An Approach to the Summit

...under others, it will do neither good nor harm...

...In other words...

...What is the purpose of these constant movements of heads of state and prime ministers...

...Among the many speeches—more than 40—in which Sir Winston urged a negotiated settlement, those of January 23 and December 19, 1948 were especially noteworthy...

...provides through its very existence a justification for that weakness...

...It must be noted at once that none of the substantive issues which have threatened world peace in the past has been affected at all by the visits that have taken place, and are not likely to be affected by most of those that will take place...

...In one word, what are we going to talk about in all those meetings at the summit and near-summit...

...In the former case, you will negotiate from utter weakness...

...Two examples of this trend toward neutralism and accommodation with the Soviet Union have only recently come to my attention...

...This being so...

...It is being handled successfully through normal diplomatic channels and certainly requires no spectacular summit meetings for its continued improvement...

...And there will be an East-West summit meeting in April or May...

...For even if ideas and persons were to be exchanged between the two countries on a massive scale, we would still be faced with the issue of whether Khrushchev will actually bury us—that is to say, whether we will survive the competition with the Soviet Union...

...There can of course be no doubt that the international climate has in good measure been improved...

...The Chancellor of West Germany visited London in November and Paris in December...

...The President of Italy will visit the Soviet Union in January...

...being the outgrowth of political and military weakness...

...Readers will recall his last NL article, "America's Passive Diplomacy," in our issue of September 21...

...There are very grave dangers . . . in letting everything run on and pile up until something happens, and it passes, all of a sudden, out of your control...

...Yet the application of their principles to the present situation must lead to the conclusion that since the beginning of the cold war there has not been a worse moment for a negotiated settlement with the Soviet Union than the present...

...The wisdom of negotiations depends on three fundamental factors: the relative power position of the prospective negotiators, the susceptibility of the outstanding issues to a negotiated settlement, and the substantive policies to be pursued through negotiations...

...Under the impact of the policy of summit meetings, the Italian Christian Democratic party is split over the attitude the Government, of which it is the mainstay...

...Either we stay alive, or we perish...

...But what can you talk about with a statesman whose declared objective is to bury you...

...Both attitudes, I submit, are irrational...

...And if we have a foreign policy—beyond the preservation of the status quo and of peace—whose objectives we intend to further through negotiations, the public is not aware of it...

...One of the most influential conservative newspapers of Japan has put to me a number of questions to be answered for its New Year's edition...

...In truth, if the policy of summit meetings were not an act of escape born of heedless despair but part of a well thought-out new foreign policy, it would require more of a national effort—moral, intellectual, material— rather than less...

...The President of the United States will visit the Soviet Union in May or June...

...THE PRESIDENT of the United States visited Bonn, London and Paris last August...

...The outcome of the atomic disarmament negotiations, presently concentrating on the cessation of atomic tests...

...His main instrument is the prestige of the Soviet Union as the most powerful, most productive and technologically most advanced nation on earth, which will establish its ascendancy by example, subversion, aid and trade...

...they create the illusion of initiative in foreign policy where there is only the initiative to travel...

...Summit meetings may temporarily conceal, but they cannot cure...

...Khrushchev revives the universalism of Lenin in that he seeks the Communization of the whole world...

...Yet while summit and near-summit meetings have left the substantive issues threatening the peace of the world as they found them, the climate of opinion has changed...

...The declared purpose of all these travels is the improvement of the international climate and, thereby, the strengthening of the foundations of peace...

...If the two countries cannot agree on the cessation of atomic tests, it is hard to see how they will be able to agree on anything else...

...This positive attitude constitutes a complete reversal of the negative attitude which we have taken until recently not only toward summit meetings, but toward negotiations with the Soviet Union on any level...

...With Stalin it might have been possible to negotiate a settlement of some of the outstanding issues...

...Africa and Asia...

...It has changed in the West because we tend to attribute to summit meetings per se a positive value, as though a summit meeting, regardless of what it achieves, is a good in itself...

...Under certain conditions, it is wise to negotiate...

...and the USSR were more susceptible to a negotiated settlement in the Stalinist period of Soviet foreign policy than they are now...

...These are among the searching questions raised by Oskar Morgenstern, author and professor of economies at Princeton University...

...But what can we negotiate about, either from weakness or from strength...

...The methods of Stalinist foreign policy were also by and large in the tradition of Russian power politics...

...The President of France will visit London, Washington and Ottawa in April...

...The Premier of the Soviet Union and the Prime Minister of Italy visited the United States in September...

...and the USSR so perfectly clear, nor are the problems to be settled by negotiations anywhere else so narrowly defined...

...They could be pinpointed on a map and dealt with one by one...

...While in the field of atomic disarmament we are handicapped by an unresolved policy conflict within the Government, we are handicapped in the other fields of foreign policy by the absence of a substantive policy altogether...

