The Rise or Rapacki Fever

Four weeks ago when Nikita Khrushchev stirred up the Berlin crisis, world attention focused on whether the vital but vulnerable Western outpost could and would hold out. The answer was yes. But by this week it was clearer than ever that the prime intent of Khrushchev's maneuvers is to reopen the far more complex problem of divided Germany and its future.

RAPACKI FEVER," said a prominent West German last week, "is everywhere these days." The symptoms of Rapacki fever--named after Red Poland's Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki--are: 1) loud protestations that something must be done at once to "relieve tensions" in General Europe; 2) the conviction that the prime source of these tensions lies in the present divided condition of Germany. Victims of Rapacki fever assume that there is little hope either for the U.S. to "roll back" Soviet forces from Eastern Europe or for the Russians to drive U.S. forces out of Western Europe. So they proclaim the need of an in-between solution--some kind of disengagement of Soviet and U.S. power. Among the most discussed disengagement proposals:

THE RAPACKI PLAN. For more than a year, Poland's Foreign Minister has been plumping for creation of a "denuclearized" zone to consist of Poland, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany. In its present version--revised, according to Rapacki, to "meet Western objections"--the Rapacki Plan would begin by banning production of nuclear weapons in these four countries and restricting atomic armaments in the area to such forces as already have them, to wit, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The next step--complete denuclearization of the area--would take place only after agreement was reached on "appropriate reduction of conventional forces," including those maintained by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in the four countries.

THE GAITSKELL PLAN. More ambitious than Rapacki, British Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell calls for the reunification of Germany by free elections and the evacuation of Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary by all foreign troops. To take his buffer zone completely out of the cold war, Gaitskell would have West Germany leave NATO and East Germany leave the Warsaw Pact; the frontiers of all the buffer zone nations would then be guaranteed by Britain, France, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

THE KENNAN PLAN. With sweeping simplicity, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia George Kennan a year ago suggested that in return for complete withdrawal of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, all U.S. troops should leave Continental Europe. Like Gaitskell, Kennan is willing to accept German neutrality as the price of German reunification.

No Precedent, No Takers

All these proposals and their many variants have one thing in common: the assumption that because the U.S.S.R. refuses to accept reunification of Germany by free elections (as it originally promised), the West must buy a German settlement by surrendering some of its own positions of strength. Sole exception to this rule is the formula advanced by Sir Anthony Eden at Geneva in 1955, and revived in the House of Commons last week by Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd. Its basic provisions: Germany should be reunited by free elections and allowed to determine its own foreign policy (the NATO treaty does not commit a reunified Germany to membership). If united Germany chose to join NATO, the West would not move troops into what is now East Germany (which would bring NATO some 200 miles closer to Moscow), but would leave that area as a buffer zone.

Apart from the Eden Plan, no one has yet suggested a disengagement proposal that would not gravely endanger the military security of the Western nations. Communist Rapacki's projected nuclear freeze would seriously weaken NATO's ability to defend itself against Russia's vastly larger conventional forces, and would constitute a major victory for Moscow. Any plan that entails German withdrawal from NATO would probably lead to complete U.S. military withdrawal from Europe, since no Western European country save West Germany can be expected to play host to more than 175,000 U.S. soldiers.

Even if Soviet forces were withdrawn to Russia's own borders, they would remain within relatively easy striking distance of all Central Europe. Furthermore, since Germany is not Austria, the idea of a permanently neutralized Germany is almost certainly illusory. "There is no precedent in history," notes former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, "for the successful insulation of a large and vital country situated, as Germany is, between two power systems and with ambitions and purposes of its own."

Signs are, moreover, that all the disengagement schemes so far suggested would be just as unacceptable to Russia as they are to the West. The upheavals in East Germany, Hungary and Poland have surely convinced Moscow that withdrawal of Soviet troops from any of the satellites would spell the downfall of the local Communist regime.

