The Wayward Bus

For 72 hours last week the world hovered on a brink--not the brink of war but a rare opportunity to take the plunge toward peace.

The U.S. was not satisfied with its negative propaganda victory of the week before--compelling Russia to withdraw its U.N. charge that U.S. bomber flights were a "threat to peace." Now, accenting the positive, Henry Cabot Lodge went before the U.N. Security Council with a proposal to open the top of the world above the Arctic Circle to international inspection to guard against surprise aerial or missile attack. There were no strings attached. Here was an imaginative proposal, to make a start somewhere, and in an area not complicated by populations and boundaries, to break the cold war ice jam.

To assure Russia that it was more than a propaganda trick or a play for headlines, the U.S. engaged in the highest form of diplomacy: it told Soviet diplomats about the plan in advance and in secret. In Washington John Foster Dulles called in Soviet Ambassador Mikhail A. Menshikov (whose reaction, said Dulles later, was "not exactly heart-warming"), and in New York Henry Cabot Lodge went up to the Park Avenue residence of Soviet Delegate Arkady A. Sobolev to outline the U.S. offer privately.

Then in the U.N., Lodge stated the case: "Our flights are a necessary defensive measure against massive surprise attack, and it follows, therefore, that if the danger of such attack were removed, the need for this defense could be correspondingly lessened . . . Let us attack the cause of the Soviet concerns--not their symptoms." The U.S. proposal: the prompt establishment of a northern zone of inspection against surprise attack (see map).

Lodge suggested an international inspection force for the Arctic that would provide notification of flights and other significant military movements, radar monitoring of all flights, and establishment of ground-inspection posts.

Out of the Nightmare. The proposal won immediate endorsement from other members of the Security Council--such disparate nations as France, Canada, Sweden, Japan, Iraq--and a cool, but not final response from Russia's Sobolev. Then came the week's most dramatic turn. Sitting to the right of Lodge, who was president of the council, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold murmured that he would like to speak.

None was more startled than Lodge at the Secretary-General's decision: Hammarskjold had intervened in council debate only twice before--once during the Suez crisis, again when the Russians smashed the Hungarian rebellion. Hammarskjold could recall the fate of Trygve Lie, whose intervention on behalf of the U.N. in Korea had won Lie the hostility of the Russians and cost him the Secretary-General's post. But, at 52, Hammarskjold had just been re-elected to a five-year term, and for weeks he had been brooding about the disheartening deadlock over disarmament.

Said he to the surprised council: "The Secretary-General has not only the right but the duty to intervene when he feels that he should do so in support of the purposes of this organization and the principles laid down in the Charter." He recalled that in response to a press-conference question last month he had welcomed the Soviet decision to suspend nuclear-weapons tests. "In the same spirit," he now welcomed the U.S. initiative. "The stalemate in the field of disarmament has been permitted to last far too long," he said. "The peoples are eagerly and anxiously expecting leadership bringing them out of the present nightmare."

As Hammarskjold explained later, "When an initiative is taken in good faith and its possible values are not fully explored, I have the feeling that we have missed the bus. We should not be too sure the road will remain open for buses in the future." For the 72 hours from Tuesday until Friday, the road was open, and the bus was waiting for the Russians to get aboard. When they did not, the whole world--and not just the Russians--missed the bus. Even satellites Poland and Czechoslovakia reportedly pleaded with the Russians not to kill the U.S. offer.

A Turning Point. But from Moscow came the implacable voice of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, describing the U.S. proposal as "sheer publicity," "impudent," "deceitful." He charged that the U.S. was simply seeking "intelligence data on Soviet territory," threatened that if a U.S. plane crossed the Soviet border, the Soviet reply might be missiles--"and you can't call missiles back."

At his press conference next day, Dwight Eisenhower lamented Gromyko's outburst as sad and "almost silly," and stated categorically: "This proposal was made as seriously and as honestly as it could be made by the United States." Secretary Dulles described it as a first step that "might mark a real turning point in this whole cold war situation." He added that the U.S. would consider reducing its flights over the Arctic if inspection showed that no surprise attack was coming across the area. Flexible about details, the U.S. agreed to back a Swedish amendment to the U.S. resolution putting the inspection plan on the agenda of a summit conference.

Quite the Contrary. But when bespectacled Arkady Sobolev began to speak in his schoolmasterly manner on Friday morning, the outcome became obvious. Sobolev returned bitterly to the charge that the U.S. was ''playing with fire," warned that "the time has passed when the U.S. is a safe sanctuary from the flames of war." Sobolev had a new word with which to denounce the U.S. proposal --priyom--which translates roughly as trick or "gimmick," the word Eisenhower had used to describe Russia's proposal to ban nuclear tests. Then Sobolev added a menacing hint to Hammarskjold that his intervention "did not contribute to strengthening the prestige of the Secretary-General--quite the contrary."

Back to the Brink. At voting time ten hands around the semicircular council table went up in favor of the U.S. resolution ; Sobolev sat impassively, his hands folded in his lap. A moment later, by raising his hand in opposition, he delivered Russia's 83rd U.N. veto. Then, when Sobolev dusted off his old resolution denouncing U.S. Arctic flights and calling for an immediate unprepared summit conference, the council glumly rejected it 9 to i, with Sweden abstaining.

"It looks to me now, speaking personally," said Cabot Lodge, "as though the Soviet Union had deliberately knocked the summit idea on the head."

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