Time for Risk

Before his flight to Vienna, President John Kennedy made it clear to the U.S. that his meeting with Nikita Khrushchev was to be a size-up instead of a summit, a time for appraisal rather than for decisions. The President was dead right. When he flew back to Washington last week--bone-tired and pained by a back injury--Kennedy faced the same old and annoying cold war conflicts. Nothing seemed to have changed.

Returning to Moscow while John Kennedy jetted to Washington, Khrushchev appeared in bubbling good spirits. It seemed unlikely that Khrushchev would push the U.S. into any overt action by deliberate international provocation. Yet there was also little chance that he would ease tension by seeking a viable solution for two of the U.S.'s most difficult problems: Berlin and Laos.

Another Story. At the Vienna conference, Khrushchev was tough on Berlin, urging in a written memo that the West immediately sign a German peace treaty. Last week the Soviet Union charged that the forthcoming meetings of the West German Parliament in Berlin were "provocations endangering peace." Khrushchev seemed a bit more cooperative about Laos. In the joint communique issued after the talks, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed on the need for an "effective ceasefire." But last week it was apparent that Khrushchev would implement those words in his own good time. When the pro-Communist Pathet Lao violated the cease-fire by seizing Padong village, Western diplomats at the Geneva conference--who had been vainly waiting for some word from Moscow--boycotted the talks in protest.

At week's end there was a good chance that the negotiations would resume, and the U.S. thereby earn a face-saving chance to let once pro-Western Laos slide quietly into neutralism, and then, almost certainly, into the Communist orbit. But West Berlin was another story. The U.S. was firmly committed to the defense of the city--and committed also to keeping Western troops there until Berlin's independence could be firmly guaranteed.

Preparation for Challenge. To write off Laos was bad enough; to write off Berlin would be a world tragedy. Thus, to the nation last week, it appeared time for John Kennedy to throw off the psychological shock of the disastrous Cuban invasion and prepare for the challenge--however it might come--on Berlin. In his report on Vienna, Kennedy was firm and uncompromising in his promise to hold Berlin. But there were fears that the President on occasion relied too strongly on advisers who would rather lose the cold war step by step than risk the nuclear consequences of standing fast. In the aftermath of Vienna, it seemed likely that a time for such risk would come--and that Berlin might be the place.

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