Berlin Crisis, 1961

The winds of cold-war crisis for 1961 were converging on Berlin. Russia's Nikita Khrushchev had made it plain that he intends to provoke that crisis.

In his Vienna confrontation with Khrushchev, President Kennedy insisted that there was no room for compromise on the commitments that 'the U.S. has made for the defense of West Berlin. But the Soviet Premier was even more intransigent in his demands--and, just to make certain they were understood, he handed Kennedy a 2,000-word declaration of Soviet intentions. In that memorandum, Khrushchev demanded an immediate peace treaty to reunite Germany under Communist terms. That failing, as it must, he vowed to sign a separate peace treaty with Communist East Germany, which by his way of thinking would then have every right to cut off free-world access to West Berlin. "It is necessary to establish deadlines," said the memorandum. "The Soviet government regards a period not exceeding six months as adequate."

Last week, appearing on Soviet television to report on Vienna, Khrushchev seemed even more deadly in his threats. "A peace settlement in Europe must be accomplished this year," he said. And after the U.S.S.R. signs its peace treaty with puppet East Germany, the East German government can cut off the supply corridors to West Berlin if it pleases. Any Western attempt to force passage to West Berlin "would mean war--and thermonuclear war at that."

Khrushchev had set similar deadlines in the past--and he had backed down in the face of obvious Western determination. Now, Khrushchev is under pressure from his Communist allies to be tough on Berlin and is well aware of the doubts among the Western allies.

So far, the allies have not formulated a united program on Berlin. The official U.S. policy has always been to maintain Western rights in Berlin at whatever cost. But Montana's Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield last week proposed a dangerously nonsensical notion for lumping prosperous West Berlin and blighted East Berlin together as a "free city." Mansfield stressed the fact that he was speaking as an individual Senator, but he is the Senate's Democratic leader and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The White House quietly let it be known that Mike Mansfield's proposal was completely unacceptable to President Kennedy. But the damage--in the form of evidence of U.S. indecision--had been done. It was now up to President Kennedy to go beyond expressions of U.S. determination to hold fast in Berlin and to make plans toward meeting the crisis that seems sure to come.

What might such plans include? First and most clearly, the U.S. could revive the Berlin airlift, which in 1948-49 humiliated Stalin's Russia. Despite a lot of loose and unknowing talk about Communist electronic devices making air navigation into West Berlin impossible, the airlift remains perfectly feasible. Beyond that, there is the opportunity for the West to force its way through the Autobahn corridor to West Berlin, since right of access to the city is guaranteed by international law. Indeed, it would not make much difference whether papers were stamped by East German gate guards or--as they are now--by Russians.

If 1961 brings a showdown between the West and Communism--as Khrushchev seems to want--it is better for the West that it comes in Berlin than in Laos or the Congo. But it is of highest importance that the West be fully prepared.

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