Getting Set

The speed and coordination of the Soviet Union's reaction to Big Four talks showed that the Kremlin's big men had calculated their moves and primed their propaganda long in advance. Hoping to gain the conference initiative with what countries they had on hand, the Russians: P: Signed the treaty making Austria independent and neutral, and recommended Austria's way as everyone's way. P: Set up a formal organization of U.S.S.R. and satellites' armies, in a kind of anti-NATO.

P: Agreed in principle with the West's proposals for disarmament and banning nuclear war, but hedged on the essentials of international inspection. P: Announced that their top men, Bulganin and Khrushchev, would drop in on Communist Heretic No. 1, Yugoslavia's Tito, to talk coexistence with him.

In Warsaw's Radziwill Palace, once the residence of the Czar's regent in Poland, the top Communist leaders of Russia's satellite states conferred with Premier Bulganin and Defense Minister Zhukov over a fistful of interlocking treaties for the Soviet Union's NATO-type organization in Eastern Europe. The meeting got the crystal-chandelier treatment, with all flags flying.

"As a result of the Paris accords." said Bulganin, "West Germany is being turned into a bridgehead for the deployment of large aggressive forces [and] is becoming the principal hotbed of the danger of war in Europe." From bases in West Germany, "air attacks on our country and other peace-loving states are being planned."

To counter this activity, the Soviet Union and the seven satellite Communist governments (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania and East Germany) joined in a defense pact, and agreed to a combined military command. The supreme commander: Russia's Marshal Konev, 57, Russia's No. 3 military leader, the man who presided over the trial that ordered Beria shot.

The eight-power pact merely gives paper reality to the coalition of 80 satellite army divisions that already exists. Command will continue to be in Moscow, the top brass will still be Russian, and the troops will still be of as dubious loyalty as before. But by making a show of erecting an overall organization, Bulganin could also promise to demolish it. "The treaty will become invalid," he said, when "a European system of collective security is established." How can collective security be established?

First, by a united Germany. "We have been and are supporters of the restoration of a united Germany, as a free, peaceful and democratic state," but "the decisive role must be played by the patriotic forces of the German people themselves."

Propaganda Points. The same day, in London, Jacob Malik, Soviet delegate to the U.N. Disarmament Commission Subcommittee meeting there, spelled out in long-prepared detail how the Soviet Union would end the cold war. He did so without furnishing his fellow negotiators with translations, but Radio Moscow promptly broadcast the message in English, indicating that the Kremlin had intended the idea primarily for propaganda, not negotiation.

First, he asked the U.N. General Assembly to adopt a resolution urging 1) state control of "any form of propaganda of a new war ... in press, radio, cinema and in public statements," i.e., government censorship on the loosest of terms; 2) settlement of "outstanding international questions through negotiation between the powers"; 3) "withdrawal by the four powers of their occupation forces from the territory of Germany to their national frontiers" -- suggesting that the Red army might pull back to Russia, not Poland, if the U.S. forces pulled back to the U.S., not France; 4) "dismantling of military bases on foreign territories," e.g., U.S. bases in Europe, North Africa and in the Pacific; 5) atom-wise states to share know-how and atomic materials with other states, for peaceful use; 6) Far Eastern settlement on the basis of "sovereignty and territorial integrity" between the countries concerned; 7) elimination of trade discrimination, i.e., free export of strategic materials.

Next, Malik proposed that the Disarmament Commission draw up for the Security Council an international convention which would "completely prohibit the use and manufacture of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction."

Malik saw disarmament proceeding in two stages:

P:In 1956, after pooling all information concerning their respective armament and undertaking not to increase it, the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and Red China would agree to limit their armed forces to 1,500,000 men each, Britain and France to 650,000 men each. (These are the figures originally proposed by Britain, against Malik's previous stubborn insistence on one-third reduction all around, a proposal that favored the big armies of Russia and Red China.) In the first stage, nuclear nations would promise not to use nuclear weapons unless the Security Council decided they were acting "in defense against aggression. " The dismantling of foreign bases would begin.

P: In 1957, production of A-and H-bombs would be stopped, military appropriations would be reduced, and existing bombs would be destroyed.

Nuclear Control Posts. In many details the Russians had simply swiped allied proposals and claimed credit for them. Said U.S. Negotiator James J. Wadsworth: "Ideas which have been advocated by the Western powers as long ago as 1947 are at last being taken seriously."

But inspection is the key to sincerity in nuclear disarmament. Malik's idea of an international authority was a staff of inspectors operating from "control posts in big ports, railroad junctions, motor roads and airdromes." These inspectors would "watch that there are no dangerous concentrations of ground forces or of air and naval forces," and "within the bounds of the control functions they exercise, would have unhindered access at any time to all objects of control." This kind of pretense at control lends itself to the absurdities of the truce inspection teams in Korea and Indo-China: unless the host nation defines an arsenal as nuclear, the inspectors would have no right to peek there.

Far short of minimum security, said Wadsworth. The only practical plan is one in which "inspectors can go everywhere and see everything necessary to make sure that forbidden munitions are not being manufactured or that nuclear weapons are not being secreted." In these days, even this may not be enough.

Malik as much as said so: "When many states display legitimate concern for their security, it is difficult to expect that these states would trustfully give other states access to their industrial and other resources which are of vital importance to their security . . . Thus, there are possibilities beyond the reach of international control for circumventing this control and organizing the secret manufacturing of A-and H-weapons for sudden atomic attack."

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