A New Era in Europe

ST. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin is a reminder of ancient ties that once linked Russia with Europe. It used to be the throne room of Catherine the Great, a German princess who became Russia's Empress. Last week, as the Soviet rulers undertook an act of reconciliation with their bitterest European enemy, they chose St. Catherine's as the setting. As millions of Europeans, both East and West, watched on television, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt stepped into the hall, past icons depicting St. Catherine holding a cross. At the same moment, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin entered from the opposite door. While Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and a group of German and Soviet diplomats looked on, Brandt and Kosygin signed a treaty that in effect marked the end of World War II.

In the agreement, Europe's leading military power and Europe's leading economic power pledged to renounce the use of force and agreed to accept the na tional boundaries in Eastern Europe that resulted from Germany's defeat in World War II. Brandt, his lined face pensive, seemed gripped by the drama of the moment. "This is the end of an epoch," he said. "But, it seems to me, a very good beginning." Replied the So viet Premier: "I agree completely."

Message from Moscow

Then Brandt, who seeks to lay the basis for a historical development that may ultimately overcome Europe's deep division, spoke from Moscow on television to the Germans. "Europe neither ends on the Elbe River nor on the Polish eastern border," he declared. "Russia is inextricably interwoven to Europe, not only as an opponent and a danger, but also as a partner, historically, politically, culturally and economically. Only if we in Western Europe recognize this partnership, and only if the people of Eastern Europe see it too, can we balance our interests."

Thus in Moscow last week, the two nations, which have faced each other for 25 years across the ramparts of the cold war, made a significant step toward accommodation. Reported TIME Correspondent Benjamin Cate from Bonn: "The treaty is, as Brandt says, a starting point for building a new era of trust and confidence across a divided Europe. It is also a starting point for a new kind of West Germany no longer utterly dependent upon the U.S. As an allied diplomat in Bonn put it, 'German history resumes this week.' "

To Le Monde, the treaty was a "turning point in the history of modern Europe." Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, called it an accomplishment of "farsighted boldness." Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the French publisher-politician, saw the pact as a "passport to the East, a preface to a policy of industrial penetration of the East by the West." German Historian Karl Kaiser said that it constitutes the first phase of a new security system in Europe.

Other European voices, mindful of the dubious value of nonaggression pacts and the tragic history of earlier German-Soviet diplomatic cooperation, raised warnings. "The haste on both sides," wrote Neue Zurcher Zeitung. "poses the question "Who plucked the rose before it bloomed?' Is it a success of West Germany's Ostpolitik or Soviet WestpolitikT' London's Economist pointed out that while the Russians talk peace in Europe, they are extending their sphere of influence in Asia, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. "This is not the behavior of a country looking for a settlement of its arguments with other people," said the Economist. "It is the behavior of a power out to maximize its own position in the world."

Willy Brandt's sudden trip to Moscow was made possible by the unexpectedly early conclusion of treaty talks between Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel the week before. Brandt's visit contrasted sharply with that of stiff-backed, patriarchal Konrad Adenauer, who went to Moscow 15 years ago and agreed grudgingly to establish diplomatic relations in return for the freedom of nearly 10,000 German prisoners of war. Brandt's visit, by contrast, was friendly and informal, but like so many contemporary events, it began with a bomb scare.

His Lufthansa 707 was taxiing to takeoff when a threatening telephone call alerted the Cologne airport tower. As a result, Brandt arrived 90 minutes behind schedule at the Soviet government's Vnukovo airport, about 18 miles southwest of Moscow, where an honor guard stood waiting. When Kosygin asked about the flight, Brandt replied: "It was a bit bumpy, but it smoothed out over Russia." As he was driven to a government villa on Lenin Hills overlooking Moscow, Brandt showed Kosygin the results of a new public-opinion poll indicating that 79% of his countrymen approved of his foreign policy.

Next morning, Brandt and Kosygin talked for two hours in a Kremlin conference room. Kosygin spoke of the Russians' strong desire for closer cooperation with Bonn on economic, scientific and other technological matters. He also referred specifically to Soviet fears of neo-Nazism. But Kosygin added: "We trust you, and if you explain the subject to us, we shall listen carefully." Brandt assured Kosygin that his country's social and economic conditions differed immeasurably from the Germany of the pre-Hitler period, and took up Kosygin's proposal that the two governments make immediate plans for economic and technical cooperation and for the financing of major industrial projects. Brandt will send Economics Minister Karl Schiller and Education and Science Minister Hans Leussink to Moscow for talks next month.

