The Grandest Tour

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The balcony scene was played in a style that could only be described as Socialist surrealism. High above the cheering crowds and the nodding lindens of Gorky Street, Charles de Gaulle beamed magnificently from the very window in Moscow's massive, 19th century city hall where Lenin had exhorted the revolutionaries of 1919. "I am in finitely touched," De Gaulle began. "I bring you the greetings of the Parisian people and the people of France." Then, in perfectly polished Russian: "Long live Moscow! Long live Russia! Long live friendship between France and Russia!" At that cry, the lowering summer skies of Moscow burst with a Wagnerian thunderclap, lightning bolts crackled among the onion domes of the Kremlin, and the rain came streaming down.

The world has long suspected that Charles de Gaulle has a mystical control over the atmosphere, and last week's performance in Russia confirmed it--climatically and politically. From the moment his tricolored, twin-flagged (French and Soviet) Caravelle touched down at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport to his week's end sortie into Siberia, De Gaulle trailed sparks and portents like a comet. Europe and the world scrutinized each move, each speech, each communique and each symbol for an indication of De Gaulle's intentions.

What was he there for? To strike an other nonaggression pact with Russia like the one he signed in the wintry days of 1944? To conclude scientific agreements that would mount the French tricolor atop Soviet rockets and send them orbiting around the moon? Or was he there to speed the summer breakup of Europe's generation-old cold war?

Never had the Continent seen such bustle and palaver on questions that only a few months ago were sacrosanct. European diplomats from both sides of the erstwhile Iron Curtain were talking again. Russia concluded an $800 million wheat deal with Canada, the largest such sale in history. West German Social Democrats and East Ger man Communists were preparing for open debates. The Vatican announced the resumption of relations with Communist Yugoslavia, a hint of ties to other Red nations in the future.

What will come of it all? Europeans sense a major breakthrough in the offing, one that will eventually result in freer movement and new alignments, a Europe that despite proliferating nationalism could, for the first time since 1939, become one continent again. No one was ready to predict when the new Europe will come. Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle, 75, arriving in Moscow to rebuild the "proud tower" of European nationalism from the Atlantic to the Urals, was doing what he could to quicken the pace.

Napoleonic Parallels. De Gaulle's visit began auspiciously enough with the warmest reception accorded any Western visitor in Soviet history. Seven MIG fighters locked in wingtip-to-wingtip formation escorted De Gaulle's plane to its landing. As the general deplaned in khakis and kepi, the band struck up La Marseillaise and a battery of antiaircraft cannon boomed 21 times--so loud and near that bystanders felt the breath of the guns. The honor guard was resplendent in grey, gold and red, and their rifle butts hit the ground with such popping precision that De Gaulle winced involuntarily. "Vive la France!" cried the thousand "workers" assembled to greet De Gaulle as he plunged among them shaking hands.

On the ride into Moscow with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny, De Gaulle followed the old Kaluga Road (now Lenin Avenue) down which Napoleon retreated under Czarist cannonfire in 1812. Last week the route was lined by 800,000 Muscovites waving paper tricolors and shouting "Druzhba!" (friendship). The Napoleonic parallel was completed when De Gaulle was escorted to a spacious apartment within the Kremlin walls, the first Western leader ever so honored and the first Frenchman to sleep there since Bonaparte.

Questions of Understanding. Like Bonaparte, De Gaulle quickly discovered that the mere invasion of Russia --however glorious--is not tantamount to victory. On the night of his arrival, after a dinner of caviar, cucumber soup, and jellied deer's-tongue, De Gaulle struck his main theme: "France would like to see the harmful spell [of the cold war] broken and, at least as far as she is concerned, a beginning of new relations toward relaxation, harmony and cooperation with the East European states. Paris, in talking of this to the East, necessarily addresses itself to Moscow. The re-establishment of Europe into a fertile whole, instead of being paralyzed by a sterile division, remains France's primary aim. Thus, the understanding between hitherto antagonistic states is above all, according to the French, a European problem." Next morning, in political talks with Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev, De Gaulle learned that French "understanding" is not the same as Russian.

Ensconced among the green malachite columns and crystal chandeliers of Catherine the Great's throne room, Brezhnev launched into a lengthy, violent diatribe against West Germany--a "revanchist" state, which 25 years ago last week had invaded Russia, that has not yet accepted the postwar Oder-Neisse frontier and, moreover, now demands nuclear weapons. French aides noted signs of Gaullist irritation: the general's nods came with such regularity that he resembled a ticking time bomb and his hands clenched tight on the carved Romanov griffins of his chair. De Gaulle's response would have pleased his NATO allies if he had uttered it in their presence. "It is necessary," he said when Brezhnev finally finished, "to proceed by stages. The future lasts a long time, and blocs do not dissolve overnight. It is up to Russia to give an example of rapprochement." As to Brezhnev's demand that the West "accept a framework that guarantees European security" and recognize East Germany in the process, De Gaulle rebutted brutally: "East Germany is only an artificial creation of yours."

Facts & Patents. Things went a bit better that evening at the Bolshoi, where De Gaulle received a standing ovation both from Muscovites and U.S. Ambassador Foy Kohler. The ballet was Romeo and Juliet, and De Gaulle, who was seated beside Klavdia Kosygin (Mme. de Gaulle's hostess throughout the week), loved every minute of it, especially the dueling scenes. He was also happy the next day, when the political talks took a more favorable turn. This time the main interlocutor was Economist Kosygin, who apologized for Soviet failure to deliver on 1964's Franco-Russian trade agreements. Said Kosygin: "You are too expensive." Still, he offered to speed up the retarded orders, and his underlings announced only a few hours later that the French firm Chausson had received a large contract for auto bodies. The delegations rapidly agreed to establish scientific and technical cooperation (exchange of scientists and patents) and to undertake joint unmanned space projects.

