Berlin and Geneva: The Kremlin, Germany and the Bomb
Coser, Lewis
The Kremlin's actions are impelled not by an ideology but by an objective: to extend the area of its control and to maximize the degree to which it can manipulate and disintegrate those parts...
...Of course you cannot trust them to live up to pledges which they consider contrary to their interests...
...But if this is their sole function then it is obvious that a few divisions of horse cavalry would fulfill exactly the same purpose as the whole NATO force...
...In fact, the approximate balance of atomic power between the Big Two has led in the last few years to just such a duopoly of power...
...Then the only realistic alternative for American policy makers would seem to be to abandon the frozen stance on East Germany which has been maintained for so long...
...The Manchester Guardian recently wrote that the West had failed to put the "one question which might seriously embarrass the Russians: Will you agree to reunion through free elections if Germany leaves NATO...
...This is indeed so, but then such freezing of the status quo of partition would at least be bought at the price of pledges which would guarantee the freedom of West Berlin...
...a thinning out by stages of foreign national forces leading to a withdrawal of the foreign troops of the NATO and Warsaw pacts...
...Steps towards German unification by stages might then no longer appear as utterly unacceptable to the Kremlin...
...The offer was not made because American foreign policy has been hopelessly in the tow of Adenauer's immobilism and because, furthermore, the State Department has not yet fully understood the new world situation in which the United States finds itself...
...they chose Berlin, but they might as well have chosen the Middle East or Quemoy...
...Both sides prepare for a war that nobody wants to fight...
...If nuclear war may depend not on intent but on accident or miscalculation then it is to the interest, of all major nations to prevent the continuation of a situation in which this can occur...
...From the moment that other powers, especially Germany, enter the atomic club the world duopoly of power would be upset, and upset in an unpredictable way...
...That is why there now exist increased chances for an escape from the balance of terror under which the world has chafed for the last few years...
...Such a proposal might still have made some sense at the time when there was an obvious disparity of power between America and Russia, but it becomes nonsensical and purely propagandistic in view of the rough power equilibrium which now in fact exists...
...Hence it is senseless to deduce from the Russian urge toward world control that one cannot negotiate with the Kremlin about any particular, immediate problem...
...But, and this fact must be underlined, this state of affairs is rapidly coming to an end...
...Hence an agreement on Germany ought to be considered only as a preliminary to an over-all settlement with the Russians...
...None of the European powers are really very interested in German unification, de Gaulle's assurance to Adenauer to the contrary notwithstanding...
...Yet the German question is, of course, a central question for the Russian policy makers precisely because the possession of atomic and H bombs by a Germany potentially bent on revenge has been their nightmare for several years...
...This accounts, I believe, for the apparent readiness of the Russian policy makers to negotiate more seriously on inspected atomic test suspension and also on other matters...
...Here we must return to our earlier assessment of Russian foreign policy...
...The Kremlin's actions are impelled not by an ideology but by an objective: to extend the area of its control and to maximize the degree to which it can manipulate and disintegrate those parts of the world not yet under its control...
...BUT HOW IS ALL THIS related to the Berlin crisis which is now at the center of attention...
...Paradoxically it becomes a task of radical critics to recall it to them...
...But then the statesmen of the world are not always interested in their interest...
...The Russians have the advantage of being able to create a crisis situation in a number of danger spots all over the world...
...I do not believe that we can understand that crisis if we restrict our focus to Germany...
...Precisely because the Russian policy makers are intent in some indeterminate future upon extending their control over the whole globe, they must have a vital interest in the prevention of incalculable world destruction...
...Why should the Russians give up their overlordship over East Germany—and reunification with democratic elections would necessarily entail this—if that would only mean that the whole of Germany would join NATO...
...The crisis cannot be solved, it cannot even be fully understood, if we fix a myopic gaze on Berlin...
...What Raymond Aron has argued in another context seems eminently reasonable in the German case: "partition is the substitute for neutrality...
...Both sides have by now enough nuclear forces to destroy each other several times...
...GIVEN THE PREVENTION of German atomic rearmament, a number of other proposals might most profitably be discussed with the Russians...
...But let us assume that the Western powers would tell Russia that a united Germany would remain outside of NATO, would Khrushchev, as the Manchester Guardian argues, necessarily refuse...
...The diffusion of atomic weapons combined with the danger of accident or miscalculation is so portentous a menace that for the first time in the history of mankind it is to the interest of all powers to agree upon the common objective of atomic disarmament...
...Hence recognition of that regime remains the only realistic alternative...
...They are ready to come to terms with the only other world power, the United States, for a partition of the world into agreed-upon zones of influence...