During the signing ceremony that afternoon, Brandt got his first long close-up view of Leonid Brezhnev, whose presence was a sign of the great significance the Soviets placed on the treaty. While Kosygin did the signing as the Soviet head of government, Party Chief Brezhnev hovered over the proceedings, grinning broadly and appearing ostentatiously jovial. Afterward, he even lingered behind, waving and clowning for photographers. Unexpectedly, Brezhnev invited Brandt to a private chat later that afternoon. The two men talked for almost four hours, with only interpreters present. The contents of the discussion were not announced, but the talk lasted so long that Brandt did not even have time to change shirts before going to his hosts' official dinner (caviar, pheasant, salmon and suckling pig).

Later that evening, as the entire party drove to the Moscow television tower restaurant for after-dinner coffee, Kosygin suddenly ordered the driver to stop the auto and took Brandt for a 20-minute walk along Kalinin Prospect, Moscow's most modern shopping street, whose glass-sheathed buildings could easily stand in Dusseldorf or Rotterdam.

Quick Checkup

Earlier that day, Brandt, who constantly puffs on cigarillos, had complained that his throat was hoarse. When he asked his hosts for a throat lozenge, they reassured him that they would find a better cure. When he returned to the Lenin Hills residence that night, three Soviet women physicians were waiting for him. They examined his throat, nose and ears, and listened to his heartbeat and breathing. Then they prescribed a mixture of hot milk and soda water for his scratchy throat. "It's a drink not normally on my list," said Brandt, whose favorite medicine is brandy, "but it worked quite well."

At every opportunity, Brandt sought to engage the Soviet leaders on the subject of Berlin. In the earlier negotiations with West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel, the Russians had refused to discuss it, adamantly insisting that it was a four-power responsibility and none of West Germany's business. Under pressure from Scheel, however, the Soviets had privately agreed that if the West Germans would proceed with the signing of the treaty, some progress; would take place in the four-power talks on Berlin. At the final meeting with Brandt, Kosygin begged off by saying that the Soviets, after all, had only a fourth of the responsibility for the talks on Berlin. In reply, Brandt quoted George Orwell's famous aphorism: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Kosygin allowed that Orwell was "undoubtedly right."

The Soviets had originally urged

Brandt to extend his trip and tour the country, but Brandt said no. For one thing, he wanted to dampen Soviet enthusiasm somewhat. He was taken aback at the grandiose terms in which the Soviets spoke of the treaty. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, for example, told Scheel: "West Germany used to say it was an economic giant and a political dwarf. But now you are a political giant too." Brandt demurred. "I would like to say that I am a little scared by the superlatives that one finds here and there," he cautioned. "As a Berliner, I want to say: 'Haben se's nich 'ne Nummer kleener?' [Haven't you got it a size smaller?]"

There was another reason why he could not stay. The day after the signing ceremony, Aug. 1 3, was the ninth anniversary of the building of the Wall. It cut off the flow of East Germans trapped within the Stalinist satrapy of Walter Ulbricht, whose regime even today is based on the presence of 20 Soviet divisions.

The Treaty of Moscow allows the Wall to remain standing, but may in the long run create a more harmonious political order in which the Wall will become irrelevant. While no one could be certain of the treaty's eventual consequences, there was agreement that it would lead to a general relaxation.

For the West Germans, it will lead shortly to similar treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia. Because Bonn recognizes that detente in Central Europe means nothing without detente in Berlin, Brandt's government is insisting on progress in the Berlin talks. The agreement holds promise of a vast new market opening to the East. Today, with Japanese exports rising, and with the growth of protectionist tendencies in the U.S., the Communist markets are an attractive possibility.

Above all, the treaty represents a chance to break the sterile and self-defeating situation that resulted from the postwar division of Germany. Brandt reckoned that it was wiser to hold in abeyance the policy of seeking immediate reunification than to allow the issue to continue to handicap Bonn's relations with its Communist neighbors. Said Brandt: "We are losing nothing with this treaty that was not gambled away long ago."

For Western Europe, already basking in a summer of detente, the treaty will be a boon. "It wrenches Europe out of the political and economic doldrums that have afflicted East-West relations since the start of the cold war," writes TIME Correspondent William Rademaekers, "and opens a vast horizon of economic and diplomatic movement." Most important, perhaps, is the boost it gives to Britain's chances of joining the Common Market. With West Germany's strength increasing so dramatically, France is likely to reverse the De Gaulle position and support Britain's entry.

Communist Motives

East Germany emerged as both a winner and a loser. The Soviets did not force Bonn to recognize East Germany as a precondition to the Treaty of Moscow, but Brandt did agree to accept the inviolability of present East German frontiers. Communist Party Boss Walter Ulbricht seized on the territorial guarantee to write letters to the heads of state of ten Western nations, demanding that they reconsider their longtime refusal to grant recognition to his regime. Sooner rather than later, he is bound to get it. However, since the Soviets have now accepted Brandt as a diplomatic partner, Ulbricht will probably be forced to agree to at least a measure of closer relations with West Germany.

