Coexistence in Perspective

...4. The Soviet Union is at least partly convinced that much, if not most, of the Iron Curtain area—the mid-European strip—cannot be converted to Moscow-directed Communism at present, if ever...

...Eliminating Germany from NATO would eliminate NATO itself...

...Neither Russia nor the West would feel justified in risking all-out war...

...Among other recent participants in the discussion in these pages have been George F. Kennan ("A Proposal for Western Survival," November 16) and Richard Lowenthal ("Three Challenges to the West," November 30...

...It is a result of the crisis caused by Khrushchev's threats to expel Western forces from Berlin, and by his insisting that Washington and Moscow could and now should setde matters between themselves, end the Cold War and enter a phase of "peaceful coexistence...

...In 1959, it represents Imperial Russia, recreated—just as in 1798 Napoleon represented the French Revolution, but in 1813 he represented the French Empire...

...With this article by Adolf A. Berle Jr., THE NEW LEADER continues its contributions to the public debate on the new developments in East-West relations...

...For example, if the West were certain that a peace-seeking Russia would keep its forces entirely within a Russian frontier, the United States would not only have no interest in keeping forces in Berlin and West Germany, it would have little interest in keeping forces in Europe at all...

...It is not even certain that it will not eventually be anxious to call in the Western world to redress the imbalance of the Communist world—its own life may well be at stake...

...If he now opposes either negotiation or withdrawal, Acheson's position is understandable...

...Soviet diplomacy has been, and apparently will be, unable to prevent it...

...George F. Kennan, author of the containment policy, proposed that the U.S...

...They were cool then to the regional groupings urged by some of us (Organization of American States and later NATO), which Secretary Marshall later brought into existence...

...Khrushchev's ideas on spheres of influence and recognition of a territorial status quo, on the other hand, do not seem negotiable...

...When Chester Bowles was in Moscow, he discussed the subject with Khrushchev...

...the German Social Democrats have not been thinking along his lines...

...Eventually, he suggests, we will have to solve the German problems by unifying Communist East and non-Communist West Germany after some sort of compromise with the Soviet Union...

...Sacrifice of German security, even for the price of apparent German unity, would scarcely be acceptable to anyone in any of the countries, nor would abandonment (under whatever formula) of the two million people in Berlin...

...The Soviet Union will be at least as preoccupied—perhaps more so—with that mounting crisis as the Western powers...

...New negotiation with the Soviet Union would scarcely appeal to men who mistakenly advocated trying it in 1945...

...The crisis manufactured by the Kremlin boss paid off in other ways, too: It got him an invitation to the United States, and the promise of a visit to Moscow by President Eisenhower...

...Or, were the Soviet Union convinced that the Iron Curtain countries could not be brought by consent into its empire and would not be bridgeheads of attack against it or immediate targets for German aggression, and that their economy was as available to it as to the West, it would have little interest in maintaining divisions there, or by force keeping them within the Warsaw Pact...

...Has anything occurred to make war less likely, or to suggest that settlement may be in sight...

...Bluntly, neither side sees continuing advantage in maintaining a nuclear armaments race...

...It would, if advantageous, make "informal" war by supporting local subversive movements with arms and assistance...

...Clearly, Khrushchev would like to negotiate on questions not capable of discussion or compromise...

...History (freely invoked by both Acheson and Kennan) records that at crucial moments in situations like this, Germany has shifted eastward, sometimes making terms with Russia in the unlikeliest circumstances...

...As to power, withdrawal of American forces from Korea in 1949, accompanied by Acheson's observation that Korea was not within the area the United States considered itself bound to defend, proved a prelude to the Soviet-stimulated invasion of South Korea in 1950...

...I am sure that the Soviet Union does not fear a Western attack in the foreseeable future...

...2. The Soviet Union is, I think, convinced that the Western world would not declare all-out war against the Soviet Union even if it had preponderant power...

...Sweden can have them when it wishes to spend the money...

...China is the only country in the world which has ever conquered Russia—and the Russians have never forgotten that fact...

...Political realities may permit mutual concessions on arms and armies which will 'accelerate the movement of historical forces toward a peaceful Europe' Coexistence in Perspective By Adolf A. Berle Jr...

