Berlin and Geneva: Co-existence Revisited

...In the framework of the present negotiations each proposal is advanced to serve specific diplomatic needs of its sponsors...

...The neutralist and isolationist opposition has been silenced momentarily, but the cold war is droning on...

...The threat that they might acquire nuclear weapons is the nightmare of big power diplomats, their rivalries make the peace machinery of the United Nations nearly unworkable and the competition of larger powers for the good-will of the small ones may still engulf all in a general war...

...but he dropped this unnegotiable document with indecent haste and proposed to settle for something much smaller, either de jure or de facto: the East German puppet regime to gain some status as a controlling agency on its territory and the West to retain the right of occupation in West Berlin...

...On the contrary, under the leadership of Pervukhin, that most advanced country in the satellite orbit is now being built up as the capital piece in empire planning and its living standards may well be comparable to West Germany's before the current sevenyear plan runs out...

...the Russian armies will return by right where in 1956 they came with a bad conscience and against the protests of the civilized world...

...Western Germany is free to "increase the exchanges below cabinet level" with the East Germans and can continue to dream of Berlin as their common capital...

...It plainly cannot be forced out by threats, nor induced by attractive offers of "mutual" withdrawal...

...The Western powers are hopelessly committed to defending positions, however anomalous, and governments, however odious, whose abandonment would weaken the status quo, which in turn is defined as that which cannot be abandoned...

...that Khrushchev would rather give up what he has in order not to lose it...

...This will satisfy nearly everybody: Khrushchev remains in the position to repeat his squeeze-play on Berlin any time he pleases...

...armies can confront each other for a hundred years without firing a shot if the political conflicts between their countries have been settled...

...PART OF THE DISILLUSIONMENT in the under-developed countries is due to the fact that independence has solved neither their economic problems nor increased their political self-respect...

...Spokesmen of the left in many countries deny that we must play the Russian game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose...

...The arms race is costly in manpower...

...its components themselves find it difficult to co-exist with their neighbors...

...But again we took no diplomatic or military action which might have led to the withdrawal of Russian troops...

...BUT MUST CO-EXISTENCE ALWAYS remain a one-way...

...A year ago we stated this as a condition of fact, tacitly agreed to by Dulles on condition that he would not have to admit it publicly...

...After the failure of "liberation," the principal device which they recommend goes by the name of "disengagement...

...What they would disengage seems to be the dangerous confrontation of hostile armies...

...and therefore, there will be no bargain on Germany either at the summit or elsewhere, except as Bonn agrees to Khrushchev's terms...

...their fight for self-determination can be supported with diplomatic means...

...If American military calculations are an indication of Soviet Russian defense thinking, then the present deployment is cheaper than the logistic preparations for possible re-entry in a wide area of disengagement...

...We need not doom the peoples behind the Iron Curtain to despair and subservience...

...The Soviet Union can identify itself with change as such, though it is a mistake to identify resistance to change with a defense of capitalism...

...This is not a question of Mr...

...England seems at times to think of herself as a "mediator" between East and West rather than as belonging to one party...

...any second-class counselor in his foreign office can tell him by the textbook that he should not be in a bargaining mood today...

...but the presence of Russian garrisons in Central Europe does not add to Soviet military manpower requirements...

...That truly is placing the thief in charge of the strongbox...

...in Germany NATO begins to be regarded as the greatest obstacle to re-unification...

...It would stabilize the present balance of terror...

...it still has to be implemented...

...To make this scheme acceptable to the Kremlin, it is proposed to withdraw American troops behind the Rhine and to let a united Germany withdraw from its NATO obligation...

...He wants an end to the arms race, and precisely for that reason he cannot contemplate disengagement...

...to legitimize, the present borderline between the "socialist" and the non-socialist camps...

...For a while, high hopes had been attached to the formation of a group, extending from Stockholm to Bandung, which might use restraining influence on the two "blocs" or even act as an arbiter between them...

...Paradoxically, the movement for independence has intensified the "presence" of the big powers in the formerly undisputed areas...

