak to the Red Chinese, refrained from any attempt to play on Soviet-Chinese differences and, in the end, contributed to their own isolation...

...By now, the West should have mastered the elementary ground rule that the only way of dealing with the Communists is through strength...

...While the military successes in Indo-China were reaped by the local Vietminh Communists, the political dividends largely accrued to Communist China and the Soviet Union, and were by no means confined to the Far East...

...Whenever their expansionist pressure encounters effective combined resistance by the free nations, they call a halt and, if the counter-pressure is sufficient, pull back...

...As the talks started, the Allied command, instead of pressing its advantage, called off all major military activity...

...Any sign of weakness or indecision on the part of their opponents, far from rendering the Communists more tractable, causes them to increase their demands...

...The turning point was Molotov's flying visit to Moscow at the end of May for consultation...

...Appeasing Communists is sure to prove no less disastrous than appeasing the Nazis prior to World War II...

...Just what occurred in the Communist camp at this juncture is not quite clear...

...Actually, the Korean debate, though it managed to consume considerable time and produced for the record voluminous and redundant charges and counter-charges, was still-born...

...The only live issue at Geneva, so far as both the public and the diplomats were concerned, was Indo-China, where the fighting continued and the situation was fluid...

...He came out with new proposals for the separate treatment of Laos and Cambodia which gave the impression he was willing to admit that the bulk of the Red forces there were not native "liberation" movements but outside invaders who would withdraw in the event of a cease-fire...

...En passant, he hoped to strengthen neutralist trends and opposition to EDC in France and Italy, and to undermine Western influence and prestige in Germany...

...Even General Walter Bedell Smith was moved in an initial reaction to describe the attitude as moderate and reasonable...

...Meanwhile, remarks out of Washington had gradually served to reassure the Communists as to the improbability of American intervention...

...Secretary Dulles's brave words about "massive retaliation" had been superseded by American rejection of a desperate French plea for air strikes on behalf of Dienbienphu on the eve of the Conference...

...Conversely, whenever they strike a soft spot, their own logic impels them to exploit their advantage to the hilt...

...In the course of the next ten days, he deadlocked the Conference and virtually demolished the flimsy framework of a cease-fire agreement which Eden had laboriously put together with few building materials other than Molotov's fussy formulas and his own gift for ambiguity...

...The effect on Eden was almost magical...

...The pain-killer was mainly for the sizable section of the French public which has been eager to end the war in Indo-China on almost any terms, and for the British, who preferred to sacrifice Indo-China rather than risk offending Nehru, or Nehru's friend Chou En-lai, or Chou En-lai's friend Molotov...

...Having failed to crack European defense by direct onslaught at Berlin, the Soviet Foreign Minister hoped at Geneva to use Anglo-American differences on Far Eastern policy, particularly their diametrically opposed approaches to the China question, as a wedge for splitting wide open the entire structure of the Western alliance...

...The results in all these directions to date have probably exceeded Molotov's most sanguine expectations...

...The Soviets and Chinese Communists stepped up the flow of supplies to the Vietminh forces, which in turn increased the pressure on the Dienbienphu garrison, whose plight grew steadily worse as the Conference date approached...

...The Korean cease-fire and de facto partition had set up an equilibrium with which neither side was inclined to tamper...

...He promptly reverted to his discarded role of mediator and began to radiate optimism...

...Both systems stemmed from the same German philosophic roots, but the Communist pattern is more comprehensive and more consistent in terms of its closed Weltanschauung...

...But failure was the last thing Moltov was inclined to admit...

...Despite this favorable military background, Molotov, still smarting from the recollection of U.S...

...In the case of Indo-China, the Communists, while agreeing to talk peace, intensified field operations...

...The prospect that a disgruntled Britain might fall in with American plans to defend Southeast Asia was scarcely to Chou En-lai's liking...

...All this has been amply demonstrated on more than one occasion...

...Possibly Chou En-lai feared that Molotov's extreme intransigence, by antagonizing Eden, was driving the British closer to America, as instanced by the announcement of the forthcoming Churchill-Eden visit to Washington...

...The new French Premier and Foreign Minister, Pierre Mendes-France, was pledged to peace in Indo-China above all else...

...Subsequent events exposed this as sheerest delusion...

...But suddenly, in mid-conference, the Soviets altered their tone...

...Forgotten was his recent disappointment and resentment at Molotov...

...The pain-killer was not for the country, Vietnam, whose living body was being dissected, or for the two million strongly anti-Communist Roman Catholic Vietnamese whose homeland in the southern corner of the Red River Delta has now been abandoned to the Communist Vietminh...

...An important member of a Western delegation, for example, bemoaned to me the "unreasonableness" of the Communists and remarked how simple everything would he if only they showed "good faith" Such congenital idiocy, coupled with disunity and apathy, has helped Communism mount its biggest victory since the fall of China...

...Having taken a new reading of American intentions, the Kremlin clique must have decided then and there that they could afford to push the conquest of Indo-China without running serious risk of American intervention...

...After the two-hour interview, the usually impassive Chinese official spokesman was practically cutting capers...

...Yet, Geneva seems to prove that Western diplomacy has sadly failed to master these simple verities...

...Both sides had reasons for seeking a ceasefire...

...For, while the talks in Geneva to all intents and purposes marked time, in both Indo-China and Paris the situation was developing favorably...