...But in a sense, these summit meetings perform a dual function within the context of such negative and sterile policies...

...What objectives are we going to pursue and what policies are we going to put to the test at those meetings...

...One of the questions reads: Since the cold war is about to come to an end, why does Japan need a security treaty with the U.S...

...Morgenstern's current book, The Question of National Defense, was published in November...

...And since obviously there can be no perfection in arrangements for the control and enforcement of such an agreement but only a weighing of different risks, the departments hostile to such an agreement have been able to sabotage it by calling for perfection where the search for perfection must be tantamount to no agreement at all...

...The very issue posed by Khrushchev allows only of two possible settlements: victory or defeat...

...I believe that in this resides the best hope of avoiding a third world war...

...Ten years ago I argued against the mystique of not negotiating with the Soviet Union and especially against equating negotiations with appeasement...

...As we have embarked upon summit meetings out of a feeling of weakness, so shall we meet at the different summits and near-summits in a position of weakness...

...There is nothing intrinsically good or bad in negotiations either at the summit or at a lower level...

...Since the use of such a capability is manifestly suicidal and is plausible only as an act either of desperation or miscalculation, the threat to use it in support of a negotiating position is both insufficient and inadvisable...

...What is the West's actual negotiating strength...

...For nowhere else is the community of interests between the U.S...

...Are these issues negotiable...

...Yet a negotiated settlement, at the summit or elsewhere, of this issue is up against a difficulty which goes to the substance of American foreign policy...

...What negotiable middle ground is there between your desire to stay alive and the other fellow's desire to put you six feet under...

...It is a matter of record that the U.S...

...While the State Department seems to have been weakening in its support of what appears to be official American policy, the policy conflict within the Government has never been authoritatively resolved...

...For if it were true that mutual visits have by themselves improved U.S.-USSR relations and that a multiplication of such visits and summit meetings were bound to improve them still more, we might indeed relax our efforts, since tensions have already been relaxed through the experience and expectation of summit meetings...

...I have frequently advised that we should endeavor to reach a settlement with Russia on fundamental, outstanding questions before they have the atomic bomb as well as the Americans...

...Thev become part and parcel of the public relations, the histrionic, the make-believe approach to foreign policy, with which we are so well acquainted...

...will provide ultimate proof as to whether a negotiated agreement with the Soviet Union can be reached on any outstanding issue...

...More than a year has elapsed since Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev raised the issue of Berlin in the most acute form, but despite all the visits and diplomatic exchanges no common ground has been found on which the Soviet Union and the West could meet, nor has there even been developed a common Western policy...

...For Stalin's objectives were limited...

...Government is divided within itself over the desirability of reaching agreement on the cessation of atomic tests...

...That improvement is the result of increased Soviet self-confidence...

...What have they achieved thus far, and what are they likely to achieve...

...A Western summit meeting took place in Paris in December...

...and under others still, negotiations will impair your cause...

...To negotiate at the summit with a feeble head, an unclenched fist and an empty holster is tantamount to one of two alternatives deplorable in different ways: Either we shall negotiate from weakness and, hence, give up what we ought to defend, or else we will only go through the act of negotiating without negotiating at all and, in consequence, will only slide farther down the slope toward all-destructive war...

...In the former he said: "I will only venture now to say that there seems to me to be very real danger in going on drifting too long...

...Spectacular meetings at the summit, inevitably arranged and conducted with an eye to the electorate at home, are more likely than not to produce grandiose but vague formulas which the weaker and less prudent party will eventually have reason to regret...

...If Acheson and Churchill were right 10 years ago, as I still believe they were, they are right now...

...This would imply that the Western democracies, who should, of course, seek unity among themselves at the earliest moment, would take the initiative in asking the Soviet for a settlement...

...In the other speech he stated: "Finally, I wish to say one word . . . about the greatest topic of all which overhangs our minds, our relations with Soviet Russia...

...The Soviet Government is no longer, and no longer needs to be, afraid of allowing foreigners and its own citizens to compare conditions in the USSR with those in other countries...

...This argument, tempting at home, threatens to become irresistible among our allies...

...it must be said—however paradoxical this may sound at first hearing—that the overall relations between the U.S...

...The Soviet press has pointed out correctly that we are no longer negotiating from a position of strength, which is another way of saying that we are negotiating from weakness, and it has congratulated us upon this reversal of our position, as it might well do in view of Soviet intereste...

...and Great Britain, on the one hand, and France and West Germany, on the other...

...Shall we settle on three feet only...

...Thus we have concentrated the national effort upon an all-out atomic capability, mistaking what must remain one of the indispensable foundation stones of foreign policy for its day-by-day instrument...

...they were by and large identical with the traditional objectives of Russian imperialism...

...it is also politically the least consequential...

...What are we seeking to achieve, say, in Eastern Europe...

...should take toward the Soviet Union...