...Much as an agreement to stop the tests is to be desired, it should be made clear that it does not mean disarmament in any true sense of the word...

...The summit meeting will not quite bury the cold war axe...

...Herter placed on the Geneva table was a terminal effort to show what we ought to fight for...

...All similar plans presuppose that the Russians are so afraid of West Germany that they would rather be rid of East Germany too...

...But why should the Red army leave in the first place...

...The traditional powers might once have adjusted to these changes...

...Under the terms of co-existence, enforced by Soviet power and fear of nuclear war, such a peace would mean that self-determination is not recognized for peoples now living under Soviet control...

...With modern arms and techniques, finally, the area of withdrawal can never be really "disengaged" so long as there has taken place no political disengagement between the two power blocs behind the withdrawal line...

...The cold war, however, has changed the meaning of change, and the advent of totalitarian forces has falsified its mechanics...

...The question of reunification might then be posed again, not by the West but by Pervukhin...

...they become prisoners of their ancient quarrels and fall prey to their need for strong alliances...

...The real problem is not military but political disengagement, and the Russians are trying to persuade us that co-existence, or the recognition of the status quo, is the best way to achieve that...

...but they think the summit meeting will close the atomic club to all newcomers without Russia having to pay any price for a limitation which, they feel, is in the interest of the other two members too...

...coexistence to them is a fluid state of power relations which requires constant up-dating by slow or disorderly means...

...But now Khrushchev wants this humiliating guarantee in writing...

...The Iraq revolution was directed less against the oil companies than against the Baghdad Pact, and it overthrew a government which had given the country a strength it had never had before, but which was stigmatized as a tool of imperialism...

...Conceivably, Soviet diplomats might wish to avoid being drawn into any conflict between the two Germanys or between Germans and Poles...

...but it implies a tacit understanding that two powers or power blocs will respect each other's sovereignty and will not use open, direct aggression in trying to change the territorial status quo...

...They have not gained more room for maneuver and have failed to constitute a neutral bloc of "third powers...

...It sacrifices the cause of German self-determination to the cause of German unity at any price...

...did raise its voice and had the Soviet Union "condemned" no less than ten times by the U.N...

...even in the United States, a new isolationism, recently emerging on the Left, questions a policy which requires us to assert from time to time that we are ready to die for Berlin...

...Which of the two methods might be agreed upon depends on many factors, not the least being the possibility of control and inspection...

...No matter how far troops be withdrawn or "thinned out" east and west of a dividing line, care will be taken to maintain their relative strengths or equivalents, as the technical term goes...

...The unconcealed aim of both Russia and Britain is to stop or prevent the nuclear armament of Germany...

...Yet where the West tries to "co-exist actively" they cry "cold war...

...but they are not willing to buy this with a retreat from their own build-up in East Germany and Poland...

...contrariwise, armies can be disengaged from each other as far as Ethiopia from Italy, and the distance will be no problem for an aggressor...

...under its rigid definition of what constitutes a friendly, peace-loving government, the Soviet Union will not sign, let alone keep, any agreement never to re-occupy any part of Germany, should the majority there elect a government which, in Khrushchev's words, fails to represent its "true" interests...

...A prohibition of nuclear arms in Western Germany would relieve pressure which the Soviet Empire might have reason to fear one day...

...Conceivably, they would like to prevent a further NATO build-up in Germany...

...This minimum of co-existence has been maintained uneasily between the Soviet Empire and the Atlantic combination ever since the Berlin airlift...

...they become attached to one bloc or the other, and find it difficult to keep up as much as a semblance of the Bandung spirit of neutrality...

...Dulles died amidst mournful prayers by his worst enemies that a leader of equal character and strength might arise in the West...

...In vain did the ex-colonialists offer their ex-wards economic concessions—for the anti-colonial revolution has taken a political turn: if once the grievance was the profit taken out of the country, now it is the privileged status of the foreigner...

...The way of negotiations is long, hard and uncertain, but failure carries the ultimate penalty...

...but semi-consciously there is a connotation of a more ominous meaning: they would disengage themselves from the obligations and responsibilities which they feel are becoming a burden, maybe a danger to themselves...

