A Change of the Stance in the Cold War
Rabasseire, Henri
In foreign affairs, no rule applies over long periods of time. Only the simple-minded imagine that, once committed to a crusade, a government must continue it until either victory or...
...for these initiatives will undoubtedly increase the possibility of maneuver for German nationalism...
...in Eastern Europe...
...Nowadays these definitions may change overnight...
...If this is no longer State Department doctrine, we might indeed be on the threshold of major new developments...
...instant re taliation, nor by the promise of reconquest after a strategic retreat...
...On the other hand, they have initiated a "policy of small steps" toward re-unification which is supposed to drain some of the impatience out of the body politic...
...Ex-Defense Minister Franz Joseph Strauss is preparing his political comeback with a frankly militaristic agitation...
...and if they do not restrain each other, no one else will...
...It is also true that at the present stage of the game the Chinese seem to be less intractable than the Viet Cong command and that neither will accept a settlement or accommodation which permits a continued "U.S...
...It is both poor logic and poor politics to maintain that the United States has no business to seek spheres of influence and almost in the same breath maintain that one cannot deny China her preponderant influence in Southeast Asia...
...While these developments have occurred in the West quite independently of the Far Eastern situation, we nevertheless may ask whether they might not have repercussions in that area...
...The opportunities which this situation offers to U.S...
...So far, it has led to an agreement on a public debate to be held in the middle of July between Willy Brandt and Walter Ulbricht...
...This change is proposed not because the danger of Soviet aggression has been abated, but because NATO no longer fulfills well enough all the purposes for which it had been designed...
...On the other hand, if they fail to restrain their retainers, they may find themselves in a war they had not planned...
...policies while not releasing the Germans from all ties to the Western alliance...
...Repeated promises were given to the effect that under no circumstances would the U.S...
...there are obvious risks, not only in terms of U.S...
...troops have been transferred to Vietnam, and while the old NATO strategy of "instant retaliation" ceased to be credible in the eyes of both allies and enemies, McNamara's new strategy of "defense in depth," with an ample pause for reflection before nuclear escalation, frankly implies a strategic retreat on German soil without —after de Gaulle's withdrawal—any rear to withdraw to...
...Until recently, the polite form of refusing to negotiate was to say that the entire Cold War package had to be negotiated at once...
...We may be relapsing into the old diplomatic game of wifeswapping...
...People a little more sophisticated may assume that bad guys too are smart and, without ceasing to be bad guys, may behave nicely toward one adversary while preparing a confrontation with another...
...Far from being the result of clever co-ordination, the simul taneous moves toward relaxation in Europe and tension in Asia may have no more sinister source than the natural dynamism of the previous condition and the clumsy fumbling of diplomats...
...the General's own efforts to weld such a unity under French hegemony were thwarted by the Anglo-Saxon powers, and there is at this moment little hope for the early emergence of an independent and united Europe as a fourth big power...
...Kennedy's "Grand Design" merely tried to confirm the very U.S...
...in the West and the U.S.S.R...
...Both were strong "Europeanists," Ball so fanatically that he proposed to take "punitive action" against de Gaulle...
...For both, the Cold War loses much of its usefulness, insofar as it no longer helps them control their allies...
...Fortunately such childish display was overruled...
...McNamara proclaimed that containment never meant containment by military means alone...
...Only the simple-minded imagine that, once committed to a crusade, a government must continue it until either victory or defeat...
...Admittedly, that "anything" is as much to be feared as to be hoped for...
...Or like children watching a Western, they assume that the good guys are always on the same side, and that a bad guy will act equally tough on all fronts...
...Nor can the Chinese be eager to confront the Russians and the U.S...
...and China, are big powers with a tendency to be overweening...
...People, who for years had been satisfied with the economic miracle and reconciled to the political status quo, now are toying with "Rapallo" or with "hardware...
...What is left of NATO, after the recent explosion of nationalism in Europe, threatens to turn the alliance from an instrument to "cool" the East—West rivalry into an instrument of German irredentism...
...she may decide to manufacture her own deterrent...
