The Third Choice

Sometimes it seems as if the Western democracies, which have to make up their minds in public, are kept united only by a steady traffic in airborne statesmen. Last week Europe's airspace was crowded with the comings and goings of worried diplomats. Of them all, none was so busy as Britain's indefatigable Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who in the space of three weeks had visited Moscow, Paris and Bonn, and this week was scheduled to go to Washington and Ottawa as well.

As Macmillan, pale but still game, stopped back in London from his visit to Bonn, some of his more enthusiastic admirers were hailing his journeys as the diplomatic triumph of the age. SUPERMAC! HE DOES IT AGAIN ! headlined London's Daily Sketch. Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail--which, like most British papers, finds the West Germans too unbending toward Russia--had wondrous news to impart. In Bonn, confided the Daily Mail, Macmillan "completely won over Dr. Adenauer, to a system of step-by-step disarmament in Central Europe."

Far from changing anybody's policies, Macmillan's chief ambition seemed to be to dispel the notion, widely held in France and Germany, that Britain was about to sell the West's family jewels to Russia. In Paris one of Macmillan's aides gave a rueful rundown of the initial discussions between his boss and De Gaulle. Said he: "We spent the whole day shooting down three ideas. The first was that we British were 'disengagers.' The second was that we were just plain yellow, and the third was that we had separated from the rest of the girls' school."

The Compromiser. While Macmillan went from one airport to another, successfully ending doubts, Russia's Nikita Khrushchev was doing his energetic best to sound like a man who was open to any reasonable compromise. At a Communist rally in East Berlin, Khrushchev casually announced: "We would not mind even if U.S., British, French and Soviet troops--or some neutral countries--maintained minimum forces in West Berlin." Scarcely had Khrushchev said it when Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt rejected the "offer" out of hand. It was, declared Brandt, no more than a scheme to get Soviet troops into West Berlin and "cook the city over a slow fire."

All week long, Khrushchev took the line that the only German--in fact, the only Westerner--with whom the Soviet Union really had any quarrel was Bonn's steely old Chancellor Adenauer. Chief victim of this gambit was Erich Ollenhauer, colorless leader of West Germany's Social Democratic opposition, who incautiously accepted an invitation to go and talk with Khrushchev in East Berlin, so long as no Communist East Germans were present. (Socialist Mayor Brandt, cagier than his party boss, coldly refused a similar invitation.) Ollenhauer emerged from his two-hour talk with Nikita with the announced conviction that "all efforts are being made on the Soviet side to avoid a conflict." But, being a little inexperienced in such methods, he discovered later that in the communique regarding his visit, he had inadvertently been lulled into assenting to the need to "end the Western occupation of Berlin." Brooded Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel: "Ollenhauer as a responsible spokesman for Germany is a dreadful thought."

Jetting home to Moscow late in the week, Khrushchev exuded confidence. Still, after all his dickerings with his East German satraps, he had not taken the crucial step of unilaterally giving them a "peace treaty," as he had promised to. That step, he knew, might prejudice his chances of getting a heads-of-government summit meeting.

Bargaining Counters. Khrushchev apparently still thought he had the West in a compromising position, and would be able, by continuing to menace Berlin, to compel the West to give some kind of recognition to his Communist East German regime. This in effect would force the restive East Germans to become as resigned to their fate as the Hungarians. Against these maneuverings by Khrushchev, there were three possible Western responses. One was the press-conference warning from President Eisenhower (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) that anyone who stirs up military trouble in so crucial a place as Berlin is risking no mere skirmish but all-out war. Another possible response, based on the same risk of war, was to search desperately for concessions that might appease Khrushchev's appetites. Newspapers were full of such speculations, but no one in responsibility in Western governments talked that way, because it implied simple surrender to Khrushchev's blackmail.

Instead, the Western diplomats have become resigned to a third choice--a serious bargaining session between Russia and the West. The position papers that are being painstakingly prepared in Washington, Paris and London cover the familiar diplomatic counters--disarmament, disengagement, German unification--but the attitude is not one of simply giving way to Russia on them. If the Soviets really have serious bargaining in mind, they must give at least as much ground as they gain. The juggling by Western planners involves a study of which factors most distress Russia, how much Russia should be prepared to pay for an accommodation, and which bargains, if any, are of mutual advantage. The mood is of being pressed, but not of panicking.

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