The Friendly Invaders

In a novel form of combined assault, the U.S. last week was invaded by two tough, elderly statesmen--one Jewish, the other German. Despite the historic tragedy that divides their peoples, Israel's Premier David Ben-Gurion, 73, and West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, 84, had a common, nervous objective: to seek assurances that the U.S. would not barter away their nations' interests in any settlement at the summit.

Ben-Gurion, an Old Testament character with delta-wing hair, had maneuvered an honorary college degree invitation into a White House visit. Ben-Gurion's problems were epitomized by the parade of ten Arab envoys who the day before his arrival showed up together at the State Department to protest his visit as part of an Israeli plot "to alienate and estrange the American people from the Arab people." As the Israelis see it, this kind of Arab pressure is an increasing threat to Israel. The Arab boycott of Western firms that deal with Israel is becoming more effective, and Egypt's Nasser still bars Israeli shipping from the Suez Canal in defiance of the U.N. Nonetheless, complain the Israelis, the West continues to vie with Russia in courting Nasser: in recent weeks the U.S.-dominated World Bank has promised Nasser $56 million to improve the canal, while Russia has furnished the U.A.R. with another batch of MIGs.

The Web. Ben-Gurion would like to get lonely Israel into some kind of Western alliance, or at least some kind of U.S. guarantee of Israel security. He was only reassured that the U.S. considers still valid the 1950 Tripartite Declaration (U.S., British and French) guaranteeing both Israeli and Arab borders. That declaration became a nothing during the Suez invasion of 1956.

Far more concerned than Ben-Gurion--whom he plans to meet for the first time in New York this week--Konrad Adenauer arrived in the U.S. fearful that he and his nation might become victims of a monstrous web of coincidental misfortune.

For months Nikita Khrushchev and his satraps have maintained a steady drumfire of abuse designed to revive the distrust of Germany latent in most Western Europeans. Aided by a sudden rash of anti-Semitic incidents in West Germany and by Bonn's heavy-handed attempt to acquire military bases in fascist Spain (TIME, March 7), the Russians have succeeded far better than they had any right to hope.

To Adenauer, this slippage in West Germany's international moral position seemed just one more evidence of something he has long suspected: that the U.S. and Britain still did not regard West Germany as a full partner in the Atlantic alliance and were preparing to make a deal with Russia over Berlin at Germany's expense.

Just Like Africans. What confidence Adenauer had in U.S. intentions was further shaken last week when President Eisenhower decided that there was no "operational necessity" for high-altitude allied plane flights into West Berlin. Ike's decision, which reversed a fortnight of Pentagon-inspired talk that the U.S. planned to resume such flights, seemed to Adenauer all too likely to convince Moscow that the U.S. was waffling in the face of Soviet threats. But he could take some pleasure in the U.S.-British decision last week to restrict the movements of Soviet military missions in West Germany to the immediate area of their headquarters--a step taken in retaliation for the Soviet issuance of new travel passes to allied military missions in East Germany accrediting them to the "German Democratic Republic," which the West refuses to recognize.

Through aides, Adenauer made it quite plain what he intended to say to Eisenhower this week. He wanted reassurance that the U.S. has no intention of giving up its World War II occupation rights in Berlin. He proposed that the first part of the summit meeting be devoted to disarmament, thereby automatically reducing Berlin to the status of a secondary issue. And at every opportunity Adenauer will remind U.S. policymakers that "Germans, as well as Africans, have a right to self-determination"--which is his way of threatening that West Germany will not accept any summit agreement that seriously weakens its control of West Berlin.

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