Foreign Relations: The Mellowing Mood

A few hours before last week’s signing of the limited nuclear test ban agreement in Moscow, a jovial Nikita Khrushchev met in his Kremlin office with U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Beamed the Soviet Premier: “This treaty we are going to sign this afternoon is, as they say, just what the doctor ordered.”

Amid all the clinking of champagne glasses and the bubbles of cold war good fellowship, there were many who could agree with Khrush. Already the big question seemed to revolve less around the possible effects (and risks) of the test ban treaty than around the nature of the next steps to be taken in relaxing East-West tensions. And by week’s end it seemed increasingly evident that a likely next step would be a mellowing of U.S. attitudes toward the satellite Communist nations of Eastern Europe.

“We Are Ready.” On the same day that the test ban agreement was signed, Hungary’s Premier Janos Kadar made a little-noticed speech over Radio Budapest. Said he: “I met the American delegation, which was just negotiating the nuclear test ban treaty, several times. In the course of these meetings, the members of the American delegation declared that they want to normalize their relations with the Hungarian People’s Republic. We are ready to normalize relations.”

Not since Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Freedom Fighters’ revolt in 1956 has the U.S. had an ambassador in Budapest. But for several months the U.S. has been negotiating toward more extensive diplomatic relations with Hungary. Similar conferences for friendlier relations—both political and economic —with Rumania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia are being considered too. The U.S. State Department notes that much of the incentive has come from the satellites themselves; they have displayed an increasing interest in trading with the U.S., and even now 40% of all satellite trade is with countries in the West.

No one really believes that Communism in Eastern Europe is about to wither and die, but there are striking signs that there is less of the Stalinist sort of repression and a chance for a freer life (see THE WORLD). “There is a long-term trend working here,” says a State Department official, “one of loosening relations between the East European countries and the Soviet Union. They are growing less dependent on Moscow, more assertive. And if relations between the West and the Soviets improve, the satellite countries are going to be able to broaden their contacts with the West and the U.S. These contacts will open them up to new impressions that weaken their blind faith in their system. Then we have the possibility of ever more effective relations. After all, our influence must operate through some kind of interchange.”

Give & Take. Along with the chance for new U.S. influence on the satellites through economic and diplomatic channels will come another important change. By dealing openly and often with some Iron Curtain countries, the U.S. may be able to wean the satellites away from their complete dependence on Russia. Said a State Department man: “To legitimize these regimes contributes to the relaxation internationally and the emergence of national identities in the bloc. That we want to see. It’s in our interest to help build up their prestige.”

Will Nikita Khrushchev perhaps also want to be a little more reasonable with regard to the issues of West Berlin and Germany? Any negotiations leading to a relaxation of East-West tensions must naturally include give and take on both sides.

For the West there can be no diminution of basic principles. U.S. policy toward Germany must remain aimed at seeking the eventual reunification of that country—no matter how remote the possibility may seem. To “normalize” Berlin by recognizing, in no matter what degree, that that geopolitical abortion is a permanent fact of life, would be to sentence West Berlin, for so long an inspirational outpost of freedom, to a lingering but inevitable death.