A New Temperature

(See Cover)

The outcome had seemed certain for days, but the suspense kept mounting. The tenth, and supposedly final negotiating session between the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union over a nuclear test ban treaty was due to begin at 3 p.m. in Moscow's Spiridonovka Palace, but actually started at 4:30. Outside the yellow fake-Gothic home of a czarist merchant prince, a crowd of 60 reporters and photographers stood watch. A bevy of iron gargoyles glared down at them from atop the gates. At 6:25 p.m. the appearance of a familiar face in the doorway was not reassuring. It was Semyon ("Scratchy") Tsarapkin, nicknamed because of his long, high-pitched harangues during the endless test ban talks in Geneva; when Scratchy summoned his automobile, there was speculation that he was on his way to consult with Nikita Khrushchev over some hitch.

Finally, after a four-hour wait, the session was really over. Newsmen scrambled through the opened gates. up a short flight of stairs, and began a stampede into the conference room. A member of the U.S. delegation looked in horror at the horde of correspondents and hastily slammed the door, but there was no stopping them now.

Around a green baize table sat U.S. Secretary for Political Affairs W. Averell Harriman, British Science Minister Lord Hailsham and Russia's Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. At each man's elbow was a copy of the agreement, bound in red leather, initialed a few minutes earlier--WAH, H and AT.

Further Steps. The atmosphere was jovial. "Let us pretend we are discussing something," said AF for the benefit of photographers. Volunteered H: "I'll make my famous speech in Russian." He grinned but said nothing, since he speaks no Russian. Suddenly finding a microphone in front of his face, WAH declared: "The treaty is a very important step forward in many respects. It provides the possibility of further steps." Everyone seemed to be talking about steps. In his report to the people, President Kennedy used the same image (see THE NATION). The big, unanswered and for the present unanswerable question is where the further steps may lead. It may or may not be a major turning point in the cold war. Given all the bitter memories of Communist deceit and broken pledges, all the past "peace offensives" that only served to aggravate the battle, no one can discount the possibility that the test ban agreement will only serve to give the Russians a breather in their struggle with the West, to be resumed later with even more ferocity. Still, this event seems different, and the evidence points to a more hopeful interpretation.

The Document. The Moscow agreement itself is simple--some feel too simple. In 800 refreshingly brief words, the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union agree to "prohibit, to prevent and not to carry out any nuclear weapons test explosion or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, outer space or under water, the treaty to be of "indefinite duration." This wording raised the question of whether prohibition of "any other nuclear explosion" might be interpreted as a prohibition of the use of nuclear weapons even in wartime; clearing up any doubts, the President in his speech took pains to preclude that interpretation.

Apart from this relatively minor ambiguity, the treaty is direct enough. Underground testing is specifically excluded because of Russian insistence that adequate on-site inspection would be a guise for espionage. A clause obviously aimed at France and Red China pledges the parties to "refrain from causing, encouraging or in any way participating in the carrying out of any nuclear weapons test whatever." An escape clause permits the signers to renounce the agreement unilaterally upon three months' advance notice any time "extraordinary events . . . have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country." The treaty invites any and all nations to become signatories. While amendments can be proposed by any new subscriber, the three original signers have a veto power over future changes.

The treaty preamble, equally brief, states the goal beyond the limited agreement: "The speediest possible achievement of an agreement on general and complete disarmament under strict international control."

Along with the agreement, the U.S., Britain and Russia issued a brief communique that contained a Kremlin concession of sorts. The Russians had sought a nonaggression pact between NATO and the Warsaw Pact powers that would, in effect, concede legality to the regime of East German Puppet Walter Ulbricht. Moscow had hinted that without simultaneous agreement on a nonaggression pact, it would not sign a test ban. But the Soviets settled for a promise by the U.S. and Britain to take up the issue with their NATO allies in an effort to find an acceptable formula. The communique also reported "a brief exchange of views" about "other measures directed at a relaxation of tension." How It Happened. There was no doubt that the Russians now wanted a test ban agreement. The U.S. had first suggested the limited ban at Geneva last year, and the Russians turned it down flat. In May, when Secretary of State Dean Rusk returned from a NATO meeting in Ottawa, he received an urgent call from Russian Ambassador. Anatoly Dobrynin, asking to see him. The two men spent the afternoon in a launch floating down the Potomac; it was then that Dobrynin hinted at Russian readiness for serious test ban talks.

After five weeks of behind-the-scenes operations, the West was prepared to send its emissaries to Moscow. Even then there was no optimism about the results. "Nobody thought there was really a chance," cracks Harriman. "That's why I got the job."

