Where the News Ends:
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin A Dissent from George F Kennan George F. Kennan always commands respectful attention when he speaks or writes on public affairs. He is one of the...
...Suppose disorders, stimulated by planted Communist agents, break out in Poland, then in Germany...
...And he possesses a gift, increasingly rare in modern times, of expressing coherent ideas in lucid, finely phrased English...
...Because of this felicity of expression, it is always a pleasure, never a painful chore, to read a book or report or speech by Kennan...
...If it were possible to assure the peaceful and permanent unification of Germany under free institutions and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the satellite states, there would be no reason to maintain United States troops in Europe...
...So it is with strong and genuine regret that I feel impelled to enter a dissent to much of what Kennan has been saying in his BBC Reith lectures (rebroadcast here by CBS...
...Kennan also declared that, if an "uncommitted" government came to the United States with the blackmailing suggestion that it would go Communist unless it received a given sum of money, the proper, self-respecting reply would be: "Go...
...Could one rely on United States intervention being as prompt and automatic as it would be if there were a Soviet attack on American forces now in Germany...
...For example, he deflated the idea of the value of a summit conference with the Soviet leaders: Nothing that could be said within a few days could change "their strangely corrupted mentality...
...Our troops would be withdrawn across the Atlantic...
...and to set up sites all over Europe for the launching of the intermediate-range missiles which America, one hopes, will have ready in the near future...
...This strange idea cropped up in other talks...
...A summit conference, with its Klieg lights of world publicity, should take place after, not before, substantial agreements had been worked out on lower levels...
...The answer, I think, would have to be in the negative...
...He is one of the few who clearly deserve the title, "Russian expert...
...The risk, I submit, is too great...
...The Associated Press summary of Kennan's last talk brought this out: "George F. Kennan cautioned tonight against strengthening NATO too much, lest that prejudice chances for peaceful negotiation with the Soviet Union...
...But this project, attractive in theory, is mined with booby-traps in practice...
...He recognizes that the Soviet Government may not consent to unification in freedom even at this price ; indeed, all the evidence points to strong doubt on this question...
...But there is a basic reasoning flaw which runs through the Kennan speeches, a flaw curious in the thinking processes of a man who saw the danger and evil of Soviet power at a time when many in high places in the United States were wilfully blind...
...The chance that, in trying to unite Germany and liberate Eastern Europe, we would lose all Germany and Western Europe is too real...
...In his six talks, there were some sound observations...
...let's make the offer...
...It may well attack, in nibbling piecemeal fashion, a West softened up by division, cross-purposes and illusions of successful appeasement...
...John Foster Dulles administered a cold douche of common sense when he recently wrote: "Nothing could be more dangerous for us than to operate on the premise that, if hostile evil forces do not quickly or readily change, it is we who must change in order to get 'agreement' with them...
...Two obvious means of restoring a balance of military power are to arm the forces of the NATO nations with nuclear weapons, so that even the weakest of them could inflict a deadly sting if subjected to Soviet attack...
...The Soviet Government screams "Fascism is reviving" and intervenes, as it did recently in Hungary...
...the Red Army would be disposed along the eastern frontier of Poland...
...However, says Kennan, we cannot know until we make the Soviets a firm offer...
...So again, even if the Soviet Government withdrew its troops and permitted free all-German elections (and this is highly improbable), the stability of free institutions would again depend on words—on the assurance that the Soviet Government would not take advantage of its immense military superiority in relation to a Germany that was militarily neutralized...
...The purpose of these steps would be to deter the Soviet Union from gambling on a one-sided superiority in modern weapons...
...Political prediction is proverbially risky, but one forecast seems almost as safe as bad weather in February: The Soviet Union will never attack a West that has developed maximum military, political and economic strength...
...This is Kennan's assumption that the free nations should not become "too" strong militarily...
...Kennan opposed both steps as prejudicial to a hypothetical future peace settlement...
...Kennan also advocates the neutralization of Germany as the necessary price of obtaining Soviet consent to the unification of the country...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 6
