The Competitors

However the situation was labeled--competitive coexistence, peaceful coattrition or simply cold war--East and West were ranged around Berlin last week in the same old postures. The Russians were back on the attack, but the free nations were not without their defenses.

The objective of Soviet conduct is to make Russia's East German satellite look like a sovereign state with which West Germany would be compelled to deal if the German nation is ever to be reunified.

To inflate the stature of their stooges, the Russians slipped them some of their supervisory chores, notably the issuing of permits for the canal barges that bring roughly one-fourth of all West Berlin's supplies across East Germany. That left the hand of German Communists resting on Free Berlin's lifeline to the West.

Lower Levels. The Reds promptly suggested that this was something for East and West Cabinet ministers to talk about.

Konrad Adenauer angrily brushed off any suggestion of discussions at a ministerial level, as implying recognition of East Germany. West Germans were willing to make lesser arrangements, a process that has been going on for some time. All barge permits, said Neues Deutschland, East Germany's Pravda, would be terminated Dec. 31, and "Bonn authorities will have to file applications for renewal." Was this the beginning of another Berlin blockade? Many West Berliners feared so; and their concern over the barge traffic was increased by the fact that the British too, like the Russians, had quietly withdrawn their supervision of barge registrations more than a month ago.

Now that East Germany had staked its claim to control the barge traffic, Chancellor Adenauer called his advisers in emergency session in Bonn to consider countermeasures. Shutting canal locks in West Berlin to East German barges, or stopping East German goods at Hamburg, would hurt the Communists, but not enough. A much rougher blow would be halting East Germany's $48 million-a-year trade with West Germany. Communist East Germany in particular needs steel and heavy machinery.

Threat and Counterthreat. But such a blockade would never work if the Belgians, French, or any other Western nation sold the East Germans the steel that West Germany would not. The West found an answer to that. The Western allies and the Bonn Government drew up a plan for applying a NATO-wide embargo on East German trade, should a new Berlin blockade develop. Next day the East Germans announced that the old barge permits would continue to be honored, after all, by the Communist regime.

For the moment, the threat to Berlin was averted. But at week's end the Communists inched forward again. The East German government announced that it had taken over from the Russians all border policing, except for allied military traffic in and out of Berlin, which would remain in Russian hands. The battle of strength continued. In any showdown, the West's ultimate power to blockade might make the Russians think twice.

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