For the Soviet Union, the treaty was a diplomatic victory. The Russians gained support for a European security conference, at which they hope to win the West's complete acceptance of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe and to speed up U.S. disengagement from Europe.

In Soviet global policy, Eastern Europe holds the overwhelming priority. Since the first stone was thrown at Soviet tanks in East Berlin in June 1953, the Russians have had good reason to feel uneasy about their volatile satellites. The legal recognition of Russia's immutable sphere of influence in Europe, contained in the Brandt-Kosygin treaty, is in large part designed by the Russians to destroy any illusions among its satellites about turning westward for economic and political help to achieve some measure of independence from Moscow. At the same time, Russia must meet Eastern Europe's economic aspirations to prevent new Dubceks from arising. The new Soviet-German treaty can provide the ideal solution to the Soviet dilemma. It may offer Eastern Europe greater opportunities to reap economic gains from trade with West Germany and the rest of Europe, but always under the supervision and control of Moscow.

Not by accident did the Russians halt the development of a new Berlin crisis shortly after the first major armed clash between China and Russia on the Ussuri River in March 1969. In the postwar years, the utterly unrealistic Soviet portraiture of West Germany as a vengeful monster out for Russian blood was a caricature created--in part--to justify the tremendous sacrifices demanded of both Soviet and East European people. The genuine threat of China to the Soviet Union dispelled the need for the West German monster; more important, it made detente with Europe an essential of Soviet policy. The present large-scale deployment of Soviet forces on Russia's European frontiers has become strategically wasteful.

Detente in the West may also serve to deter Western nations from a highly tempting ploy: forming ties with China. Moscow evidently hopes that the Western nations, and especially West Germany, will soon feel so committed by the spirit of conciliation that they will not wish to endanger their good and profitable relations with Russia by flirting with China. In Peking, the Chinese appear fearful that the Soviet success in sealing the status quo in Europe will give Russia a free hand in the East to threaten China and undermine Chinese influence in Asia.

Backward in virtually every industrial sector except the military, Russia's growth of industrial productivity and rate of return from investments in the past decade have sharply declined. In the race to achieve nuclear parity with the U.S. and to develop anything like an adequate production of consumer goods, the U.S.S.R. has spread its resources too thin. Much of Russia's tremendous natural resources in gas, oil and essential ores remain untapped because they lie in remote areas, which would require vast capital investment and an advanced technology to exploit them.

Moreover, Russia's problems of economic growth have coincided with an era of scientific and technological explosion in the West, notably in the U.S. and West Germany. As a result, the West's initial lead in such prestigious sectors of the future as electronics and computers is growing at a rate that increasingly alarms the Kremlin. Moscow's treaty with Bonn provides the political basis for an influx of German capital and technical and managerial know-how on which Russia rests its hopes of bridging its technological gap with the West. U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird may be able to pressure Henry Ford out of building a truck factory in the Soviet Union; but a European consortium headed by the German firm of Daimler-Benz is a highly acceptable alternative.

Having caught up with the U.S. in the race for strategic arms, the Soviet Union will no longer need to fear negotiating any agreement with any nation from a position of weakness. The Soviet-American SALT talks, which last week recessed until Nov. 2, have created an atmosphere for Western European nations to seek accommodations with Moscow without seeming to undermine their alliance with the U.S.

Risks of Relaxation

In spite of such obvious gains for the Soviet Union, the treaty also carries considerable risks. The trouble with relaxation in tension is that it cannot be controlled at will by the Russians. Detentes have their own dynamism and logic. Every period of relaxation has helped to create disturbances in the Soviet bloc, and in Russia itself, which deeply alarmed the Soviet leaders.

History seems to show that modern dictatorships cannot be maintained in relaxed societies: they require a visible enemy and an atmosphere of struggle and danger. One effect of detente with the West is to strengthen more liberal groups in totalitarian societies that favor domestic reforms and are opposed to adventuristic expansion abroad. detentes also erode the authority of Communist regimes that have little or no popular support. Contacts and exchanges with the West tend to give fresh impetus to East Europe's aspirations for independence from Moscow.

