The Policy That Paid

All week long, the eyes and the interest of U.S. policymakers were focused on Europe. They watched two widely separated dramas, and what they saw looked good for the U.S. and for the free world.

First, there was the British election, which increased the Conservative Party's House of Commons voting majority from 18 to 59 seats. The Labor Party, whose powerful left wing is passionately anti-American, went down to a staggering defeat. While the U.S. can and has worked with both Socialist and Conservative governments in Great Britain, the prospects for close cooperation in cold war are far better with the Conservatives in power. By strengthening their Conservative government, the voters of Great Britain increased the strength and stability of the Western alliance.

The other and more fascinating of the European dramas was staged in Yugoslavia, where the top men of Soviet Russia went to call on, to apologize to and to woo Dictator Tito, a man they had repeatedly condemned as a traitor, murderer and spy. Seldom in all history has so powerful a nation so abjectly reversed its position before the watching eyes of the world (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Four Steps Backward. Taken in larger context, the Soviet groveling at Belgrade was all the more interesting. It represented the fourth recent major reversal of an important Russian position. Within a fortnight, the Soviet Union has 1) signed an Austrian peace treaty that was less favorable to it than a treaty it had been rejecting for years, 2) announced a new disarmament plan that, while still unsatisfactory to the U.S., offered more concessions than ever before, and 3) agreed to Big Four talks "at the summit" under conditions that the Communists had previously denounced. For months, Soviet leaders had said that Big Four talks would be of little value if the Paris accords for Western European unity were ratified. But immediately after WEU ratification, they were eager to talk.

The four Soviet reversals added up to one major new development in world affairs: obviously, there has been a drastic change in Russian foreign policy. Involved in the change were retreats in principle and in fact that could have highly important consequences. When they agreed to pull out of Austria, the Russians created the risk that new eagerness for freedom and new unrest will rise in the satellites, notably in neighboring Czechoslovakia and Hungary. When they appeared hat in hand in Belgrade, they showed that dissenters to Communist rule not only can survive but can flourish. These are highly dangerous chinks in the foundation of a system built upon terror and centralism.

Why have the Soviet leaders changed? One view is that their new stance is purely tactical, aimed at encouraging other European lands, particularly West Germany, to take a neutral position beside Austria. But encouraging neutrality is a substantial retreat from the previous Soviet tactic of swallowing up and controlling satellites. As last week's pilgrimage to Belgrade demonstrated. Marshal Tito's current brand of "neutrality" is deplored by the Soviet Union. The prevailing view in high U.S. circles is that the Soviet leaders were forced to change because their previous policies stopped working.

Five Years Lost. For five years, the key aim of Soviet foreign policy in Europe was to prevent the firm establishment of a Western European alliance including a rearmed West Germany. With the ratification of the Paris accords, and the admission of the West German Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (TIME, May 23), those five years of Russian effort ended in dismal failure.

While it faces a stronger and strengthening Western alliance, the Soviet Union also is plagued by home-grown problems. Its agricultural program is admittedly in serious trouble; its industry is seriously strained by the constant pressure of military production. Help to Communist China is a heavy drain; pledges to neutral lands are nagging overdue notes. Interlaced with and more important than these economic woes is the Soviet Union's political trouble. Inside the Kremlin, the struggle for power at the top still goes on; there is nothing in Marxist theory or Soviet history that can guide the Russian ruling committee's internal power problem.

None of this means that the Communist system is about to collapse. The Soviet bloc still has great and growing military power; it still has a firm creed that calls for domination of the world. The U.S. and the West cannot afford to relax and let the new Communist tactics win the old Communist objective. What the new Soviet stance indicates is that policies of strength, firmness and vigilance on the part of the U.S. and the West have paid off, and that they should be continued.

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