Time Out at Geneva

Today's recess finds the Geneva Foreign Ministers conference bogged down in the third week of what the French have called the "dialogue of the deaf." Both East and West have put forth their plans, and to no one's surprise, they have been rejected.

The Soviet proposal is a good deal simpler than the Western plan, and hence it is easier to dismiss. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko has asked that the Big Four sign separate peace treaties with the "two German states" and then undertake the joint administration of West Berlin as a "free city." Western acceptance of this plan means recognition of East Germany, abandonment of the traditional policy of re-unification through free elections, and admission that while the East Germans have a right to East Berlin as their "capital" West Berlin must remain under political tutelage--with a new and rather unpleasant addition to the tutorial staff.

Admittedly, even all these concessions, though extremely unpleasant, do not imply immediate surrender of any essentials. The trouble with this proposal is that it doesn't solve anything: West Berlin would be nominally free, but it would still be subject to extreme pressure from the outside; West Germany might be in NATO, but East Germany would remain in the War-saw Pact. The current crisis has taught the West that any negotiated settlement cannot leave Germany divided and Berlin a vulnerble island.

With this consideration in mind, the West has proposed a complicated four-step plan, starting with unification of Berlin by free elections under four-power supervision and ending, rather irrelevantly, with provisions for armaments reductions and European security. The most interesting feature of the Western plan is the section of German re-unification. West Germany is much larger than its Eastern counterpart, yet Soviet proposals for re-unification have always been based on the idea of "federation," with the "two Germanies" being treated as two equal states effecting a merger. The West, for its part, has insisted on immediate nationwide free elections and has rejected the federation concept. Its new plan, however, steps back from the traditional approach in several respects: elections are no longer immediate, but take place within thirty months; the East Germans will be in the minority on the commission to draw up an electoral law, but they will have a veto power.

The Russians do not accept these concessions, chiefly because they know that a soverign Germany set up under any conditions (except with Russian soldiers counting the ballots) will march right into NATO at the first legal opportunity; they cannot afford a setback of this kind. So any compromise on re-unification will have to give Germany less than complete sovereignty in her foreign affairs.

If Germany were demilitarized now, if she were treated half as a friend and half as a habitual criminal, the general dissatisfaction and unrest of the inter-war period might repeat itself. A new Hitler is improbable, and Germany is not sufficiently powerful any more to terrorize Europe as it has done twice this century, but conditions would certainly hamper general European peace and stability.

Thus prospects for demilitarization are not particularly attractive. But another possibility exists, that of neutralization: Germany could have complete sovereignty except in the making of military alliances, and foreign troops would not be allowed on German soil. This plan should certainly appeal to the West: militarily, Germany would be willing and able to defend itself; politically and economically, the extremely hopeful post-war developments of the Franco-German rapprochement and the European Common Market could be preserved; Germany, legally forbidden to enter NATO, would be none-the less committed in principle to the Western point-of-view.

Of course, although the Russians have offered proposals similar to this one on several occasions in the past, they are not likely to accept it now. Almost any form of re-unification could be acceptable to the West, except one that involved the entry of Soviet troops into West Germany (Russian soldiers form rapid attachments to places they visit, and they just hate to go home). The Soviets seem to be taking the attitude of "Nobody really wants to unify Germany" and are concentrating rather on hardening and formalizing the lines that currently divide Europe.

For this reason, the outlook at Geneva for a compromise short of outright appeasement appears pretty bleak. The two sides are plainly working at cross purposes.