Failure Is Assured

...It is perfectly plain what Moscow will demand to start with: American withdrawal from Europe, abandonment and dismantling of U.S...

...As for the chiefs of state, if they are capable of learning the lesson of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, they should know what they have to do??or rather not do...

...As for the foreign ministers, they should, as far as possible, keep still...

...The West is playing blind man's buff with people who play with poison, daggers and revolvers...

...and it can always proclaim that it is making great sacrifices in the interest of universal peace...

...That, of course, would not prevent it from proceeding to carry out its further plans for world hegemony by the methods it has always found so successful...

...3 Articles on the Berlin Meeting Failure Is Assured The Foreign Ministers Conference cannot bring true peace any closer By Boris Souvarine Paris Since the end of World War II, innumerable international conferences have been held in a vain effort to resolve the many questions left unsettled on V-E Day...

...The Western democracies give frequent proof of their revulsion at the very idea of war...

...It allows these implacable enemies to gain time??the thing they most need just now...

...Or if Moscow should generously consent to the evacuation of Austria, the fate of that country would still be decided in conjunction with the future of all Central Europe...

...has a serious proposal to make, its leaders will know to whom to address it and how to go about it...

...Their function is to listen, to suggest, to negotiate, to transmit...

...Boris Souvarine, now an editor and journalist in Paris, is the author of the classic biography of Stalin...

...The Western governments, on the other hand, are subject to all sorts of contradictory internal and external pressures...

...Statesmen and generals publish memoirs and confidential documents without allowing a reasonable interval to pass...

...The Communists have never honored a political agreement...

...Communist strategy, in addition to unified leadership, enjoys absolute secrecy in its intentions and operations...

...It also accepts the myth of "peaceful coexistence" with a gigantic power which ceaselessly wages a war of lies and slander against the West...

...We would do well to launch this revision by abandoning useless conferences...

...So long as the Western allies continue this policy of blindness, there is no use counting on stately diplomatic get-togethers to bring us a whit closer to a true peace...

...But they cannot intimidate or convince men who are utterly without scruple by continuing the fruitless exchange of words that has gone on for almost ten years...

...The Soviet Government knows what it wants and where it is going...

...Persons official and officious pour forth statements, revelations and explanations which are precious to Moscow...

...In the Western camp, everything is exposed to public??and thus to enemy??view on the grounds of democracy...

...The Communists and their neutralist allies urge "mutual concessions" in order to insure the success of the Big Four conference...

...In return for this, the West can hope for nothing but some insignificant concessions which will be swiftly nullified by the march of easily predictable events...

...We must break with the delusion which has characterized the policy of Washington and London, Paris and Rome, in the face of Communism's drive for world domination...

...If Moscow, for example, seeking to detach France from the Atlantic coalition, should agree to a compromise to end the war in Indo-China, that country would still eventually fall into Communist hands in the same manner that Czechoslovakia did...

...There have been some 300 sessions on Austria, and, of course, endless series of negotiations on Korea in which the public has long since lost interest...

...They are quite capable of assuming initiatives in accordance with instructions from their governments...

...Announced with great fanfare and to the accompaniment of useless??and hence harmful ??commentaries, they could only increase public disillusionment, uneasiness and confusion, to the advantage of no one but the Communists...

...has made such extensive foreign encroachments since the war that it can easily retreat at a few secondary points without handicapping its future expansion...

...Consequently, there is no longer a single concession we can make to a totalitarianism all too prone to take advantage of conciliation...

...It is rather for Soviet imperialism to disgorge its ill-gotten gains...

...It has no fear of "losing face," for it has neither parliamentary institutions nor a free press nor an organized public opinion...

...There are Western ambassadors in Moscow and Soviet ambassadors in the Western capitals...

...This being the case, the West should steel itself and revise its entire attitude toward a lawless, faithless enemy whose strength is augmented by our weaknesses...

...All these conclaves have had one thing in common: Their failure was assured in advance...

...But the present impasse is the result of senseless postwar concessions which were not mutual...

...It recognizes the "cold war" desired by the enemy and, by mistaking passivity for wisdom, permits the initiative in this struggle to remain with the Communists...

...When the U.S.S.R...

...Even military matters??technical questions of armaments, troops and bases??are discussed in public...

...they are pulled this way and that, and are as lacking in a broad conception of policy as they are in precise views of particular problems...

...as a rather dangerous adversary in the commonplace sense of a bygone era??an adversary to be watched and contained, but not on any account to be antagonized...

...Under these conditions, one may well ask: What is the use of a new conference at which the Soviets will offer nothing which can open any new vistas...

...We have been lost in a multitude of conferences of the Big Three, Four, Five and Six, of foreign ministers, deputies and general-staff chiefs...

...This consists in regarding the U.S.S.R...

...New concessions would mean rewarding the Kremlin for its cold war, its coups d'etats and aggressions, and inviting it to continue right up to the ultimate provocation...

...bases throughout the Continent, admission of Communist China to the United Nations, unification of Germany under a semi-Communist government, Europe's reversion to a purely defensive status, and lifting of the embargo on strategic goods...

...There is nothing to justify the hope for such a revolution in Soviet policy, which, in the absence of sufficient external pressure, can be produced only by internal transformations...

...The U.S.S.R...

...One conference, more or less, will change nothing in the alignment of forces or the views held about them on both sides...

...The so-called Atlantic policy tolerates the pernicious activities of a thousand auxiliary organizations of Soviet imperialism when it fails to move decisively against the Communist parties of France and Italy, the two countries most exposed to conquest from within...

...The preliminary bargaining on the Big Four Conference already indicates the shape of things to come...

...it has countless auxiliary organizations everywhere in the world and is accountable to no one...