...I am aware that atomic disarmament is no cure-all, but I am also convinced that without an end to the runaway nuclear race through enforceable safeguards binding on all, there can be no cure...
...Underground living will be enforced, he said, by the grim realities of a world in which even small countries would possess enough standardized intercontinental ballistic missiles to "take out" any other nation...
...June 1, 1959 Lieut...
...Earlier Hanson W. Baldwin, military news analyst of The New York Times, advised the information officer to tell the public what needed to be done "without making them unduly despondent...
...It is even doubtful whether unification is as popular within Germany as it was a few years ago...
...If there is to be no reunion in the foreseeable future then there remains only the alternative of accepting the fact that short of nuclear war there is for the time being no chance of getting rid of the East German regime, distasteful as it may be...
...To a totalitarian regime anything not yet "coordinated" is of necessity threatening, the outer world is evil because uncontrolled, hence only total dominion can give ultimate reassurance...
...The size and location of foreign garrisons in both East and West Germany, the future international obligations and status of a united Germany, the status of Berlin itself as a basis for propaganda and political action could all become subjects for negotiations, as George Kennan has suggested...
...There is only one situation which might allow for a halt in the all-out atomic arms race: the wish of the participants to keep others from entering it...
...If that were not the case Vienna, Helsinki and Belgrade would be at least as endangered as Berlin...
...As Raymond Aron has argued: "land armies no longer have the function, even hypothetically, of waging a war in which the thermonuclear horror would not be unleashed...
...The American plan for German unification, predicated on Germany remaining within NATO and having access to atomic weapons, has, of course, no chance whatever of meeting with any kind of positive response from the Russians...
...I wish people would stop dragging in the red herring about "you cannot trust Russian pledges...
...The Russian policy makers may now be ready to enter into serious negotiations with the West because they fear that the military bi-polarity of the recent past is about to be upset by the imminent possibility that several NATO nations—and some neutrals—will acquire atomic weapons in the near future...
...But suppose the Russians reject unification nevertheless...
...There is nothing more perturbing to totalitarian planners than an unpredictable situation...
...It might be suggested that this second solution would only amount to a perpetuation and legitimation of the bi-polarity of power now existing in Europe and the world...
...New York Times, January 8, 1959...
...Hence if America were willing to offer the continuation of the present atomic duopoly (England might be considered a simple dependent of America in all major respects), it would be offering something of real value from the point of view of Russian interests...
...THE FREEZING and legitimation of the status quo would still leave the world in the same state of tension which has become all but intolerable in recent years...
...If the atomic race continues much longer, the strain on the nerves of those who hold the ultimate trigger—and while these may be statesmen they may also be pilots in planes armed with nuclear weapons—may be too difficult to sustain...
...That is why, or so I believe, the Russian policy makers are now willing to enter serious negotiations with the West...
...This is an age of global politics...
...The establishment of a zone of disengagement comprising both parts of Germany as well as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary...
...The Russian policy makers, knowing that there is no chance at the present time to achieve a monopoly of world power, are quite willing to settle for a duopoly...
...If the Russians were to reject unification along the above lines, then one must assume that they are willing to trade recognition of Eastern Germany for some mutually acceptable arrangement for Berlin...
...But it is often to their interest to keep pledges...
...their sole function is to create the causus belli atomici...
...The Russians keep pledges, and not only the Russians, just as long as it is to their interest to keep them...
...Such a settlement must first be centered, as I argued earlier, on a limitation of the membership of the atomic club, on an agreed-upon cessation of the testing of new nuclear weapons, and, at a later stage, on an agreed-upon reduction in atomic stockpiles, missiles and conventional armaments...
...When NATO was originally conceived it was thought that European rearmament would involve a build-up of conventional arms to enable NATO to halt a full-scale attack without recourse to atomic weapons...
...Clarence R. Huebner, director of the State Civil Defense Commission, predicted that within five years most Americans would be living in fallout shelters and would see sunshine only by taking a calculated risk...
...But ultimate objectives do not necessarily govern political moves at any point in time...
...Today's NATO forces can only provide a trip wire or a fire alarm, they are no longer militarily decisive in themselves...
...and an unconditional ban on all nuclear weapons from an agreed-upon central European area might be acceptable to the Russians if such moves were predicated on keeping Germany out of the atomic club...
...The Russians are vitally concerned with denying access to atomic armaments to Germany and other second-rank powers...
...This objective looms so large in Russian calculations that they might be willing to make a number of otherwise distasteful concessions in order to attain it...
...But in the age of the H bomb this conception is utterly anachronistic...
Vol. 6 • July 1959 • No. 3
