No Agreement at the Summit-Now:
BERLE, ADOLF A. Jr.
By Adolf A. Berle Jr. No AGREEMENT AT THE SUMMIT-NOW The problems of Europe must be postponed before genuine agreement can be reached THE EUROPEAN problem is once more in the news, this time...
...In consequence, if I were Adenauer I should prefer not to' accept any such word...
...Some observers insist that the Berlin situation, and with it the German situation, is getting worse while time runs against us...
...Russia supported some of the French moves in Algeria...
...What was really being demanded was briefly: "Kindly turn Germany over to the Soviet Union...
...Five years from now, the Soviet Union may be willing to recognize realities, and join the Western world in creating a real solution to the problem of Europe: a reconstructed neutral belt down the middle of Europe, with each country attending to its own social problems...
...First, the unified Germany must be democratic...
...My own position is that time is in favor of the West in this matter...
...No AGREEMENT AT THE SUMMIT-NOW The problems of Europe must be postponed before genuine agreement can be reached THE EUROPEAN problem is once more in the news, this time relating to next week's summit conference...
...For the last month the world has been filled with preliminary meetings in preparation for that conference...
...A further reality is that if they do incorporate themselves into such a system, the rest of the world will have to gird its loins for almost certain war, as after Munich in 1938...
...It was elaborately prepared for by de Gaulle who, at the moment, is enjoying the almost dictatorial powers voted to him by the French Chamber of Deputies...
...They aligned themselves with the Marshall Plan, they began to close ranks and the Soviet threat was thrown back...
...Thus far the European union shows little signs of dividing...
...I do not think this will happen, but one can see why the State Department burned the midnight oil during the Khrushchev visit to France...
...I have no doubt he expressed that view with force to Eisenhower...
...My hope, therefore, is that out of the summit conference will come understanding that no agreement is possible today...
...Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany has recently been in Washington conferring with President Eisenhower...
...One is de Gaulle's insistence on France's inherent grandeur, and his claim that in all military and diplomatic matters France must act separately from the Allies, though in any given set of arrangements he indicates that he will go along...
...This was done by calling for general strikes, and by trying to cause a revolt in the belief that the three governments were too weak to put down the ensuing disturbances...
...In unification it sees an obstacle to Soviet hopes to take over Western Europe as a part of its larger project for a world-wide Communist empire...
...Using them, he rounded up all the men in Paris who might be surmised to be enemies of Khrushchey...
...It probably will be less anxious at that time to force its system on a great part of Western Europe whose vast population does not want and fundamentally does not need a change in system...
...Khrushchev is not yet willing to recognize that World War II is over and that Russian troops belong inside the Soviet Union...
...Friendly to the Soviet Union" means that the government is hand-picked and controlled by Russia...
...It instructed the French Communist party to keep quiet, and for the moment to support the French regime...
...In that language, "democratic" means Communist...
...Now, temporary deployment of troops is not reality...
...In this he failed...
...He wants no agreement at all on Berlin, believing that any agreement one could get out of Khrushchev at this time would be worse than the existing state of affairs...
...I doubt that any realistic agreement about Berlin, about East Germany or about the unification of East and West Germany can be made now...
...And Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchey has visited Paris to confer with General Charles de Gaulle...
...The last attempt of the Soviet Union to take over Western Europe was in 1947—the year commonly given as the start of the cold war, though I think it started earlier than that...
...My guess is that he went further, and agreed to support Adenauer's view that no arrangement should be made until a real arrangement can be made about Germany...
...There also might be a painstaking examination of the real map of Europe which must emerge when the cold war is over...
...West European economics and social development at the moment are going faster than that of the Soviet Union...
...They have discussed the subject, though no one knows what the precise understanding between the two men is...
...But there are chinks in its armor...
...Meanwhile in Washington Adenauer discussed with Eisenhower the possibility of a summit agreement on Berlin...
...France did not wish to break with Germany for Khrushchev's benefit...
...He pulled out all the emotional arguments...
