Toward the Summit

The war scare that flitted around the world when U.S. marines splashed ashore in Lebanon had died away. The immediate U.S. objective of propping up the legitimate government of Lebanon had been achieved--and without gunfire. The West's thrust into the Middle East had temporarily jolted even Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser into comparative sobriety. The Russians had responded to the West's show of force with mere bluster--a fact that in time may sink into many a Middle Eastern mind. And so it was that when President Eisenhower conferred with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and other top team members at the White House early in the week, the most pressing problem was not what to do about Lebanon or Jordan or Iraq, but what to do about Nikita Khrushchev's demand for a Khrushchev-Eisenhower-Macmillan-De Gaulle-Nehru-Hammarskjold summit meeting at Geneva (TIME, July 28) to bring the world back from the "brink of catastrophe."

Yes-No Dilemma. Confronted with that cry, Eisenhower & Co. had to find an answer that did not say yes and did not say no. To say yes would be to undercut the United Nations, upset U.S. efforts to ease the Lebanon crisis by getting U.N. forces to replace U.S. troops. To say no would be to invite--unnecessarily--the duckings of the neutralist world and--more important--to strain the home-front political position of that valuable ally, Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, already under considerable to-the-summit pressure from Laborites. In talks with Dulles, Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd made it clear that the Macmillan government could not afford the political penalties of rebuffing Khrushchev's ploy, and Macmillan himself drove that point home with a transatlantic telephone call to Dwight Eisenhower.

Secretary Dulles, who as a chief legal architect of the U.N. Charter has all its provisions neatly cross-indexed in his mind, spotted a way around the yes-no dilemma. Under the charter, Dulles pointed out, Khrushchev could sit in the U.N. Security Council if he wanted to. Around that point, Dulles and the President shaped Eisenhower's reply to Khrushchev.

If the Soviet Union "seriously believes that there is an imminent threat to world peace," it said, "it is bound by the United Nations Charter to take the matter to the Security Council . . . Under the Charter, members of government, including heads of government and foreign ministers, may represent a member nation at the Security Council. If such a meeting were generally desired, the U.S. would join in following that orderly procedure."

The U.S. note was calculated to force Khrushchev to make the next move, ask for a U.N. summit meeting. Macmillan's note went further; it expressed "hope" that Khrushchev would attend the U.N. Security Council, noted that it would not be the purpose of the meeting "to register differences through voting," i.e., Khrushchev would not have to pack a veto in his bag.

Cooler-Eyed Scrutiny. Next afternoon, while Dulles, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Nathan Twining and other top officials were meeting with the President in an overall review of the Middle East situation, Press Secretary James Hagerty hurried into Ike's office with the news, just off the White House Teletype machines, that Khrushchev had accepted the idea of a summit-level Security Council meeting. India's Prime Minister Nehru should take part, said Khrushchev, and so should "the Arab countries concerned." As the place and time, Khrushchev suggested New York City five days thence. "The threat to world peace has reached a dangerous level," he wrote. "So much so that no time should be lost."

To eyes that strain eagerly and hopefully for any sign of good will in Nikita Khrushchev, his letter seemed, as one British official put it, "almost ingratiating." But cooler-eyed scrutiny at the State Department found two pitfalls: 1) Khrushchev was trying to dictate the arrangements for what was supposed to be a U.N. meeting, and 2) he repeated his accusations of "expansionism and aggression" against the U.S. and Britain, implying that this was to be the subject for discussion.

Dulles set about drafting the week's second reply to Khrushchev, worked out the final details in an hour-long session with the President. The U.S. letter's net: 1) it was up to the Security Council to decide the meeting's "composition" and "conditions" under "established rules," and 2) the meeting should deal with the whole range of Middle East problems (i.e., including Russian and Nasserian troublemaking). "To put peace and security on a more stable basis in the Middle East," wrote Ike, "requires far more than merely a consideration of Lebanon and Jordan. These situations are but isolated manifestations of far broader problems. In my opinion, the instability of peace and security is in large measure due to the jeopardy in which small nations are placed . . ."

Summrrsmanship. At week's end it was uncertain when the modified summit meeting would be held, or where, or what nations would participate, or even whether any such meeting would take place at all. It all depended pretty much on Khrushchev's next note. Washington thought the U.S. could be ready before mid-August, and regular members of the Security Council were expected to discuss the procedural possibilities this week. One possibility: the heads of state and the permanent representatives--among them the delegate of Free China in the absence of Chiang Kai-shek (who made no sound in the matter all week)--could meet as the Security Council, then appoint a special heads-of-state committee to talk informally in Secretary General Hammarskjold's office.

But whatever the ultimate shape of the summit, the week of U.S. notes had managed to 1) placate U.S. allies, 2) keep the Middle East crisis from slipping out of the Security Council's hands, and 3) put upon Khrushchev the burden of either rejecting the summit meeting or accepting on U.S.-U.N. terms.

Khrushchev's clever summit ploy, the pundits said over and over again, had caught the U.S. in a trap. It was undoubtedly true that the Administration, made wary by memories of Yalta and Potsdam and the 1955 Big Four meeting at Geneva, had no desire at all for a summit conference. But a meeting within the Security Council on the terms set forth by the President need not bring the U.S. any discomfort. Yalta and Potsdam and even Geneva were defeats of a sort for the West, not because of some unbeatable Russian gift for summitsmanship, but because of Western illusions about Russian good will, good faith, desire for peace and willingness to keep promises. If the West brings no such illusions to the table, then Khrushchev stands to gain less from attending a summit meeting than from clamoring for one. Indeed, his clamor may have been just a bluff. If so, the West had called it.

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