...In practice, no "Third Force" has been able to impose more co-existence on the first two...

...they also tend to be irreversible...

...While their adversary seems to espouse the justice of popular causes and the dynamism of change the worldover, the Western powers have become the prisoners of their counterrevolutionary allies everywhere, and in fact have become more reactionary abroad than they ever were at home...

...The relationship so described is neither war nor peace...

...in exchange, the Kremlin might have to agree to some kind of inspection which would lift the iron curtain a little, as the Anglo-American negotiators desire...

...they are strictly self-serving...

...but it will increase the possibilities of co-existence, with the advantage, we fear, on the Soviet side...

...Meanwhile the State Department impresses no one with its logic that 80 million Germans united are easier to control than separated, and the Germans are not making friends for themselves by renewing their claim to the frontiers of 1937...

...Instead of increasing the chances of peace, they have multiplied the dangers of war...

...During the East German revolt of June 1953 we applauded politely but lifted not a finger to prevent its suppression...

...For this very reason Soviet diplomacy is not now buying any disengagement schemes...

...For the dynamics of change not only tend to favor the Soviet Union...

...Conceivably, they might wish to prevent the equipment of West Germany with atomic rocketry...

...Negotiating for the sake of negotiating may be a device, if one has a policy, but it is no policy either...

...It is not just conceivable but foreseeable that in this Assembly Communist demagoguery could force the Western socialists to vote with the Eastern deputies on key issues of the electoral law and of social legislation, thus giving them the necessary two-thirds majority to take over Western Germany by the same methods which succeeded in East Germany and Czechoslovakia...

...elsewhere the NATO obligations toward Germany begin to look burdensome, if not dangerous...

...Withdrawal, on the contrary, might place an additional burden on preparedness...

...This purpose might be achieved by either or both of two methods: by declaring a permanent and general prohibition of atomic tests, thus closing the atomic club of three, or by designating a Central European area in which all such weapons would be prohibited...

...The foreign ministers have swapped invectives for a month and Khrushchev has put his German satellite on the map...

...If Khrushchev just sits still and watches NATO disintegrate, he can avoid paying a price for its premature demise...

...How they might achieve that can be read in the so-called "Deutschland-Plan" published by the German Social Democratic Party which really deserves the name "All-Deutsche Socialist Party...

...At the Geneva Conference of 1955 a declaration of principle was extracted from Molotov, charging in effect the four powers to proceed with the reunification of Germany...

...BOTH DISARMAMENT AND POLITICAL disengagement are being envisaged in the most serious part of the current negotiations: the debate on the control of atomic arms...

...During the past year or two, Khrushchev's aim has not changed...

...For a while smaller countries could nourish the illusion that standing aloof means being spared...

...Disengagement" plans vocally propounded by panicky politicians in all Western countries promise Khrushchev the American withdrawal from Europe which remained Stalin's unfulfilled aim...

...to legitimize, his East German satellite republic and to freeze, i.e...

...Often conceived in the spirit of the cold war, some of these generous grants only have met the competition of similar Soviet donations...

...The revolutionary nations crave recognition of their new status as independent countries which have grown up from under the tutelage of the big powers...

...A revival of the "Third Force" idea in Central Europe, which might be attractive to the Scandinavians, the Yugoslays, the Egyptians, Indians and other Bandung powers, would then, it is argued, reverse the trend of Soviet magnetism for the weaker nations...

...People who are still hungry and dynamic look at the status quo not as something to be preserved but as something to be developed...

...A Russian attempt to change the status quo in Korea was frustrated by American might and subsequently the Chinese thwarted the American drive north of the 38th parallel...

...In truth we now are co-existing collectively rather than individually...

...All this is so elementary it is almost useless to repeat to someone who refuses to "dig" it...

...It is a tragic misunderstanding that the German socialists feel their boys are being trained as gun fodder for an American attack on Russia, that Mendes-France fears NATO is being misused to bolster up British positions, that the British feel their power is being sapped for the benefit of German unification and that Senator Mansfield should think this is an appropriate moment to campaign against foreign aid and against the mayor of Berlin, as though we did not have a common cause...