...In this respect I agree with Acheson—no business can be done at the moment...

...Economically, politically and perhaps militarily, this third force is coming into being...

...The real reason for maintaining a small military unit in Berlin—as hindsight shows should have been done in Korea—is to make clear that the use of Soviet force there entails the full hazard of unpredictable consequences...

...There are gains and losses for both sides in this list...

...There is reason to believe that both the Soviet Union and the West will feel increasingly safe from that kind of attack...

...The continuing tide of developments does not suggest that a settlement point has yet been reached...

...These realities are not the conditions established by Stalin's betrayal of the Yalta Agreement, nor the conditions thus far suggested by anyone—Kennan, Acheson or Khrushchev...

...Berle has for 40 years been a student and practitioner of foreign policy formulation...

...Neither the Soviet Union nor the West is prepared to impose its social and economic system on the other, and probably neither could do so...

...He should know, nevertheless, that no American Government can "accept" the existing status of the Iron Curtain countries, for example, because the American people would not accept it no matter what a President or State Department might sign...

...Let us list the chief developments...

...7. The struggle between the East and the West is increasingly less a struggle of social systems and increasingly more a question of Russian imperial ambition...

...But it will not push its own armies beyond the Western frontier of the Iron Curtain...

...The problem is less that of power than of continuing common will to use it in certain contingencies...

...So are Acheson's—though he learned the hard way...

...President Truman and Secretary of State George C. Marshall followed the containment policy with fair success...

...In any case, he proclaimed, Presidents cannot negotiate and the only admissible policy was to stand pat...

...By now, if Kennan thinks the policy's limits have been reached, his opinions are entitled to respect...

...My own feeling is that he would like to negotiate on a good many questions because, as historical forces appear to run, this may well be the last clear chance he will have to attempt to solve them on the basis of Imperial Russia...

...Almost inevitably everyone else, from Communist China to Nasserite Egypt or possibly Castro Cuba, will have them in a decade or so...

...Khrushchev's last proposal—to make a serious endeavor to eliminate nuclear weapons and reinstate conventional forces—may well have negotiable possibilities...

...To which Bowles, a canny soul, replied, "These are not equal withdrawals...

...When Kennan plumped for containment in 1947, the Soviet Union was plainly seeking to push its forces into Western Europe, into Greece, toward the Near East— in fact, along its entire perimeter and as far as it could go...

...A former Assistant Secretary of State (1938-44) and Ambassador to Brazil (1945-46), he is also an attorney, author of many books on international affairs and economics, and professor of corporation law at Columbia University's law school...

...3. The West is not so certain, but inclines to the belief that the Soviet Union will not commence formal war...

...INSTEAD OF dealing in absolutes, let us take sober inventory of the mid-European stalemate...

...Incidentally, the crisis has produced violent exchanges of opinion in the United States...

...Economic recovery, relative affluence and obvious progress have reduced the Communist revolutionary movement there to comparative impotence...

...Here negotiation is possible...

...If you withdraw your forces to Moscow, it would be more nearly an equivalent...

...Elsewhere, they are probably as obscure to the Soviet statesmen as to ours...

...On the other hand, a rational limitation of arms and force probably could be accepted by everyone, chiefly because at bottom everyone understands that realities impose themselves, and in this field they are tolerably apparent...

...Dreams of incorporating this area into the Moscow empire have partly, perhaps wholly, disappeared...

...As to current action, there is, or should be, a sharp difference between discussion and "negotiation...

...War aside, Moscow is reconciled to the continued existence of France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and similar countries as non-Communist nations...

...There is little chance of its early revival...

...NATO is not a unity, it is a collection of allies...

...I see little point in buying out of the Berlin abnormality by agreeing to withdraw from and disarm West Germany, even if Moscow agrees to pulling out of East Germany and accepting unification...

...the United States would be back to the Western side of the Atlantic Ocean...

...In most of this area, notably Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, it understands that it is a conquering imperialist ruler, governing unwilling, restless and unhappy peoples by right of its guns...

...Time is slowly establishing certain realities...

