Anomalous Berlin

...Maps of Berlin published in the Eastern sector do not show the Western sector at all...

...Yet where relations with the West are concerned, all is sweetness and light...

...Soviet interest in such a treaty, transparently enough, centers on Berlin...

...It was Khrushchev's obsession with realizing such a scenario that triggered the Berlin crisis of 1961...

...This year both East and West Berlin are putting on enormous celebrations—fairs, festivals, balls, cultural events—to mark the 750th anniversary of the founding of the city, and they are doing so separately...

...One American diplomat, admittedly not unbiased in the matter, has ruefully observed: "On earth as in heaven, there is more joy for a reformed sinner than for someone who has been virtuous all along...

...It is true that they virtually never exercise their prerogative, having for many years let the popularly elected mayor and Senat get on with the business of running things...

...Indeed, misgivings about the Kremlin's designs lie behind the largely forgotten fact that World War II has never been officially concluded...

...Peace movements on this side of the Atlantic now find it difficult to convince people that catastrophic nuclear conflict could be around the corner...

...The Soviet Union maintains several divisions of troops within an hour of the city as part of its Warsaw Pact deployment...

...Byvirtueof its location 1 lOmiles within the GDR, it would then be vulnerable to Communist pressure and the danger of absorption into the East German state...

...Historically a single city—the largest between Paris and Moscow—it has since 1961 been divided by a gruesome 29 mile-long barrierof concreteandkalashnikovs, barbed wire and fierce alsatian dogs...

...While it is generally accepted that Gorbachev is prepared to take enormous political risks to drag his country out of its post-Stalinist rut, however, concern also exists that the Soviet political structure will not be able to assimilate the changes he has in mind...

...Khrushchev once termed the city "the testicles of the West: When I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin...

...The Allies describe themselves as "protecting" rather than "occupying" powers, but the commanders of the American, British and French troops are the supreme authorities in the city...

...When Khrushchev finally realized that President Kennedy was prepared to go to war to protect West Berlin's freedom, the Soviet leader consoled frustrated East German Communists with assurances that, isolated as it was, West Berlin would in time wither on the vine and fall into their laps...

...President John F. Kennedy's determination to stand fast in West Berlin in the face of Khrushchev's rocket rattling produced a Soviet climb-down, after some profoundly worrying moments...

...That may even happen sooner than expected—if the easing of tensions fails to yield meaningful progress in the East-West negotiations for mutual reduction of forces in Europe...

...Thousands of West Berliners ride the subway to and from work and play every day under East Berlin, their trains eerily whizzing through sealed and policed stations...

...Today West Berlin is a thriving, energetic place that makes its Communist counterpart look provincial by comparison, even with downtown East Berlin's skillfully restored monumental architecture...

...Not long ago, some residents who were plagued by gunfire noise from a nearby British training ground tried to sue the British to get it stopped...

...Long-serving Communist Party apparatchiks in the Soviet satellite states are not, it appears, anxious to have domestic critics harp on their shortcomings, despite Mikhail S. Gorbachev's bold proclamations that this is the way forward...

...Though their presence is a reassurance to most West Berliners, it does lead to friction from time to time...

...WORLD WAR TWO'S UNFINISHED BUSINESS Anomalous Berlin BY NORMAN GELB London Unrelenting Persecution of dissident movements in Czechoslovakia and the continuing clampdown on the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland demonstrate that the Soviet Union's muchtouted glasnost has a limited appeal...

...To be sure, both sides are still armed to the teeth, with NATO and Warsaw Pact forces strategically deployed all over Europe...

...Norman Gelb is The New Leader's London correspondent...

...Meanwhile it remains an island within Communist Eastern Europe, and the danger that it might again be the focus of conflict cannot be overlooked...

...Although Europe's prevailing atmosphere of security began settling in before Gorbachev inaugurated his goodwill campaign and apparent reform efforts, it has certainly been thickened by the General Secretary's words and gestures...

...Hungary is grappling with economic disappointment after its heady flirtations with market economics, and Romania is hamfistedly making a mess of its ethnic minority problems, to mention but two others...

...They are there primarily as a "trip wire" in the event of a Soviet probe...

...And that objective has been achieved, even if the Soviets have occasionally indulged in menacing gestures...

...Khrushchev hoped that secretly setting up Soviet missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida would put him in a position to trade them against the Allied presence on the only patch of Western real estate within the Communist Eastern bloc...

...On the other hand, more than 50 per cent of West Berlin's budget has to be covered by the West German taxpayer, and predictions that the city would become a major industrial and technological center have not been completely borne out...

...Ignoring Allied insistence that the former German capital remain under four-power control, Moscow unilaterally announced in 1949 that it considered the Soviet sector the capital of the Communist-ruled (and Soviet dominated) German Democratic Republic (GDR...

...By contrast, the Western garrisons in Berlin are militarily insignificant—some 5,000 American troops and far fewer British and French...

...For this reason, LIVE OAK, the staff set up at NATO headquarters in Brussels to prepare Western military responses to Communist actions during the 1961 Berlin crisis, still exists in skeletal form, ready to be activated at any time...

...The American base is a convenient target for West Berlin political activists critical of Washington's foreign policy...

...The United States, on the other hand, gets little credit for the current calm...

...The Iron Curtain, if not really very much less of a barrier than before, at least seems less ominous, and contacts between Eastern and Western Europe—diplomatic, commercial and cultural—are more congenial than at any time since their postwar division...

...Yet until a treaty is signed and the related formalities are settled, the commanders retain the right to intervene should their governments ever feel strongly enough about an issue to instruct them to do so...

...Former West Berlin Mayor (1957-66) and West German Chancellor (196974) Willy Brandt hopes that the divided city will one day become the place where East and West learn to coexist, and that it will reassume its crucial role—interrupted if not ended by the building of the Wall—as an oasis of freedom where those fleeing tyranny can find sanctuary...

...His latest book, The Berlin Wall: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and a Showdown in the Heart of Europe, has just been published by Times Books...

...Less obviously, the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis had the same cause...

...But there is no senseof menace, no fear of imminent conflict, no thought that another conflagration might soon again lay waste to much of the Continent...

...In 1974, Henry Kissinger worked out an arrangement that "normalized" Berlin's status: The Soviets agreed to end their threats against West Berlin, and the United States extended diplomatic recognition to the previously shunned GDR...

...The ongoing charade is intended to preserve West Berlin's geographically precarious freedom by helping Moscow remember that it must keep its hands off...

...Many activists have therefore shifted their attention to the perils of possible nuclear powerplant breakdowns instead...

...That has not happened...

...The two parts of the city use different currencies...

...Should this prove true, or should Gorbachev simply conclude the price the Communist system will have to pay for his political and economic innovations is extravagant, the old apprehensiveness about the Russian bear would undoubtedly return to the Continent...

...In response, the United States, Britain and France have maintained a continuous military presence in their respective sectors, which together constitute West Berlin...

...Glasnost, or lack of same, is not the only thing discommoding Eastern Europe these days...

...A peace treaty would eliminate the legal basis for the Allied garrisons, turning West Berlin into what Nikita S. Khrushchev called a " free city...

...To the visitor Berlin is a rather striking geopolitical symbol...

...The city was divided into four occupation sectors—American, British, French and Soviet—after the cessation of hostilities...

...Nonetheless, Berlin remains an anomaly...

...The unconditional surrender of Adolf Hitler's armies more than four decades ago notwithstanding, the Western powers have firmly resisted repeated demands by their erstwhile Soviet ally that a peace treaty be signed with Germany to formally terminate the conflict...

...and contributed to the Party chief's political demise two years later...