Why, then, did Khrushchev turn the international spotlight on "the German question"? Western experts no longer believe that he was merely probing for weak spots in the Western alliance. Moscow is well aware that an increasing number of West German politicians, expecially the Socialists, regard Konrad Adenauer's stern insistence on reunification, with no strings attached, as dead-end diplomacy. They are flirting restlessly with the notion that if the West agreed to discuss German demilitarization first, it might be able to lure Moscow into serious talks about reunification.

Tke Wnip & the Carrot

But there were signs that the Soviet objective was something far more concrete than mere psychological warfare. In the past four weeks Khrushchev has effectively reminded everyone that at no cost to himself he could make it extremely awkward and expensive for the West to stay in Berlin. Last week from Central Europe came reports that, after threatening the whip, the Russians were about to hold out a carrot. Reported terms:

1) Removal of the East German Communist government from the Berlin district of Pankow to another East German city--possibly Leipzig.

2) Establishment of all Berlin, East as well as West, as a free city administered by the U.N. and with U.N.-guaranteed ground and aerial corridors to West Germany.

3) West German withdrawal from NATO and East German withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. ("A most unequal bargain," says British Laborite Nye Bevan.)

In tne Bazaar

In itself, such a proposal is far short of what Konrad Adenauer describes as an "undeclinable offer." But in the bazaar haggling of the cold war, it might be a first price to indicate a willingness to bargain. The direction that such bargaining would take is already fairly clear. In recent weeks both Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and Polish Communist Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka have emphasized that the only way Germany can be reunified is as a "confederation."

What the Communists presumably mean by a confederation is an arrangement under which both East and West Germany would retain their present governments and economic systems, and even commitments, but would establish some kind of "federal" parliament or high commission to regulate any trade and relations between the two Germany's, the one free, the other Communist. Even if a confederation were fairly proportioned between West Germany's 54 million people and East Germany's 17.4 million, it would mean open Western acceptance of the East German Communist government and of the Soviet presence in East Germany.

For some, confederation would have its temptations. By accepting it, the West would be promised abatement of Communist pressure on Berlin--at least until the Russians decided that such a promise belongs in the category of what Izvestia recently called "paper guarantees which have value perhaps only in history's dustbin." Confederation plays to the sympathies of those who, with vivid memories of two world wars, fear a rearmed and militarized Germany. It is a fear that disturbs not only Poles, Czechs, Frenchmen and Nye Bevan, but also distresses those who, like Konrad Adenauer, want safeguards on German militarism.

At the same time, confederation would probably allay some of the clamor in West Germany for reunification, thereby lessen the strain on West German loyalty to NATO. West Germans might feel that, without any Russians in the act, they could get along with and even prevail over East German Communists. But the contrary would be true: confederation would give the Soviet puppet government of East Germany a voice, however small, in the common affairs of Germany, and that voice would not long be reticent.

Direct Confrontation

Victims of Rapacki fever assume that the West should show itself ready to make painful sacrifices, as if a German settlement and some form of disengagement would actually "relieve tensions." But against the nebulous idea that a vacuum or a buffer contributes to peace, Britain's Selwyn Lloyd argued cogently last week: "It may well be that the world is a very much safer place if in critical areas there is a direct confrontation of the major parties and not an area of uncertainty."

On the West's side, the chief compulsion to abandon fixed positions comes from the fear that West Germans are restless over the West's unyielding Western stance. This amorphous feeling in Germany dominates the opposition Socialists and even penetrates the "flexibles" in Adenauer's own Cabinet. Awareness of this restlessness is behind the spreading conviction that the West must now show itself willing to talk, if under no compulsion to buy. Such talk should not hesitate to put forward legitimate Western positions simply because the Russians say they would reject them; pressure must work both ways. If Khrushchev is embarked on a haggling session rather than a probing operation, it is because he badly wants Western recognition of the status quo in East Germany and in Eastern Europe.

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