Fruitful Exchange

Although the Europeans' fear of West Germany has almost disappeared and fear of the Soviet Union has declined substantially, both nations have long been symbols of dread in Europe. When the two countries fought each other, as they did in both world wars, other nations suffered as a result, and when they were allied, during long periods of history, it was scarcely to the advantage of the rest of Europe. In 1939, for example, Adolf Hitler sent his Foreign Secretary, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to Moscow. As Stalin stood smiling in the background in a library in the Kremlin, Ribbentrop signed a nonaggression pact that facilitated the Russians' invasion of Finland and the annexation of the Baltic states and the Nazis' blitzkrieg against Poland that started World War II.

That conflict and the ensuing cold war have obscured the fact that the two countries have often been engaged in a fruitful exchange of ideas and talents. Each country possesses values, riches and skills that the other needs and envies. Whenever Germany has felt confined by its frontiers, it has looked eastward to exercise its talents. Since the 18th century, backward Russia has repeatedly attempted to use Germany as the instrument for catching up with the rest of Europe. In the process, Germany and Russia have alternated between phases of fondest love and deepest hate. Observes the emigre Russian historian Victor Frank: "No other Europeans have been so hated by the Russians and none so loved."

Willy Brandt's own ideas about Ostpolitik date from the years he served as mayor of West Berlin from 1957 to 1966. Brandt became disillusioned early with the Dulles-Adenauer policy, which assumed that German reunification would be achieved as an inevitable consequence of the West's economic and military strength.

Then Brandt saw the Wall go up, and the West did nothing to stop it. Washington's reaction--or lack of it --made it clear that the U.S. was not prepared to risk confrontation with the Soviets over the German issue. So Brandt set out to try to do something himself. He decided on a policy of "small steps" toward the same ends --modest efforts at relaxation on a bilateral basis. His first attempt at Ostpolitik, after becoming Foreign Minister in 1966 in the Grand Coalition, was in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets seized on the West German rapprochement with Czechoslovakia as one of the main justifications for the invasion. The Czechoslovakia experience taught Brandt that progress could only be achieved through direct dealings with Moscow.

Perhaps reflecting an American inability to perceive the importance of a historic moment that occurs without U.S. participation, the signing of the Treaty of Moscow had little impact in the U.S. The State Department, whose reaction was notable for its lack of enthusiasm, expressed the hope that the treaty would lead to progress in Berlin.

Some observers feared that the whole fabric of Ostpolitik could be rent by the fall of Brandt's tiny coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, whose 30 members give him a bare twelve-seat majority in the 496-seat Bundestag. A defeat of the Free Democrats in the state elections in Hesse and Bavaria in November could result in a coalition crisis that could end the Brandt government as presently constituted. Even so, Brandt's foreign policy seems to enjoy solid support among a large majority of West Germans, who grew weary of the cold-war posturing of the rival Christian Democrats.

The most important issue for the future is whether Western Europe alone is strong enough to resist Soviet pressures. It is not a superpower and is not likely to become one in the next decade or so. For one thing, it remains politically divided. For another, it lacks a significant nuclear capability. The declining U.S. concern over Europe was one of the reasons for Brandt's desire for a treaty with Russia. The danger is that the Treaty of Moscow and the ensuing movement toward detente could lull the West into a false sense of security and reinforce the drift toward U.S. withdrawal. In fact, the Treaty of Moscow immediately brought Senator Mike Mansfield back into the headlines with a call for a reduction of the American troop presence in Western Europe.

Test Case Berlin

Europeans can hardly be blamed if, as they watch the U.S. colossus spending itself in distant wars and domestic turmoil, they question the credibility of the U.S. commitment to Europe. And Americans can hardly be blamed for wondering why U.S. troops should remain in West Germany when Brandt goes running off to Moscow to make pretty speeches about the Russians.

The possibility of unilateral American-troop withdrawals is an unsettling thought for Western Europe, especially since the Warsaw Pact countries have indicated a tentative willingness to discuss mutual balanced reduction of forces. A premature withdrawal of substantial numbers of American troops would hamper these discussions and play into the hands of the Soviet Union. Though there is reassuring talk coming from the Kremlin these days, few responsible Europeans believe that the Russians have given up their long-range goal of sundering NATO and pushing America out of Europe.

Brandt has embarked upon a realistic diplomatic gamble, which will only work to the benefit of the West if the U.S. continues to counterbalance the Soviets by its nuclear commitment to Europe. Brandt made clear to the Soviets that he intends to keep his ties to the Western allies intact, and that he considers Soviet willingness to accept this as the litmus test of West Germany's relations with Russia. Moreover, the Soviets must agree to allow untrammeled access between West Germany and West Berlin and cease all harassment of the Western sectors of the divided city before Brandt will submit the Treaty of Moscow to the Bundestag for ratification. Fittingly, the prospects for a true relaxation of tensions in Europe will be tested in the city where the cold war began a quarter-century ago.

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