Canceling the Bargain

The recent diplomatic storm over the Atlantic has all but obscured the proposal that caused it. It was Sir Winston Churchill, you remember, who started the affair when he suggested that himself, Eisenhower and whoever happens to be running Russia might meet to settle some of the outstanding issues of the cold war. That was before Clement Attlee made a criticism of the U.S. Constitution which, for all its academic substantiation, was about as politic as Adlai Stevenson suggesting the Coronation is a pompous farce. And it was before Senator McCarthy disgusted everyone by applying to Attlee the same kind of smearing brush he has used on American nationals. But Churchill's original plan is too important to let these unfortunate reactions cancel its consideration.

The time is as ripe for a conference as it has been in the last seven years. Churchill's proposal catches Russia in the middle of her peace offensive where she can hardly be caught refusing the offer. Whether a talk will accomplish anything is another problem, depending entirely upon Russia's willingness to make concessions.

But President Eisenhower is reticent to join such a conference, he says, until Russia accompanies her peace talk with some "deeds" as he calls them. He suggests Russia share in writing an Austrian peace treaty or acquiesce to a democratic unification of Germany. In fact, he asks as a preliminary to a conference some of the very actions the conference is supposed to discuss. This is a rather stubborn attitude, which disregards the fact that Russia, through its satellites, has made some significant concessions already, such as the acceptance of a Nehru inspired POW exchange.

In the game of diplomacy, a country abhors making outright concessions. It offends its "national honor"--a quality picayune at first glance but actually important enough that wars have been fought for it. Russia certainly regards her national honor as highly as the United States. So if the Russian government believes it must make concessions, it would rather dress them up in conference form than as preliminaries to a conference. The ritual of bargaining is important to the national honor. The country that gives in likes to go through the motions, at least, of trying to extract concessions from the victor.

If the Russian government does not, however, wish to make any concessions, the three-power talks will fail. But steeped as this is in recent precedent, this would be no tragedy. The deputy prime ministers have flopped around for years without result.

Eisenhower reasons that if Russia will make no preconference concessions, the talks will fall through. He and his advisors, convinced American diplomats got their fingers burnt at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, are afraid they will be bested again. This is hardly the kind of "new, daring foreign policy" he promised the electorate. There is no reason for our diplomats to have this inferiority complex, and as long as they keep it, our cold war position will be weakened.

After eight years of dealing with Russians, and two years at Panmunjom, American diplomats should have learned to confer with Communists without appeasing them the least bit. And such a conference is an honorable way, in diplomatic language, for Russia to take the strain off Germany, Austria, and important parts of the cold war battlefield. The U.S. might listen to an old hand like Sir Winston. He has been dealing successfully with Communists for a long time.