If It Had Been the U.S

IMAGINE the United States to be angered by the advent of a left-wing government in Norway," Britain's New Statesman magazine suggested last week. "This government is sharply told that the internal reforms which it plans are not its private affair, but also concern its allies. It is advised to curb the local press, and a manifesto by a group of writers and scientists is described as intolerable. Anxiety is expressed over the ease with which Russian tourists cross the frontier, which -- a Note suggests -- would be better guarded by U.S. troops. Though the Norwegians claim that they merely want to humanize the capitalist system with a view to preserving it, they are told that precautions against a slide further left must be taken in advance.

"In vain, too, do they declare their loyalty to NATO; their assurances are spurned . . . The Norwegians are summoned to explain their conduct before a jury composed of such loyalists as Mr. Wilson and Herr Kiesinger. They reply by inviting President Johnson; he insists on a meeting with the entire Norwegian cabinet, known to contain some men open to pressure. Meanwhile, American soldiers stay in Norway for weeks after joint maneuvers are over. The world waits to see if the Marines will move in."

Thus, through-the-looking-glass, the New Statesman imagines what world reaction would have been if the U.S. had been in Russia's role vis-a-vis Czechoslovakia. The usually anti-American magazine suggested, of course, that the U.S. was not unnecessarily beyond this sort of behavior, particularly if the country in question were as near to the U.S. as Czechoslovakia is to Russia. Still, the New Statesman came down hard on the Russians: "One has only to consider this scenario to see how in-defensible--in terms of any principles ever upheld by men of integrity, including that of 'national sovereignty' so exalted in Moscow--is the Soviet pressure on Mr. Dubcek."

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