...I have seen people who relied on it herded into boxcars to death or lifetime slavery in Siberia...
...Since then has come the European Common Market, in which six West European nations agreed to pool their economies to eliminate tariff barriers, working toward a single economic system...
...This may mean the end of the Allied occupation of Berlin, but in place of it we should trust the Soviet word that the freedom of Berlin and of the West German people will be preserved...
...Walter Lippman has forcibly urged this view on a number of occasions...
...Here we run into a square difference of view...
...If, however, a substantial part of Western Europe were ever allied to the Soviet Union, as Khrushchev hinted in Paris, the next step for the United States would probably be the middle of the Atlantic—presumably remaining in alliance with Great Britain...
...These he sent off to an enforced vacation on the island of Corsica—a beautiful enough place, but few places are beautiful unless you go there willingly...
...Despite that,Western Europe has been unifying itself steadily...
...As an opening gun for the Khrushchev visit, a very important public-statement was made by Ambassador Andrei Andreivich Smirnoff in Bonn...
...Communist language is a language all its own...
...Adenauer and de Gaulle are personal friends...
...What he wanted to do, quite obviously, was to break up the unity between the Western Allies by rekindling the ancient enmity between France and Germany...
...Anyone familiar with the political, military and economic map of Europe knows this was equivalent to a demand that the Soviet Union be allowed to take over and administer all Western Europe...
...It would be a welcome change in international affairs...
...There might be a frank agreement to postpone the question of Berlin and to maintain the existing situation for a period of time, say, another four or five years—with an agreement to discuss it again at the end of that time...
...including many exiles from Iron Curtain countries...
...Well, I have seen word of that kind given by the Soviet Government before—at Yalta, for example—and I have seen it broken...
...This latter visit gave some concern...
...The Soviet Union then undertook to foment revolutions in Italy, France and Belgium all at the same time...
...But it hitterly condemned de Gaulle's expressed intent to continue to work closely with Adenauer and has been waiting for a break...
...After an agonizing week—this was Christmas 1947—the three governments did maintain themselves...
...The American position is based on the theory that non-Communist Europe will resist Soviet attempts to dominate its governments—attempts the Soviet Union has been making right along, in one or two cases successfully...
...The Soviet Union makes no bones about its complete disapproval of all these...
...The Soviet Union has continuously sought in every way to prevent unification of Western Europe...
...What will de Gaulle do...
...He wanted a new Franco-Russian entente...
...This was followed by the European Common Army -an agreement to put West European armed forces under the joint command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...
...With that background khrushchey arrived in Paris...
...two indispensable conditions...
...He stated with force what the Soviet Union really wanted from the summit conference...
...Therefore, say these advisers, we ought now to make the best agreement we can get...
...Second, its government must be friendly to the Soviet Union...
...Probably de Gaulle gave assurances to Adenauer that he, too, would not compromise the freedom of the people of Berlin...
...The controlling fact there—the abnormality talked about by Khrushchev and occasionally by George Kennan—is that some 30-odd Russian divisions are in Germany and very, very far outside the Russian border...
...The reality is that Berlin is German—and East Germany is German—that neither of them are Communist, nor wish to be, that they have acceded to force but are totally unwilling to incorporate themselves into any Russian system...
...What actually came out of the meeting was an agrement between the President and the Chancellor that in any arrangements on Berlin the freedom of the West Berlin people would be "safeguarded...
...Basing its hope on this stand, Soviet diplomacy has cautiously tried to woo de Gaulle...
...We are prepared to talk about the unification of Germany," he said, "but we want it perfectly understood that there are ADOLF A. BERLE JR., Assistant Secretary of State from 1938 to 1944, is a professor of corporation law at the Columbia University Law School...
...My own belief is that after another five years the Soviet Union will be preoccupied with problems of its own growing economy and with its rather inconvenient Chinese neighbor...
...First came the Coal and Steel Community—the union of West European coal and steel producing interests in a kind of supra-national government...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 19
