April Fool?

The Soviet Union made an astonishing proposal last week. In 1,700-word notes to Britain, France and the U.S., Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov invited the U.S. to join his proposed pan-European security alliance and in return asked for a seat for Russia in the councils of NATO.

The proposal was unveiled, with a certain unconscious appropriateness, on April 1, and it actually amounted to this: 1) the U.S. would join a Kremlin-organized coalition conceived with the ultimate aim of pushing the U.S. out of Europe, while 2) Russia would contribute armed forces and help plot the strategy of the grand Western alliance that was created only to stand off the armed forces of Russia.

Some could not believe at first that the news was true. Example: many Swedes telephoned Stockholm newspapers to protest that the times were too serious for playing April Fool jokes in the headlines. Even the Communists were perplexed. Example: after years of obediently denouncing NATO as "aggressive . . . warmongering . . . imperialist," editorialists for East German newspapers stumbled all over themselves trying to explain why the Kremlin was suddenly applying for NATO membership and inviting the American imperialists into the peace-loving proletarian camp.

Try the U.N. Western diplomats promptly skewered the Soviet maneuver for the impossible thing it was. The State Department noted that only a few weeks ago at Berlin, Molotov had lambasted NATO and introduced his pan-European pact idea with the specific proviso that the U.S. should be excluded except as an "observer." Now he was switching decks. "It is a maneuver," said the U.S. spokesman, "to gain admittance within the walls of the West, to undermine its security."

In Britain, while Laborites complained of this "unilateral" U.S. action on the Molotov offer, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden rose in the House of Commons to add Britain's thumbs down. If Russia really seeks relaxation of world tensions, disarmament and security, said he, the United Nations "affords the best forum and the most hopeful opportunity."

The Usual Aim. Like so many of the ostensibly clumsy swipes which Vyacheslav Molotov makes with his diplomatic hammer & sickle, this one had a method, and a danger to it. In a week when many of the U.S.'s allies seemed politically mesmerized by the mushrooming cloud of the thermonuclear bomb (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), Molotov adroitly played on man's justified concern over the power he now holds in his arsenals: "There can be no doubt that the employment of atomic and hydrogen weapons in a war . . . would mean the wholesale annihilation of civilians and the destruction of big cities ..." Here the aim was the usual--to excite the excitable world into banning atom-age weapons so that the wide-open U.S. would not be able to have any, while Iron-Curtained Russia could stockpile them at will.

Molotov also played on wavering France's fears over the proposed European Army: "The main role," said Molotov, "is assigned to the armed forces of West Germany, with Nazi generals at the head."

Many Britons, French and West Germans thought they saw more to worry about in these tactics than Washington appeared to see. Allied diplomats in Moscow warned that one of Molotov's big objectives apparently was to provoke the U.S. into a prompt and flat rejection. "For the Soviets," commented a French official, "it is essential for the U.S. to say no to everything in 1954."

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