...That is precisely why he craves a summit meeting with Eisenhower...

...To negotiate is not to capitulate...

...Moreover, its voices are passive or reflexive: I suffer your co-existence with me...

...Khrushchev's difficulties with his friends, of his character and moods...

...The very word "co-existence" has lost its innocent meaning and has become the propaganda slogan of one side...

...The idea of a "Third Force," based on the assumption that neutrality is possible, has again given way to the compulsion of alignment...

...France is more concerned about the Mediterranean fleet than about NATO unity...

...At least on the European front, it now looks as though the powers might be ready to conclude an armistice or even to formalize the uneasy peace...

...street...

...Paradoxical though this statement sounds, a little reflection will show its soundness...

...If one sits down to negotiate, one expects an outcome which makes co-existence more tolerable—if not outright pleasant, then at least not more unpleasant than before...

...With the Iron Curtain once established de jure where today it is only de facto, the implication would not be lost on other nations under Quisling governments: the West has given you up...

...But most wishful is a policy of yielding to ultimatums that will result in nothing but more ultimatums...

...that Khrushchev thinks a united Germany would out of sheer gratitude stay disarmed or renounce her Polish irredenta...

...meanwhile it is good for political baiting—Clausewitz recommends that no question be settled so long as its unsettled state is an embarrassment for the adversary...

...Even the well-meaning schemes to help under-developed countries on the way toward industrialization do not now sufficiently stir the imagination of progressive forces in these countries...

...But it has never been formulated with such clarity by its foremost spokesmen, and for an obvious reason: if the scheme is indeed so disastrous for the Soviet Union—as our friend Richard Lowenthal has brilliantly shown in a recent issue of Encounter—then no Soviet statesman is likely to accept it so long as he has the power to reject it...

...A summit meeting of heads of state is likely to seal a test ban for nuclear arms largely on Russian terms, i.e., without inspection on a scale technically sufficient or politically desirable...

...and the USSR "guarantors" of a collective security arrangement between Germany and her Eastern neighbors...

...Its essence is to get the Russian army out of East Germany and thereby to relieve the pressure on the satellite empire and eventually to roll back the Iron Curtain beyond the Pripet marshes...

...in December 1956 the U.S...

...that the Russian army would rather yield a position than be forced to maintain it...

...Even if all the other assumptions were less fantastic, the Soviet Union could never allow East Germany to go back from "socialism" to capitalism...

...Whether Herter can use alarm words like "agonizing reappraisal" to stop such centrifugal lures, remains to be seen...

...if once the hewers of wood and drawers of water rebelled against economic exploitation, now their politicians and officers stage pronunciamentos against being exploited as pawns in the great game of world politics...

...It offers to representatives of both Germanys, the freely elected and the Moscow-appointed, "parity" not only in an all-German Parliament, but in the judiciary and in various economic institutions which conceivably might give Ulbricht's deputies a seat in the Ruhr authority and other insti tutions of the European common market...

...Instead of lowering the iron curtain at the Elbe, the SPD plan might extend it to the Rhine...

...it is useless to stage rebellions a la Hungary, coups a la Tito or even thaws a la Gomulka...

...The West might yield on many points of mere prestige, such as recognition of various governments now not recognized, provided it holds on to the substance, such as its rights in Berlin...

...If, however, such proposals to withdraw from Central Europe or to dissolve NATO or to accommodate the Russians in Berlin or to form bi-lateral councils with the East German puppet government on the basis of parity, are being presented as plans to "disengage," their authors are only half candid...

...The Russians think that by that time the 17 million East Germans may be strong enough to take over the 60 million West Germans...

...that he would rather expose the whole satellite empire to a threat in order to avert one to Eastern Germany...

...Re-entry" by the major powers is the crux of any disengagement plan...

...For the SPD plan makes both the U.S...

...they could even imagine that by gaining their independence from Western colonialism they were not risking the embrace of Eastern imperialism...

...It is trying to shirk the burden of co-existence and to shove the responsibility for defending self-determination over to the United Nations...

