Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Will There Be War Over Berlin? WASHINGTON SOMETIMES, on a short visit to Washington, when one makes the rounds of the State Department, the...
...He has already used ugly threats about what he and his stooge Walter Ulbricht may do if they do not get their way about creating a phony "free city" status for West Berlin, which is free right now, and wishes to remain so...
...Not that there was any decisive reason for optimism...
...The legislation which prevents such sharing may have seemed to make sense when America possessed a monopoly in this field...
...The only man who may conceivably know whether there will be a war is Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev...
...It would, of course, be better if de Gaulle had the French Army in Europe, not in Algeria...
...He softened this remark by adding that Macmillan had not given up the essentials of the Western position...
...Implied criticism of the Macmillan mission to Moscow was voiced by a continental diplomat who said: "When you are being blackmailed it is not wise to pay a visit to your blackmailer...
...Rumors have been filtering out of assurances by Khrushchev to British Premier Harold Macmillan that Moscow has no intention of blockading Berlin or of provoking a clash with Western troops...
...What part of the world is really most important...
...On this point, I was somewhat more optimistic at the end of my Washington stay than I had been at the beginning...
...But I have a feeling that the history of 1939 will not recur...
...What he hoped to bring back from Moscow is what Benjamin Disraeli felt he had brought back from the famous Congress of Berlin: peace with honor...
...Withholding these weapons from our allies is now mere shortsighted stubbornness...
...American military power, non-existent except for a defense navy 20 years ago, is very real at the present time...
...And, if Khrushchev should shake down the West once by threatening war over Berlin there would be nothing to prevent him from coming back again and again...
...And it is my personal impression that Macmillan is aware of the Communist danger and is in no sense a conscious or naive appeaser...
...had such an alliance existed in 1939, Hitler might never have struck...
...The most melodramatic aspect of the question, of course, is whether there will be a military conflict over the freedom of West Berlin and the right of the Western powers to unrestricted access to the city...
...The strife which is devastating that unfortunate country is a tremendous indirect service to Soviet imperialism...
...For the blackmailer proverbially always comes back...
...The answer to that should certainly be an uncompromising No...
...this step would carry unmistakable conviction...
...Second, the word "disengagement," often associated with British policy, is ambiguous and could be dangerous, if it meant a "freeze" of the existing military situation and a permanent denial to the German Federal Republic of nuclear weapons...
...Khrushchev may be a gambler, but hardly such a reckless one as to invite the application of this power...
...Another positive element in the present situation is NATO...
...WASHINGTON SOMETIMES, on a short visit to Washington, when one makes the rounds of the State Department, the Pentagon and foreign embassies in pursuit of background for the news, there is a question of where to begin...
...The uncertain spot in the Western diplomatic line-up, so often France in the past, is now Great Britain...
...There has also been a great change for the better in the creation of the new "Paris-Bonn Axis...
...there is now no reason to expect that May 27 will be different from any other day...
...West Berlin, and the closely related subject of divided Germany, held the center of the stage...
...Now General Charles de Gaulle is Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's strongest backer and an avowed sceptic about the value of a summit conference without some advance assurance of Soviet willingness to negotiate...
...There was no such perplexity in Washington in late March 1959...
...At the same time the line between legitimate diplomatic flexibility—bargaining concessions against counter-concessions — and appeasement can sometimes become a little blurred...
...There are two points on which Chancellor Adenauer and his new partner, General de Gaulle, might feel legitimate misgivings...
...Speaking of nuclear weapons, it is my impression that the worst American political and military blind spot is the failure to share these with our continental NATO allies...
...One hopes Khrushchev already knows that we mean business...
...But that condition has long ceased to exist...
...and he is not telling...
...The Soviet dictator has been backing away from the bleaker implications of his November 27 ultimatum...
...It is easy to imagine what screams of protest would have gone up in France a few years ago at the idea of "dying for Berlin...
...There would be no better or quicker way to put flesh on the rather bare bones of NATO than to equip every NATO national force with the same tactical nuclear weapons which our own troops possess...
...The first is whether Khrushchev is to be paid for leaving West Berlin alone...
...Like Adolf Hitler in 1939, Khrushchev today holds the key to the fateful decision...
Vol. 42 • April 1959 • No. 16
