The Weighing Room

On both sides of the Iron Curtain last week the atmosphere was scented with soft words and occasional gentle deeds. Russian Propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg announced that the Russians are "sick and tired of the cold war" and want to end it. Premier Georgy Malenkov beamed a velvety message to the U.S.: "With all my heart I wish the U.S. people happiness and a peaceful life ... I believe there are no obstacles to the improvement of relations." Radio Moscow even enlivened one broadcast with the long-forbidden "decadent" music of George Gershwin.

Moscow advised Washington that it will discuss President Eisenhower's atomic pool proposal. Washington said fine. The Red Danube was suddenly opened to shipping of all countries. The U.S. prepared to withdraw two divisions from Korea (leaving eight there and in Japan), and though this was accompanied by hints that the U.S. would retaliate to the heart if the Communists resumed the Korean war, many Europeans drew their own wishful conclusions from U.S. defense budget cuts, and gossiped of a general U.S. withdrawal into something called "peripheral defense."

No Word for It. Something, in fact, was happening to the cold war, but no one had yet found the right word or phrase for it. Some called it an easement, others, a thaw. Many, including Prime Minister Churchill and Pravda editorial writers, preferred to speak of "relaxation of tension." The Italians talked of distensionse. No phrase yet minted combines both the reality and the illusion of the moment: the reality of the new Russian regime's need to relax tension, and the Communists' manipulation of this need. Reality and illusion have a rendezvous date: Jan. 25 in Berlin. Then, the foreign ministers of Russia and the West will gather together for the first time since Paris, 1949.

It was a conference that many of Europe's people seemed to want. But their governments had assented to it without enthusiasm (even to Churchill, this was no substitute for meeting Malenkov in Moscow). It was fairly safe to predict in advance that it would produce no dramatic settlement, or even a peace treaty for Germany or Austria. Yet it was fast building into an important testing time in the cold war. In this weighing room, after four years, the Big Four will test ,anew the jiggling scales of world power.

Never That Easy. Last week Western diplomats were preparing "position papers" in the event Russia's Vyacheslav Molotov comes equipped with surprise proposals for unifying Germany and signing a peace treaty. But they were confident that the Russians were neither able nor willing to pay the price of losing East Germany. Western strategy, according to word in Washington and London, will be to expose Russia's unwillingness to make a settlement, trumpet it to the world, then adjourn the conference in the hope that Europe might thereupon unite in firm purpose. But with the Russians, it has never been that easy.

The Russians, in talking about Germany, would be thinking about France. They may have been maneuvered into talking sooner than they wished, but, as London's Economist pointed out last week, Molotov has achieved a meeting "on the date he wants, in the place he wants and on the subjects he wants." His strategy presumably will be to work for "a combination of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, France, and, if possible, Britain, against Germany . . . The strategy of opposing the Eurasian to the Atlantic idea."

Such a break in the allied front would be unthinkable if it were not for France, whose place at the conference table will be representative only of her leaderless condition. John Foster Dulles' blunt warning to France of an "agonizing reappraisal" of U.S. policy if EDC is not ratified has not had the expected effect; it has not cracked the anti-EDC forces, though it has dismayed some EDC supporters. Like the British and other West Europeans, the French are talking, too, about the possibility of a U.S. recession which would cripple all who relied too deeply on alliance with the U.S. Item: the Federation of British Industries, comparable to the U.S. National Association of Manufacturers, last week urged British industrialists to "pursue East-West trade rigorously" to build up a cushion for a possible slump in the U.S., and with Tory righteousness said that there was nothing immoral about trading with Communists.

Through Channels. In an appeal to France, Russia's biggest bargaining lever is the war in Indo-China. The French public is achingly impatient for a settlement. So far, French leaders have resisted the impulse on the ground that Ho Chi Minh has not used regular diplomatic channels or made a specific proposal. This is an open invitation for the Russians at Berlin to be specific and go through channels. At the very least, Molotov can make mischief between the U.S. and France by professing a willingness to talk about Indo-China--if only Communist China were invited to Berlin to talk too.

At weighing-in time in Berlin, France's frustration and weakness will thus be entered in the scales against the West. But heavy too are the burdens that Russia brings to Berlin: its discontented satellites, its own agricultural difficulties, its mistrusting and mistrusted leadership. In fact, with a proper awareness of Russia's own sizable handicaps, the West need not fear the reading of the scales at Berlin.

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