In Moscow, Envoy Harriman operated smoothly out of a tiny improvised office facing the courtyard on the ninth floor of the U.S. embassy. The only extra furnishings were a portrait of George Washington and two extra chairs, one of which was shoved into the open doorway by his secretary. Since the office is usually a waiting room, many a surprised visitor tried to vault the chair. During the mornings,

Harriman, Hailsham and their advisers met at the British embassy; after about a three-hour daily meeting with the Soviets in Spiridonovka Palace, the Westerners talked over the day's negotiations in the U.S. embassy "tank," a small room safe (hopefully) from ubiquitous hidden Soviet listening devices. During one informal evening that he spent chatting with U.S. correspondents at the Sovietskaya Hotel, Harriman suddenly looked up at the ceiling and said, "Mr. Khrushchev, if you hear what I am saying . . ."

No one knew whether Big Brother's electronic ears were listening.

What It Means. When the agreement was finally initialed, much of the world reaction was highly emotional. Japan, the only country to have been an atomic target, was most enthusiastic of all. Sang Tokyo's biggest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun: "Sayonara, Mushroom Clouds." IT'S A TRIUMPH! headlined London's Daily Express. In the name of Pope Paul, the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano called the Moscow accord "in harmony with the profound and universal wishes of mankind."

In one sense, practical consequences of the test ban are relatively minor. It will not end the arms race or reduce nuclear stockpiles by a single kiloton. It obviously will not tip the balance of power--or both sides would not have accepted it. Its most concrete result is to reduce widespread fears--exaggerated but real--of radioactive fallout. The agreement may also help to check nuclear proliferation. Red China will scarcely give up its project to build an Abomb, nor is Charles de Gaulle likely to abandon his cherished force de frappe. But beyond these, the U.S. estimates, ten countries have the capacity to develop their own atomic weapons within ten years, and five more within 15 years. These others, the U.S. feels, may well be curbed by the moral and political force of the test agreement.

But the biggest significance of the treaty is probably symbolic. History will note, after all, that Year 21 of the Atomic Age had brought a reaching-out, however guarded, across the chasm, the first concrete move, however small, by both East and West to control the thought-defying force that had been unbound.

Between them, the three major nuclear powers had set off 425 announced test blasts with 545 megatons of destruction--more than enough to destroy civilization. For 15 years of nerve-racking cold war and five years of futile, frustrating negotiations, fear and reason had not been enough to halt the weapons race. The test ban, though it may accomplish little else, at least suggests that fear and reason, those eminently constructive forces, can still operate with some success in human affairs. The agreement does not spring from concern for humanity, although it is surely tinged with that, or from a change of heart on either side. It simply shows that both East and West are sufficiently independent of dogma to act from self-interest, and that their interests can occasionally coincide.

The Risks. Even though the U.S. itself has been pressing for a test ban all along, the agreement holds risks for the U.S. The most concrete ones are military-scientific, and by and large expert opinion holds those risks worth taking, provided that U.S. vigilance is not relaxed (see box). The political and diplomatic dangers are less dramatic, less clear, but no less important.

Most observers, Averell Harriman included, believe that Khrushchev signed the test ban treaty--and is seeking a detente with the West in other matters --primarily because of the split with Peking, which Harriman considers as important as the split between Constantinople and Rome. It forces the Kremlin to campaign for outside support among other Communist parties; in order not to wage a two-front cold war, Khrushchev is seeking some sort of understanding with the West. Other motives may be equally compelling. The Soviet budget is badly strained by military spending that is proportionately twice as high as in the U.S. If Khrushchev is ever going to make good on his promise to the Russian people to provide a few more amenities, finance a highly expensive space program and also scrounge for rubles to sink into a chaotic farm system, he must start saving money somewhere. A limited test ban seems like one possible economy.

A more serious problem is to what extent even a limited era of good feeling between the cold war enemies will erode Western Europe's firmness against the Reds. Much of Western Europe's postwar order is based on anti-Communism as an article of faith: the conviction that the Communists are a treacherous, armed and somehow non-European enemy. That conviction began to falter with the changeover from Stalin, the "oriental despot," to Khrushchev, the table-thumping but jolly politician--and with the accompanying softening of Communist tyranny in Russia and the satellites. The test ban and what may follow will continue this process of persuading European voters that Communists--Moscow, if not Peking variety--can be lived with. Even Charles de Gaulle seems ready to think so. As he reportedly told the Czech Ambassador to Paris last week: "I will happily place my confidence in white Communists, but I distrust yellow Communists."

