Run for Cover

With all the world watching, the neutralist leaders meeting in Belgrade abjectly abandoned all title to the role of "conscience of mankind,'' and ran for cover.

Nikita Khrushchev scattered them with one loud boo and the remote thunder of atomic explosion deep inside Russia. After that, it was every neutralist for himself, and the Conference of the Nonaligned Nations was soon lined up in splinters tremulously blown one way or the other. Yugoslavia's President Tito condemned France for failing "to comply with the resolutions of the United Nations on the discontinuance of atomic tests." He was willing to forgive Russia, "because we can understand the reasons adduced by the government of the U.S.S.R." Indonesia's Sukarno and Ghana's Nkrumah echoed Tito.

Senior Neutralist Jawaharlal Nehru proved to be the statesman, stubbornly and persistently trying to restore some balance and perspective to the quivering delegates. "The era of classic colonialism is dead," he told them flatly. "Of course it may give us a lot of trouble yet, but essentially it is gone, it is over. Colonialism, racialism are important, but they are overshadowed by this crisis--because if war comes, all else goes." He got surprising support from the U.A.R.'s Gamal Abdel Nasser, who opposes the Soviet demand for two Germanys since, if he sanctioned the principle of partition, it would prejudice the Arab case against Israel. Six other neutrals showed some understanding of what nonalignment means, and backed Nehru: Burma, Ceylon, Cyprus, Lebanon, Nepal and Tunisia.

Fringe Benefits. Many of the neutrals abandoned any pretense of judging the cold war, pushed their own pet projects. The Congo's Vice Premier Antoine Gizenga. arriving late with Premier Adoula, claimed the floor in violation of the rule that only heads of delegations could speak, used it to subtly pump up his own prestige as Patrice Lumumba's spiritual heir. Equally busy was the F.L.N.'s new Premier Benyoussef Benkhedda, who succeeded in persuading Afghanistan, Cambodia. Ghana and Yugoslavia to extend formal recognition to his provisional Algerian government.

During the feverish, all-night attempt to draft a final communique, Indonesia's Sukarno begged the conference to support his demand for West Irian; Morocco's King Hassan II urged his claim against Mauritania. Nehru's coalition vetoed mention of either. An Arab resolution condemning Israel was knocked out by Burma's U Nu, a good friend of Ben-Gurion's.

But not even Nehru could bring himself to an outright condemnation of Khrushchev's new tests. Instead, the conference blandly urged that "all countries" resume the moratorium. But Nehru did succeed in getting the delegates to approve a special message addressed to both Kennedy and Khrushchev, urging immediate summit talks between the Big Two, because of the "deterioration of the international situation and the possibility of war which jeopardizes humanity."

Nehru--already scheduled to go to Moscow from Belgrade on a state visit--and Nkrumah were asked to take the Khrushchev letter. Sukarno then proposed that he and Mali's President Modibo Keita carry the Kennedy letter to Washington as official messengers. At the word "official." Nehru blew up. He would not be anybody's messenger, he declared. He would carry the message only in an unofficial capacity, insisted that Nkrumah go in a separate plane.

Shifting Middle. Though the final communique was the more moderate for Nehru's efforts, it was a woeful performance for the band of statesmen who had swept into Belgrade to render self-proclaimed moral guidance in the cold war. President Dorticos of Cuba badgered the conference into deploring the U.S. base at Guantanamo, but no mention was made of the Soviet garrisons in Hungary, Poland and East Germany, or of Red China's occupation of Tibet. There was much space devoted to the sins of colonialism, but no hint of reproach for the brutal neocolonialism that crushed Hungary and swallowed up the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

The neutralist potentates grandly viewed an effusion of fireworks and ended their meeting in a miasma of self-congratulation. But to the U.S., which has given the nations represented at Belgrade more than $8 billion in aid since 1946, the neutrals' failure of nerve was deeply disappointing. It showed that Khrushchev's callous disregard for the neutrals' feelings had paid off. Big, bad Russia had, in fact, cowed them into appeasement. It also proved that, for all their lofty talk, the neutrals are chiefly committed to the profitable middle way--to preserving their "neutrality," at whatever cost of "principle," to keep the money flowing in from both camps. When Russia tramps down hard on its end of the balance of terror, the neutrals, like so many rings on a rod, obligingly slide down.

In his own brutal way, Khrushchev demonstrated a fact of international life: that the neutrals, though they fancy themselves the conscience of mankind, act generally out of naked self-interest. And their self-interest tells them that it is safer to cock a snoot at the U.S. than at Moscow.

Privately, many of the delegates were shocked, and many more are well aware of the evils of Communism. In the cold war's ideological battle, private sympathy is no mean asset. But the West learned at Belgrade, to its sorrow, that in the self-serving calculus of neutralism, private sympathy does not necessarily equal public support.

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