...a neofascist party (NDP), which nationally polled only 2 percent of the votes, was able to make significant inroads locally into the ranks of the right-wing Free Democratic Party...
...Such legal fictions include not only the Hallstein doctrine (which forces the Federal Republic to sever relations with any government that recognizes the DDR, except the Soviet Union), but the refusal to recognize the present frontiers of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the DDR, as well as the denial that there is an East German government (with which Bonn has numerous commercial and other agreements...
...It is true that our stubbornness is greatly helped by an even more irrational truculence on the part of the Chinese...
...This, however, may force the United States and the Soviet Union to seek direct deals with each other...
...is in the uncomfortable position of having to guarantee this new room for maneuver to its allies while no longer being able to control them...
...resolution, partly out of racial prejudice and partly out of fear of "Communism...
...but its usefulness to the Western powers has mostly disappeared, and its usefulness as an instrument of U.S...
...No serious observer has ever maintained that our problems will be over the moment Peking is admitted to the U.N., or even the moment we abandon Chiang Kai-shek and General Ky...
...The fact is that all three, the U.S., the U.S.S.R...
...hegemony is declining...
...In summary, the crisis of NATO and the Warsaw Pact has weakened the hegemony of the U.S...
...Thus the Cold War, which originally was in part a propagandistic device to keep the NATO allies in their place and to guarantee the status quo, now threatens to degenerate into a not-so-cold war of maneuver, where the security of Europe may be at the mercy of electoral rhetoric in one or two states...
...If Moscow receives de Gaulle, Washington inches closer to Bucharest...
...But he spoke as a defeated man...
...In foreign affairs, no rule applies over long periods of time...
...McGeorge Bundy already has left the White House staff and George Ball is on his way out of the State Department...
...The State Department, therefore, not only is exercising gentle pressure on Bonn to relax its "cold war" attitude...
...The recent modus operandi, as practiced by Stalin and Dulles, where each kept his harem well together and no leering glances into a neighbor's garden were permitted, was easier to play...
...presence" on Southeast Asian soil...
...Hence President Johnson, echoed by Mr...
...For without France, the strategic pull of West Germany inside NATO may become irresistible...
...There is concern in German Social Democratic circles that this new party may have a potential of up to 15 percent among the young, who are dis satisfied with the "square" culture of the post-Third Reich, its lackluster leaders, its unsolved border questions, its dependence on the U.S.—in short, the absence of a German de Gaulle...
...Germany may demand a share in the use or control of nuclear weapons...
...hegemony which is now being resented...
...Others wonder why de Gaulle also favors this plan and doubt that the Social Democrats will be able to control the genie they are conjuring up...
...his place in the Planning Division of the State Department has been taken by Professor Zbigniev Brzezinski, a hard-liner on Asia but an advocate of "peaceful engagement" and general relaxation between NATO and the Warsaw powers in Europe...
...This may be a squaring of the circle, but there is no denying the fact that once the alliances in the East and in the West have started their process of dissolution, the process becomes cumulative: the less they hold together, the less they feel a need for holding together, so that in the end anything can happen...
...NATO, Brzezinski proposed and Acheson now agrees, is to be converted from an instrument of containment into an instrument of rapprochement...
...McNamara, is heard to speak of the need for "building bridges" to these East European countries...
...Bundy's work has been taken over by Walt Rostow, a man of infinite flexibility and bubbling over with ideas...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk has announced that this country stands prepared to negotiate individual issues, each on its merits...
...For both purposes, it is necessary that the big powers maintain constant diplomatic contact and seek to negotiate issues which might otherwise involve them in armed conflict...
...NATO was able to keep the Cold War at a manageable temperature...
...or other people's security, but in terms of world peace...
...Hence both the helplessness of American policy and the search for a new one...
...This implies a number of "sacrifices" for the Germans, less in terms of real protection than in terms of the juridical fictions so dear to their ossified, hopelessly lawyer-dominated foreign service...
...It is understandable that under those circumstances Mr...
...and at least some Social Democrats are apprehensive lest this spectacle bring Ulbricht closer to the fulfillment of his slogan: "Germans all around one table," to the exclusion of Germany's allies and the guarantors of the status quo...