New Strains? De Gaulle waited till this week to spell out his attitude toward the test ban at a press conference, but his Foreign Minister, Couve de Murville, had already declared that France would not consider itself bound by a treaty to which it was not a signatory, and that a test ban did not make much sense anyway, short of general and complete disarmament.

Obviously De Gaulle must go on test ing if he is to develop his force de frappe. Some believe that the Moscow agreement puts the U.S. and Russia in league against De Gaulle and his ambitions, thereby further straining the NATO alliance. But Washington argues that De Gaulle cannot grow much more anti-NATO than he is already, and hopes, further, that le grand Charles, after swallowing his initial annoyance, may soften his stand for fear of being isolated.

On the left, the new "reasonable" image of Moscow fits into an already developing situation. In a memorable phrase, French Socialist Leader Guy Mollet once said: "Communism is not left, but east." Nowadays, Mollet, Jules Moch and other previously staunch anti-Communists are openly urging a political alliance with the Reds in hopes of toppling Charles de Gaulle.

This trend is even stronger in Italy. In Rome, President Antonio Segni told a visitor that though the Moscow meetings "may settle some international problems, it could leave things wide open here in Italy." The Italian Communist Party, largest in the West (membership: 1,750,000), has prospered at the polls by pretending to be the government's loyal opposition in Parliament. By successfully peddling the Italian version of Khrushchev's "moderation," Italian Communists have challenged the badly demoralized ruling Christian Democrats.

Old Fears. Khrushchev told visiting Reds in Moscow: "If anybody thinks we shall forget about Marx, Engels and Lenin, he is mistaken. This will happen when a shrimp learns to whistle." In Britain, some pretty big fish believe that shrimps make beautiful music. The Labor Party, which may well rule the country within a year, is still badly split between unilateral disarmers and a conservative wing that has not yet recovered from the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Somewhere between the feuding factions is Harold Wilson, prospective

Prime Minister, an advocate of nuclear free zones in mid-Europe and other accommodations with Russia. Not that such sentiments are confined to Labor. A group of 20 leading British industrialists recently asked for a review of the licensing system that restricts shipment of strategic goods to the Soviet Union and its satellites. The test ban treaty elated the scandal-ridden Tories. Eager to capitalize politically on the agreement, they did nothing to restrain public euphoria. Harold Macmillan himself last week described the present as "a period when Russia is moving away from Communism."

The country least susceptible to such shrimp music is West Germany. By itself, the test ban treaty was welcomed in Bonn. The nation is barred by postwar treaty from producing ABC (atomic, bacteriological and chemical) weapons, and no prominent West German is urging a change. Still, Bonn officials are nervous about the Moscow talks. Reason: the West's promise to discuss a nonaggression agreement between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Such an agreement, West Germany fears, might in effect recognize Communist East Germany, thus formalizing the country's division. Critics of Bonn argue that reunification of Germany in the foreseeable future is a myth anyway, but Bonn finds a significant difference between knowingly living with a myth and publicly admitting that it is one. West Germany has already renounced the use of force to unite the country; and it is willing to increase trade and other contacts with East Germany. West Berlin's Socialist Mayor Willy Brandt even speaks about "fixing the military status quo" and moving "beyond previous conceptions that are no longer fruitful." But the official Bonn line--which may change after

Adenauer steps down--is that a formal nonaggression declaration might jeopardize West Germany's long-range legal case for reunification and thus in effect put an official seal on the European status quo. That, in Bonn's judgment, is what Khrushchev is really after. But if he wants it so badly, argue both Bonn and Paris, he should be made to pay a price for it.

Twin Ogres. If the cold war lull may mean a relaxation in free Europe's anti-Communist posture, Washington is sure that it will also mean a relaxation in Eastern Europe's anti-Western posture. If Communism is less of an ogre to the West, capitalism will be less of an ogre to the East. Khrushchev is determined that "peaceful coexistence" must not apply to the realm of ideology, but Washington is sure that the centrifugal force already at work in Moscow's satellite empire will continue if the constant, artificially whipped-up threats of "imperialist militarism" abate.

Averell Harriman, for one, has detected signs of mellowing. "There is no reason to believe that Khrushchev's aim has changed or that the outward thrust of Communism is less violent. But there are certain situations in which our objectives and the Kremlin's coincide--one of them is not wanting nuclear war. Besides, any ideology becomes less vigorous as time goes on. I'm not a great Kremlinologist; I don't go off in a padded cell and read the literature. I can't tell you what Lenin or Stalin or Khrushchev said on a given date. But I think

I have a certain feeling for the place and for what goes on."

