DRAGGED TO THE SUMMIT
MR. BULGANIN's letter sent to nineteen countries, proposing a conference of Heads of States to discuss topics ranging from the Polish suggestion of a non- atomic zone in Central Europe to non-aggression pacts be- tween the USSR and the various countries of the West, has sharply revealed the barrenness of NATO diplomacy and has placed the American Government in particular in a difficult position. Mr. Dulles, having dismissed the Bulganin letter and steadily refused to consider the idea of a summit meeting, has seen his President grudgingly admit that there might be something in it after all. In fact, the skill of Soviet diplomacy has been demonstrated by the invitations extended to various Powers attached to neither of the two world blocks. It is unlikely that even the State Department will wish to leave the USSR and its allies to a quiet tete-a-tete with India, Afghanistan, Egypt, Sweden, Austria and Yugoslavia.
As it is, it seems likely that the West will have to agree to a summit meeting on terms fixed by Russia and at a time and place of Mr. Khrushchev's choosing. And this surrender 'to Soviet initiative will be the inevitable result of the lack of any activity by Western diplomacy. We halie suffered a severe diplomatic defeat dirough sheer incompetence—largely Mr. Dulles's—and it is doubtful whether President Eisenhower's far more skilful phrasing in his reply to Mr. Bulganin's letter of December 12 is not too late to save the situation.
* * * From time to time during the cold war there has developed a growing crisis so dangerous in its implications, that it is to the advantage of both sides to lessen the tensions arising out of it. Indo-China was one such crisis. The Berlin blockade was another. And it should be recognised that the accelerat- ing race in nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles is more perilous than, either of these. An arms race can create an atmosphere in which the smallest frontier incident can be magnified into a major threat. If war comes about in 1958 it is far more likely to come about by accident, as in 1914, than by one country's design. In face of this threat it is not 'sufficient to go on repeating the platitudes of power diplomacy or to murmur piously cum malo non est pactandum. If Europe is not to go up in a mush- room cloud we must find an area of agreement with the Soviet Union—a neutral groUnd which certainly exists, since we both have an interest in preventing the outbreak, of a new apocalypse. To refuse to search for common ground when, in fact, the Soviet leaders appear to be' willing to dis-, cuss the matter is not merely to lose points in the cold war— that goes without saying—but it is also a real disservice to world peace. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Dulles's 'stone-, wEoli ng policy has led to.
Against this it is often argued that suggestions like Mr. Macmillan's proposal of a non-aggression pact will not merely shake public resolution in this country but will also disgust the Americans with the pusillanimous Europeans and cause them to consider pulling out. All this is pretty absurd. At the moment there is a good deal of evidence that American public opinion is highly critical of Mr. Dulles and his policies. The criticisms which have been voiced in Europe about his policy of discreet petrifaction were expressed long before by com- mentators such as Walter Lippmann and the Alsops. As for this country, if those who favour a policy of tightening our belts and manning the guided missile sites really imagine that this will be made leSs unpalatable, by refusing to have any- thing to do with talking to the Russians, they are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. It is significant that it is just those people who want no truck with Moscow who also complain about the high level of taxation. The connection of the latter with an atoinic arms:race does not seem to have occurred to them.
Fortunately the British Government seems to be slowly coming round to the view that talks of some kind there must be. One unfortunate result of the Western failure to produce alternative planslias been that it now seems to be 'a question of talks 'at the summit or nothing. The best way would have been to get agreements through normal diplomatic channels, but the West has been manoeuvred into a position where it can hardly refuse to accept, with whatever ill grace, the idea of a summit conference. And the urgency of some Western initiative to take' the arranging of, the agenda of such a con- ference out of Russian hands is not lessened by previous failures to take advantage of thOse diplomatic cards we do hold. One very obvious retort to the Polish idea of a Central European zone free from atomic arms would be to extend it to cover, on the one hand, withdrawal of British, French and American troops from Western Germany and, on the other, withdraWal of Soviet forces from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. This idea—which is that of the Gaitskell and Kennan plans—is not really open to Mr. Acheson's objection that aggression in this case would leave no alternative except recourse .to 'massive retaliation.' As it is, the NATO forces in Germany are merely a trip-wire. What a mutual withdrawal of forces in Central Europe would be doing would be to diminish the likelihood of some incident triggering off 'a war.
Whatever may be thought of this approach to Central European probleins, the urgency of working out an agreed Western 'policy of a more positive kind cannot be disputed. Up till now the Russians have won all along the diplomatic line—a fact which points to a singular incompetence on the part of those directing NATO. Since we are being forced into a conference of Soviet choosing we must for once be prepared politically as well as militarily.
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