...Western observers had noted from the outset that, although the Soviets and the Red Chinese worked together closely, Molotov and Chou En-lai were equals—China was an ally, not a satellite...

...But the French were far more anxious than the Vietminh, which enjoyed the military advantage...

...In both cases, they were unwittingly aiding Molotov...

...Had the West approached Geneva from positions of strength and made clear its determination to repel any Communist encroachment, Molotov would doubtless have proved more conciliatory...

...Molotov returned to Geneva, not (as the British had hoped) with some new proposals on the status of Laos and Cambodia, the two lesser Indo-China states invaded by the Vietminh forces, or on the neutral supervisory commission, but in an ungracious, arrogant, no-compromise mood...

...For a time, the Soviets simply refused to believe that American policy was as incoherent as it seemed, and suspected some subtle ruse...

...He appeared to second British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's efforts at mediation and to exert a restraining influence on his Oriental partners, who, after the fall of Dienbienphu, were raring to reap the full benefits of their military and psychological victory, and wanted nothing short of the entire Indo-China cake in one mouthful...

...Another American fiction at the outset was that the Geneva gathering was primarily the Korean political conference as contemplated in the Panmunjom armistice agreement and that the Indo-China phase was only an incidental afterthought, added to please the French...

...And he easily succeeded in selling these representatives, who in the past had looked to the United States for protection, on the idea of "neutralization," their independence and integrity to be guaranteed by Red China...

...The laws of Hitler's expansion apply even more fully in the Communist case...

...The United States, which should have preserved the leadership it had asserted in Berlin, made no serious effort beforehand to hammer out a common Western line of action...

...The capture of Dienbienphu was timed to coincide with the initial phase of the Indo-China talks...

...The Vietminh "volunteers" would be withdrawn, but the status of the "local" resistance movements was left undefined, a potential Trojan horse for an eventual Communist take-over...

...For America had virtually retired from the picture...

...On his return to Washington after the first week, Dulles publicly congratulated himself on not having exchanged a single word with Chou En-lai, though he sat in the same conference room...

...In falling in with these proposals on British advice (India's Krishna Menon, who worked long and hard as a go-between at the Conference, reportedly helped Chou En-lai shape his formula), the Laotians and Cambodians were making the best of a bad bargain...

...At the Berlin Conference, Molotov had proposed an Asian conference in Geneva not solely, or even primarily, to assist his Oriental friends, but as the most effective way of weakening the free world everywhere, including Western Europe...

...Instead, American policy seemed determined to play down the Geneva talks...

...In the Korean cease-fire negotiations, the roles had been reversed, with the Communists making the initial approach at a time when the Allied forces in the field had them on the run...

...Should the West seek "coexistence" with the Communist world on Communist terms, it will presently find itself backed against the wall, faced with the bald choice of total surrender or total war...

...From his standpoint, the Conference was succeeding brilliantly...

...In the European theater, France had moved one notch away from ratification of EDC and one notch nearer neutrality...

...Two days after this memorable social gathering at his villa, Chou En-lai motored to Berne to meet the new French Premier...

...The concessions and compromise formulas which Molotov offered were more rhetorical than real, contrived to sound plausible without altering the basic Communist position...

...Recent events in the Red River Delta might help explain his exuberance...

...Three days later, the Conference approved a French resolution calling for talks between the Laotian and Cambodian field commands and the Vietminh representatives, amended by Molotov to include withdrawal of all foreign troops, including, presumably, the French training mission...

...He proceeded to cultivate the delegates of Laos and Cambodia, with whom he had never exchanged a direct word up until the previous week, inviting them to dinner with Vietminh Foreign Minister Pham Van Dong...

...For example, he suggested a "neutral" cease-fire supervisory commission?with Communist members on it exercising a built-in veto...

...Moreover, his mood and tactics altered from day to day, keyed to the effort in Paris to topple the Laniel regime...

...Secretary Dulles tried to picture as a major diplomatic triumph Molotov's acceptance of the American condition that China not be included among the inviting powers...

...French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, who struggled manfully to maintain French bargaining power in the face of mounting disaffection at home, complained that these American comments had deprived him of his last trump cards...

...intervention in Korea and of how the Soviets had overplayed their hand on other occasions, started out at the Geneva Conference on a fairly cautious tack...

...Then came President Eisenhower's "modus vivendi" statement, followed by talk to the effect that Indo-China was not essential to the defense of Southeast Asia...

...The coma of the past three weeks can be attributed to anesthesia, deliberately administered while major surgery was being performed...

...Meanwhile, the fall of the Laniel Government, to which Molotov's tactics had largely contributed, removed from the Geneva scene the one Frenchman who in Communist eyes barred the way to appeasement —Georges Bidault...

...No less striking than the proposals themselves was the moderate, conciliatory tone of his speech, which, for the first time since the Conference opened, contained no violent recriminations against the United States...

...And while the negotiations dragged on month after month, the Chinese Communists and North Koreans rebuilt their battered forces and restored the balance...

...With Communist China outfoxing both Britain and America, the 'four-power' conference is now ready to seal Red gains The Climax at Geneva By Edmund Stevens With the military experts due to report on their Indo-China cease-fire mapwork, the Geneva Conference is about to shift back into high gear...

...But the West came to the Asian conference in a woeful state of unpreparedness...

...The American representative pointed out that this would mean the disintegration of the young and still inexperienced defense forces of the two kingdoms, but did not oppose the resolution...

...The triumph has been a double-header—military and political, with the accent on the political...