First Taste. Harriman's "certain feeling," which impressively often has led him to the right answers, goes back an impressively long way. He first saw Russia at the age of eight. In 1899 he accompanied his father, Edward Henry Harriman, Wall Street's "Little Giant" (Union Pacific, Illinois Central), on a scientific voyage to Alaska; on the way, the ship stopped off in Siberia, where the group was happily greeted by Eskimos.

Harriman's next trip to Russia, in 1926, gave him his first taste of negotiating with the Soviets. One of his firms held the rights to mine manganese in the Caucasus, granted in the days of Lenin's New Economic Policy, which encouraged capitalist investment. But after a four-hour talk with Leon Trotsky, Harriman was convinced that Stalin would soon force out foreign concessionaires; astutely, "Ave" sold back the investment to the Soviets. Moreover, he proudly recalls, he sold out at a profit--"not much, but a profit."

Politically, the visit was also revealing. Harriman had decided to find put what the new Soviet regime was like, and whether it was going to last. "The more diplomats I saw," he said, "the less I learned." But in the end he became convinced that Bolshevism was there to stay.

Grim Jest. By the time he returned to Moscow in 1941, Harriman had become an impressive diplomat himself.* He was the U.S. member of an Anglo-American Lend-Lease mission (British member: Lord Beaverbrook) and troubleshooter for F.D.R. Meeting Stalin for the first time, Harriman promised that hundreds of U.S. tanks and planes would soon be on their way to help N Russia stem the Nazi invasion. They were the first installment of $11 billion in wartime U.S. aid to the Soviet Union. He saw Stalin again the following year, when he returned with Winston Churchill to discuss the Second Front. Approaching Moscow in a blackout, their plane was shot at. In retrospect, he is not impressed by Russian marksmanship. "Fortunately, they were aiming at us and not at something else--so they missed us."

In October 1943, he was named Ambassador to Moscow. Polished, handsome Harriman was soon Stalin's favor ite foreigner, usually took the seat at Stalin's left at diplomatic dinners. Once, during a Kremlin affair honoring visiting Charles de Gaulle, the French leader stubbornly refused to be persuaded by Stalin to recognize the Communist-controlled provisional government of Poland. Old Joe shouted in a grim jest: "Bring out the machine guns! Liquidate the diplomats!" There were forced smiles all around the table.

"Even before Germany surrendered," says Harriman, "it became clear to me that the outwardly friendly relations of our wartime alliance were not going to survive the peace." Still, in February 1945, at the time of the Yalta Conference, he and other U.S. leaders believed Stalin's promise that he would hold free elections in Eastern Europe. Two months later Harriman realized the truth, cabled the State Department: "We must realize that the Soviet program is the establishment of totalitarianism, ending liberty and democracy as we know and respect it."

Such sentiments were highly unpopular around Washington at the time, and soon a thoroughly disgusted Ambassador to Moscow was badgering Harry Truman to accept his resignation. In 1946 Harriman was shifted from the Kremlin to London's Court of St. James's.

"See for Yourself." Not until 13 years later did he return to the Soviet Union, as a private citizen. Harriman quickly made up for lost time. He took a grueling six-week, 18,000-mile tour from the Baltic to Siberia; in tribute to his wartime service in Moscow, Harriman was treated as though he were still ambassador. Russia's new ruler was the son of a miner, but the son of a railway magnate got along with him famously and frankly. Talking politics, Khrushchev asked: "Do you suppose we consider it a free election when the voters of New York State have a choice only between a Rockefeller and a Harriman?" Shot back Harriman: "Come see for yourself. Ask the voters."

What Harriman really wanted to find out during that trip was the extent to which Khrushchev's Russia was really different from Stalin's Russia. More than ever, that remains the question today. With Harriman, the U.S. had witnessed the great Communist switch of the Popular Front period, when Russia was severely threatened by the Nazis, ordered Communist parties everywhere to make common cause with the hither to despised Social Democrats, and even with the bourgeois. Maxim Litvinov, voluble ambassador to the U.S. and the League of Nations, spoke as eloquently as Khrushchev does today about "the peaceful coexistence of two systems--the socialist and the capitalist." After the cynical nonaggression treaty with Hitler killed off the Popular Front but could not prevent the German attack on Russia, Moscow once again became democracy's ally against a common enemy--only to revert to the old ruthless anti-Western line as soon as the German danger to Russia was over.

