The Cold War: The Long Shadow

At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, a small cloud of sand puffed over Rainier Mesa, Nev. From a tunnel deep below the mesa’s sandy surface, a muffled thud rose to shake the desert silence. Minutes later in Washington, President John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. had “reluctantly” completed its first nuclear-weapons test in nearly three years.

Compared to some of the atomic devices that the Russians have exploded since Sept. 1, the low-yield (probably not more than one kiloton) U.S. test seemed as tame as a firecracker. But it carried the U.S. a step forward in its tactical weapons development. And unlike Russia’s atmospheric explosions—which have scattered radioactive debris from far beyond its borders—the U.S. test caused not a particle of fallout.

More Credibility. In terms of cold war politics, the small cloud of sand from Nevada was meant to cast a long shadow. The U.S. hoped that the blast, along with a second underground shot that came the next day, and with the others that were soon to follow, would help reestablish what Pentagonese labels “credibility”—meaning Communist belief that the U.S. has the weapons to fight, and the will to use them if need be. Last week the U.S. and its Western allies further advanced credibility with more taut, determined words on the Berlin crisis.

In a letter to neutralist Presidents Keita of Mali and Sukarno of Indonesia (see following story), President Kennedy warned that “we do not intend to enter into negotiations under ultimata or threats. It is also clear that we do not propose to discuss either abdication of our responsibility or renunciation of the modalities for carrying out those responsibilities . . . We are prepared to meet force with force if it is used against us.” Later, Secretary of State Dean Rusk warned Soviet Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov that any further unilateral action in Berlin by the Russians and the East Germans would obliterate hope for rational, peaceful resolution of the crisis.

Theoretically in pursuit of such peaceful resolution, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Rusk will meet this week during the U.N. General Assembly’s opening session. Their professed purpose: to set the date and preliminary agenda for an East-West foreign ministers’ meeting on Berlin.

Corridor Incidents. But despite Gromyko’s willingness to confer, it was still not certain that Nikita Khrushchev was ready to negotiate on rational terms. Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovosky, in an ominous article in Pravda, said that Russia must arm its forces for “a strenuous, difficult and exceptionally fierce war.” Along Western air corridors to Berlin, Soviet MIG-17s began making close-up inspections of U.S. passenger liners—the first such incidents in a year. There was a rising chorus of East German and Soviet complaints that the Allies were “misusing” the corridors—a possible foreshadowing of Red efforts to interfere with the Western rights of access.

Back in Washington for consultation, tough old General Lucius D. Clay, the 1948 airlift boss, who is now the President’s personal representative in Berlin, gloomed that the situation is “perhaps the most tense, most critical that it has been in the city’s history.”

Berlin was no longer the sole danger point. In Washington’s “Crisis Center,” State Department intelligence experts kept a weather eye on the rain in Laos, where the monsoon—and perhaps an uneasy truce—will end later this month. From the stalled peace talks in Geneva, roving Ambassador Averell Harriman flew to Southeast Asia in an all-but-hopeless effort to establish accord with Sovietsupported Prince Souvanna Phouma, Laos’ prospective Premier.

Stability in Southeast Asia rested in precarious balance and, as President Kennedy well knew, there was a strong possibility that the tension in this jungle-filled corner of the earth might soon match the war of nerves in Berlin, 5,000 long miles away. But in terms of formulating policy, the U.S. had little choice. Khrushchev had started the crisis, and its relaxation or intensification was up to him. The U.S. could only await his next move—and prepare to defend freedom wherever threatened.