...Detente in the West, in other words, must not necessarily mean increased tension in the East— as though there were a certain amount of hate and tension in the world which must be applied somewhere unless it is diluted evenly everywhere, or as though international diplomacy were a system of pipes in which the water must rise in one place because it falls elsewhere...
...An attempt was made to dangle before the allies the semblance of a nuclear sharing device while withholding from them the real thing...
...It might just as well be that the present loosening of the NATO and Warsaw pacts was forced upon both quite accidentally at the same time and that, accidentally also, tension in the Far East increased at the same time for both of them...
...the break-up of the Sino-Soviet bloc has resulted in the emergence of China as a potential contender for big power status, while the demise of the colonial empires has diminished the status of France and England...
...The U.S...
...Nor is German unrest confined to the lunatic fringe...
...simultaneously...
...while they honestly do not want a "finger on the trigger," they do demand "a finger on the safety catch...
...The Bonn Government not only has refused to guarantee the borders of Germany's Eastern neighbors, but it is withholding its assent to a non proliferation treaty regarding atomic weapons...
...Our problems may well become more serious, and this may be the place to say a word about the neoisolationist argument: As the largest military power, the U.S...
...Everybody seems eager to go on record that "something must be done" or "something must change...
...Should the West be unable to secure her national aim of re-unification, Bonn might then turn around and make a deal with the Soviet Union, which would upset the balance of power in Europe and eventually lead to a sixth partition of Poland...
...This view, I submit, attributes to the State Department and the Kremlin more planning and calculating than they are capable of...
...In fact, the Germans have been advised, by various roundabout hints, to prepare for a further thinning-out of the American presence in Europe...
...Professional observers of the Washington scene assume that anyone calling for "new and imaginative policies" has not the foggiest idea of what that policy should be...
...Once we are at it, we might play the new game in another garden too: why should the Chinese be excluded from the change-your-partner dance...
...As father of NATO and architect of the containment policy he had come to tell a Congressional Committee that the old NATO conception cannot be salvaged and that containment no longer operates in the accustomed ways but must be replaced or supplemented by the techniques of penetration and coexistence...
...But they must seek this accom modation now under conditions where their own liberty of maneuver is restricted by the greater independence of their satellites...
...The peace-loving and U.S.-loving Social Democrats again surge forward as spokesmen of Germany's national aspirations...
...and both nations have an interest in settling the Vietnam conflict...
...It also was neater: you knew who the good guys and the bad guys were...
...it is trying to encourage independent policies in East European chancelleries, to soften or eventually dissolve the Warsaw Pact, to search for security arrangements which would lessen the German hold on U.S...
...The defense of Germany no longer can be guaranteed by the credibility of U.S...
...Relaxation in the West will, of course, free our military hands to deal more effectively with the East, but it also will free Russian hands...
...diplomacy, however, are largely unused, partly out of blind righteousness vis-A-vis a nation which we once had condemned by a U.N...
...withdraw troops from German soil or diminish its protection of German territory...
...It was therefore somewhat surprising recently to hear this formula from Dean Acheson, who usually does know what he is talking about...
...In such a view, the United States and the Soviet Union are now working for a detente between them because they both foresee war with China...
...cannot escape its share of responsibility for the collective security of all nations...
...Rather, the tendency fostered for different purposes by American, Soviet, French and other diplomacies, is toward a loosening of the alliances, with each of the lesser 348 powers seeking favorable deals with partners on the other side of the curtain...
...The chauvinistic policies of General de Gaulle have momentarily arrested the strong movement toward European unity...
...Concomitantly, they have been urged to seek diplomatic accommodation with their Eastern neighbors and to start earnest (presumably "imaginative") conversations with the Czechs, the Poles and even the Ulbricht government (DDR...
...Why should we just replace the Russian bad guy with a Chinese bad guy...
...President Johnson should neither be blamed for premeditating the Vietnamese war nor praised for seeking "new and imaginative policies" in Europe...
Vol. 13 • July 1966 • No. 4