These are familiar facts of 20th century life, and the suspicion is inevitable that they have a bearing on the present. Is Moscow simply making a deal with the West to free its hands in dealing with China? Will the old line reappear if the Chinese danger is ever brought under control? Optimists can point out that the Peking challenge to Moscow is not likely to end soon, because it rests deeply in the economic and even racial differences between the two countries. At the very heart of the conflict is the fact that Russia today has more of a stake in the good life than in world revolution.

Comparing Khrushchev and Stalin, Harriman recalls that while Stalin often told him that Communism would triumph because of capitalism's failures, "15 years later in the same office, with the same pictures on the wall, Khrushchev says the Reds will win because of their own successes. The faith is not fluid, but the expression of it is." Moscow's present "peaceful" line cannot be considered irreversible. What is irreversible, Harriman thinks, is "the freedom from Stalin's kind of terror and the Russians' effort to build a better life for themselves."

A Look at the Books. On these assumptions, where does the West move next? Immediately on the agenda are a score of items that Khrushchev wants to negotiate about. They include a ban on underground testing, though both sides still disagree on the number of international monitors and the freedom they would require to make inspections of suspicious blasts, and Khrushchev's nonaggression formula between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Beyond these issues, there are a batch of other Soviet proposals:

&3151; Stationing of inspectors at rail junctions, airports and other traffic centers on both sides of the Iron Curtain to prevent the danger of surprise attack. The U.S. is interested in the idea as a possible basis for reducing Russia's often psychopathic fear of West Germany. As a harmless tranquilizer, Washington feels such an agreement could prepare the climate for other negotiations.

-- A troop thin-out in Central Europe. The U.S. points out that Soviet soldiers would withdraw only a few hundred miles to their own territory while U.S. infantry would, in effect, have to be pulled back clear across the Atlantic. If the U.S. were to consider this idea at all, it would insist on compensation for the Soviet tactical advantage: the U.S. would want three or four Russian soldiers withdrawn for every G.I.

-- Freezing of military budgets. The Soviets brought up the subject many times during the Geneva test ban talks, usually as a condition of the agreement. It has never really been spelled out. The problems involve vastly complex and secretive Soviet accounting methods; before agreeing to anything, the U.S. would demand a look at the books --all of them.

-- Atom-free zones in Central and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and possibly Africa. These are all variations of the old Rapacki Plan (named after Adam Rapacki, Polish Foreign Minister), which the West rejected in 1957, since it contained inadequate safeguards to prevent cheating.

-- A cutback in U.S. bases overseas. An even older Moscow propaganda cliche. The U.S. has shut down missile bases in Italy and Turkey when the arrival of Polaris submarines made the launching sites obsolete; other bases will close only if they become superfluous.

-- General and complete disarmament. Still a Utopian vision, but there may now be a better chance for some degree of disarmament than at any time since World War II.

Competition for Survival. The Moscow agreement and the prospects it raises are not merely events in the cold war; they are also events in the long, distinguished career of Averell Harriman, at 71 an old man on the New Frontier. He is a figure of another generation, yet very much on top of present events; hard of hearing, yet noticeably keen in his political perception; a rambling speaker (his dictation, says his secretary, is "impressionistic"), yet hard and precise of thought. In the period of change that is bound to follow the test ban treaty, Harriman's thinking is more pertinent than ever.

Says he: "We cannot find comfort in any idea that the Communist regime is going to be overthrown or converted to our beliefs. For the foreseeable future, the leaders in the Kremlin are going to be guided by their firm faith in the triumphal spread of their doctrine across the globe. On the other hand, I do not think that the present Soviet leaders will bring on war except by miscalculation or mistake. But we must dismiss as a pleasant daydream any thought of peaceful coexistence and apply ourselves to the challenge of all-out competitive coexistence--competition for survival."

* Dating Year 1 from Dec. 2, 1942, when the first controlled atomic chain reaction was achieved by Enrico Fermi and his associates in the celebrated squash court beneath the grandstand of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. The first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945 from a steel tower at Alamagordo, N. Mex.

* Harriman's remarkable series of Government posts centered around these major jobs: 1934-35, a division administrator, then a special assistant to the administrator, and then chief administrative officer of NRA; 1940-41, executive in the Office of Production Management; 1941-42, Lend-Lease expediter in London with rank of minister; 1943-46, Ambassador to Russia; 1946, Ambassador to the Court of St. James's; 1946-48, Secretary of Commerce; 1948-50, roving ECA ambassador in Europe; 1950-51, Special Assistant to the President; 1951-53, Director of Mutual Security; 1955-58, Governor of New York; 1961, Ambassador-at-Large; 1961-63, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, led the U.S. delegation to the Laos truce talks in Geneva; 1963-, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.