...palace coups were frequent, affected the balance of world powers but little and their effects never lasted long...

...they are losing the ability to co-operate with progressive parties in the under-developed countries...

...Instead of extending the area of freedom, it might subject the 60 million to the regime of the 17 million, and the SPD would then be the first victim of its plan...

...One has just to consider what such an offer might have achieved in December 1956, in order to understand its persuasiveness...

...The "package" which Mr...

...Moreover, since the West will not take such a loss any more quietly than the Russians, the plan is likely to bring war rather than disengagement...

...If one engages in negotiations one must know, approximately at least, what one wants to achieve and what the other side may be ready to agree to...

...We are faced with a neo-isolationism of the left which has forgotten the lessons of collective security...

...At this year's Geneva conference, the West tried to use the so-called German question as an opening wedge against the satellite empire...

...it would not diminish the danger of nuclear war one iota...

...Assembly for suppressing Hungary...

...In fact their blindness did not protect them from the dangers they refused to see, and the result of so much praiseworthy effort toward multi-lateral co-existence has been a relapse into the two-camps world of the cold war...

...Using his tactical advantage in Berlin, he thinks he can force the Western powers to recognize, i.e...

...r.s.—Two months after writing this, I still am sorry to see no silver lining on the horizon...

...Disengagement, more over, means a vast network of inspection and control personnel which the Russians are extremely reluctant to allow on their territory and that of their satellites...

...The role of an opposition under these circumstances is to watch that no means of peace is left untried, and in particular to assure the government that it needs to save people but not face, principles but not appearances, peace but not position papers...

...for the NATO conscience, finally, Berlin may still symbolize a beacon of liberty and a promise to the unliberated peoples of the East...

...But the United Nations is nothing except the nations that stand behind it, and "let Hammarskjold do it" is no policy...

...Yet, even if all these resources had been applied in the purest spirit, with the right method, at the place of optimum benefit and had not aroused suspicions that we were merely trying to buy friendship—even then their necessity would not prove their sufficiency: they are a supplement to, but no substitute for a foreign policy which comes to grips with the fundamental problem of political change...

...but his grow ing power, skill and ruthlessness have softened the West's determination not to surrender other people's rights to self-determination...

...This indeed is what Stalin, Malenkov and Khrushchev have done consistently...

...but that clearly can be prevented more effectively with the Russian occupation than without...

...With the second method, America or NATO would be prohibited from installing pentomic units in Germany, but France might be left free to experiment with such weapons in the Sahara...

...Conceivably Khrushchev might be hard pressed to fulfill some of his exaggerated domestic promises which threaten to land him in the guns-or-butter pitfall...

...THE NEGOTIATIONS which Khrushchev's ultimatum set starting last November have revealed basic flaws in the Western defense posture...

...It has been my unfortunate function to warn of illusions in foreign affairs, and I still know of no gadget, device, panacea or unilateral action which could transport us from co-existence to co-operation...

...he does not have to relinquish to Grotewohl and Ulbricht more power than he thinks fit for these underlings...

...Soviet imperialism now uses "co-existence" as a cover for its infiltration in neutral countries and as a fence to protect its Empire from infiltrators...

...The cold war has been fought to a standstill, with each side admitting that it cannot hope to "liberate" populations in the other's orbit...

...To stop this kind of upset, the old powers would have to, and do, add more rigidities to their defense of the status quo: dictatorship, militaristic terrorism, bloody suppression of popular movements...

...one system of collective security co-exists competitively with the other...

...IN THE UNDER-DEVELOPED AREAS, likewise, the present mode of co-existence tends to weaken the position of the "have" powers...

...Even the more significant changes of recent revolutions which did affect the social and political structure of the underdeveloped areas might still have met with sympathy, or even found encouragement in the West...

...More countries are losing the status of independents...

...It would leave the big three in possession of their atomic stockpile and of the facilities to replenish and develop it...

...None of these possible arrangements, however, including the Rapacki and Eden plans which in themselves and at another time seemed to offer possibilities of relaxation, would now constitute disengagement or would make co-existence any less unpleasant...