...Finally, the pace and intensity of Far Eastern affairs are likely to preoccupy the world to a point where no one will risk conflicts in Europe...

...face up to a real compromise in Europe, though he thinks that only the abolition of nuclear weapons could be negotiated now...

...Without some limitation, there is danger that within the next few years many nations will have these weapons...

...Both the Soviet Union and the American-West European group have experienced changes since Yalta, or since containment began in 1948...

...All that can be done here is discussion—statement and restatement of the positions of each side, while underlying forces continue to develop the realities...

...It did this after World War I by the Treaty of Rapallo (1924), and again in 1939 by the Hitler-Stalin Pact...

...A "neutralist" West European unit might then become quite acceptable to the United States, since no war would then be likely...

...Until then, no progress can be made...

...If I retire to the Soviet borders," Khrushchev is said to have suggested, "why can you not withdraw to the French frontier...

...But Acheson has an almost romantic view of "power...

...Kennan's point that the Berlin situation is "abnormal" and insoluble, except within the framework of wider agreement on German unification, begs the issue...

...5. Soviet dreams of bringing Western Europe into the Communist orbit through revolution within those countries have completely disappeared...

...Kennan expressed his views in an address before the Women's Democratic Club in Washington, which was published in THE NEW LEADER of November 16 under the title, "A Proposal for Western Survival...

...It does suggest that a settlement point may well be reached within a relatively few years...

...THE HE SUMMIT CONFERENCE between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President Eisenhower is, one supposes, scheduled to take place sometime next year...

...It did not do so when it had monopoly of nuclear weapons, though under most vivid provocation...

...This is the least important, though perhaps most spectacular, of the developments...

...For practical purposes, this means ending NATO and undermining the emerging unity of West Europe...

...Acheson, despite his personal feud with Kennan, continued it when he came into office in 1949...

...France has them now...

...In terms of international politics, there is balance...

...1. The Soviet Union has developed nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles...

...Negotiation" in respect to Berlin or Germany or the cold war merely means willingness to permit expansion or accept consolidation of existing Soviet power in the Iron Curtain countries and East Germany...

...Meanwhile, discussion on other points may accelerate the movement of historical forces which, to me at least, appear to be moving in Europe toward a peaceful world...

...The result was a war which the Chinese Communist Government later took over...

...There is, and will be, increasing disadvantage to the Soviet Union in holding by naked force great areas in mid-Europe whose populations hate Russians only slightly less than they hate the Communist quislings the Soviet Union has imposed on them...

...In 1945, the Soviet Union represented revolutionary forces operating in many countries...

...It caused a flurry of consultation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization chiefs of state, and a lengthy voyage of explanation and exploration by the American President...

...6. Emergence of an increasingly integrated West Europe is a fact, and a unified West Europe is a possible, if not a probable, factor in the next few years...

...But I would suggest that neither opinion is quite good enough today...

...Nor would Western Europe then wish it to do so...

...There is reason to believe, too, that the illusion of seizing the world through Communist revolution or capitalist economic collapse will increasingly die in Moscow, just as the illusion that the Communist system will break down is steadily dying in Paris, London and Washington...

...Then control of nuclear weapons would become nearly impossible...

...There is, for example, no real likelihood that the balance of force will be so upset that either side would care to start an atomic war...

...8. The intensity of the Far Eastern situation, and particularly the internal difficulties and external expansion making Communist China an explosive force, is steadily mounting, independently of the desires of both the Soviet Union and the West...

...Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson reacted as violently to this as he reacted two years ago to Kennan's suggestion of disengagement (presumably Soviet military withdrawal from the Iron Curtain countries on condition that the United States and its allies withdraw from Germany) ; and he also perceived an opportunity to belabor the current Republican policy...

...In a speech to NATO Parliamentarians, aimed at Kennan and Secretary of State Christian Herter, he maintained that the main issue today is the location of the center of power...

...Germany, rapidly becoming the most powerful European factor in it, may not forever be the Germany of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer...

...In most of the items, processes are continuing...

...He and his associates favored the Yalta meeting and cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1945...

...Then, very possibly, realities will permit vast mutual concessions on both sides regarding the actual maintenance and deployment of arms and armies...