...for since his objectives were essentially limited and his methods essentially orthodox, there was room for maneuver, mutual concessions and the give-and-take of compromise...

...summit meetings, instead of being an instrument of substantive foreign policy, become a substitute for it...

...However, the increased exchanges of ideas and persons are irrelevant to the overall political relations between the U.S...

...this disease...

...Obviously the fundamental issue which Khrushchev's new foreign policy poses is in its very nature not susceptible to negotiation...

...There is no positive answer to these questions beyond the preservation of the status quo by whatever policy requires the least effort and expenditure...

...Of these three issues, the first is by far the easiest to deal with...

...What are we after in Europe...

...But this is the decisive question...

...The danger is considerable, however, that, seduced by the virtue of negotiations per se and compelled by our military weakness, we shall step by step— first imperceptibly, then drasticly—retreat from the substance of our position in Berlin...

...On the other hand, the policy of summit meetings...

...At that time I cited former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Sir Winston Churchill in support of the proposition that the time was then ripe for a negotiated settlement...

...I believe that the best chance of preventing a war is to bring matters to a head and come to a settlement with the Soviet Government before it is too late...

...What are the issues which by their very nature lend themselves to a negotiated settlement...

...Their nature is in good measure determined by the conflicting objectives of the nations concerned...

...On the very question as to whether Berlin is a negotiable issue at all from the Western point of view, there is no agreement between the U.S...

...For now we are beginning to reap—and alas, we are seeing only the beginning of it—the fruits of a military policy which defines the resources of the nation not in terms of what the nation needs to survive and to succeed, but in terms of what it can afford in view of the overriding goal of a balanced budget...

...The President of the United States visited 11 nations in Asia, Africa and Europe in December...

...and the Soviet Union and the overriding issue of war and peace itself...

...Among the specific issues, only three seem a priori to be capable of a negotiated settlement: the interchange of ideas and persons, the modalities of the Western presence in Berlin and atomic disarmament...

...Thus it is exactly because we are strong only in the most irrational and least flexible weapon of modern war that we are negotiating from weakness and not from strength...

...Khrushchev frightened us, and so we invited him to come here and set the sequence of summit and near-summit meetings into motion...

...The modalities of the Western presence in Berlin, in contrast to the Western right to be there, can be negotiated about...

...The issues which by their very nature lent themselves to a negotiated settlement 10 years ago are, with one exception, now less susceptible to such a settlement than they were then...

...They consisted of military threats, diplomatic pressure and subversion at the service of both...

...Not all issues outstanding between the U.S...

...To negotiate seriously requires more of a moral, intellectual, material effort than the West seems inclined to make AN APPROACH TO THE SUMMIT By Oskar Morgenstern Among the items on the agenda of the forthcoming East-West summit meeting will be cultural exchange, Berlin and disarmament...

...and the USSR are, in terms of their objective nature, susceptible to a negotiated settlement...

...in the other, you will provoke your destruction...

...Negotiations are a means to an end...

...The Soviet Premier will visit France in March...

...The President has committed himself in words to a policy seeking cessation, while leaving the implementation of the policy to the warring departments...

...The radical reversal, which has undoubtedly occurred in our attitude toward relations with the Soviet Union, is the direct result of the Khrushchev ultimatum of November 1958...

...It is significant that we have embarked upon the policy of summit meetings not because we felt strong enough to support our policies with promises and threats sufficient to induce the other side to make concessions, but because we were frightened by the power of the other side and by the uses to which it might put that power...

...We may be absolutely sure that the present situation cannot last...

...It should not be impossible to devise a formula which will give the Soviet Union a certain satisfaction without impairing the title to the Western presence...

...For in order to be prepared to negotiate seriously with the Soviet Union on the outstanding issues that threaten the peace of the world, we would have to marshal all our present strength and increase it drastically in support of our negotiating position...

...Khrushchev's foreign policy radically departs both from the objectives and methods of his predecessor...

...His objectives are as unlimited as Lenin's were, and his methods are unorthodox both in Leninist and Stalinist terms...

...To what extent this improvement has also increased the chances of preserving peace is moot...

...The Italian Prime Minister visited London in December...

...Such negative and sterile policies do not need the spectacular demonstrations of summit meetings: the ordinary diplomatic procedures are perfectly sufficient to carry them through...

...If you sit down at the negotiating table having nothing to threaten with but the H-bomb, the other side will either not take you seriously or else will take you only too seriously...

...I also cited Acheson's statement of February 12, 1950, that only those agreements are useful which "record an existing situation of fact . . . so it has been our basic policy to build situations which will extend the area of possible agreement, that is, to create strength instead of the weakness which exists in many quarters...

...On the one hand...

...The Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission have consistently supported the continuation of atomic tests, and the State Department has been in favor of an agreement to stop them...

...They create the illusion of substantive action where there is nothing but the bodily movements of statesmen...