All went so smoothly on the economic and scientific front that there was time in that session to return to world-scale questions. On Viet Nam, De Gaulle and Brezhnev found it enough to agree that neither Red China nor the U.S. should ultimately win the war and occupy the country. Both concurred in their oft-stated demands for "respect for the 1954 Geneva Accords" and establishment of an independent Viet Nam, "sovereign and free of all foreign intervention." Brezhnev, softening from his rigid position of the previous day, proposed another session on politics at the end of De Gaulle's twelve-day trip. He had, said the portly party boss, been thinking about De Gaulle's speech of the day before, and wanted to talk about Europe again.

With that, De Gaulle took off on a 6,200-mile swing through Russia that was less political than it was crowd pleasing. In Novosibirsk--"the Chicago of Siberia"--fully half of the city's 1,000,000 residents turned out to greet the French leader. Accompanied by Podgorny and Zorin, De Gaulle inspected power plants and electrical-equipment factories, then stalked through Akademgorodok, a seven-year-old academic city of 37,000, which gave him the opportunity to strike again on the anvil of Franco-Russian cultural rapprochement. "How can one forget," he said, "that the great academy I am visiting today is the successor of one founded by Peter the Great in 1725? Later, the same drive that inspired Czar Peter carried you to Siberia, to discover great riches: oil, gas, metals. And to construct new cities. Let Soviet and French science unite for the progress of man. as Russia and France unite for the peace of the world."

From Novosibirsk, De Gaulle flew south to Baikonur, the Soviet Union's main space center. No other Westerner had ever seen the Baikonur "cosmodrome," and the Russians topped that distinction by launching a satellite in De Gaulle's honor--probably, said wags, a polar-orbiting satellite aimed at spying on the U.S. From there, at week's end, De Gaulle flew on to Leningrad for tours of the Hermitage and the Petrodvorets palace--and more talks with Podgorny and Kosygin about the ultimate disposition of Europe.

Grand Finale. No other Western leader feels he has more of a right to discuss that disposition than De Gaulle. Moreover, no other Western leader is currently in a position to do so. Britain's Harold Wilson, with his Atlantic orientation and his Common Market phobia, is hardly eligible. West Germany's Ludwig Erhard has been forced into a defensive corner by Social Democratic Leader Willy Brandt's initiative on an exchange of speakers with East Germany; Italy and Spain, the Low Countries and Scandinavia are not contenders.

But for Viet Nam, the visiting President in Russia last week might have been American, not French. The U.S., which for 21 years has been the leader of Western Europe, is now so deeply engaged in Asia that even if Lyndon Johnson wanted to involve himself in the current European transmogrification, he would have neither the time nor the forum to do so. De Gaulle is perhaps the only Western leader with the freedom of action and position to do some good in Europe at the moment.

Last week's Russian journey is perhaps De Gaulle's grandest gesture--and quite likely his most valuable. Since 1945, when he was declared odd man out at Yalta by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, De Gaulle has put France back on the map as a major world power. He ended the debilitating war in Algeria and added a new dimension to Western handling of the "Third World"; he blew life into the Common Market, even if he chilled the aspirations of those who saw it as a way to political unity on the Continent. In one fell swoop, he disposed of France's colonies in Black Africa, and in the process salvaged stronger ties and greater loyalties with his former wards than any other ex-colonial power.

De Gaulle took France's defeat at the hands of Communism in Southeast Asia as stoically as possible, even turning it to his diplomatic advantage in his current Russian tour. Last week he revealed that he would visit Cambodia in September, and had dispatched a "personal message" to North Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh that might very well win him an invitation to Hanoi. Still, De Gaulle can do very little about Asia. He no longer has the power base or the authority. In Europe, he has both.

Friendly Persuasion. De Gaulle's view of Europe is the traditional one of a continent of nation-states, each sovereign and each civilized enough to look out for its own interests by means of bilateral treaties. ''I intended to assure French primacy in Western Europe," wrote De Gaulle in his memoirs of 1954.

"Without ever accepting any kind of dependency, [I would] persuade the states along the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees to form a political, economic and strategic bloc; to establish this organization as one of the three world powers and, should it become necessary, as the arbiter."

That act of friendly persuasion is quite in keeping with the French role in Europe. De Gaulle shares the traditional French fear of Germany, and has been reluctant to see his trans-Rhine neighbor reunite. In that, De Gaulle is clearly a Frenchman first--but with a pan-European difference. As he said during his election campaign last year: "This country, this France which has bandaged her wounds, and God knows they were serious; this France which is regaining her power; ah, yes, she is devoting herself to establishing an equilibrium in the world. In brief, we are playing our role, pursuing a vocation which has been ours for centuries."

On both sides of the Iron Curtain other men in other places were pursuing the same vocation, confirming the fact that Europe was indeed in motion. Last month Rumanian Minister of Metallurgy Ion Marinescu visited Paris; Russia's Leonid Brezhnev showed briefly in Bratislava; Czech Foreign Trade Minister Frantisek Hamouz skipped frantically from Oslo to Budapest to Copenhagen, signing trade agreements. Meanwhile, Danish agricultural experts toured the backwoods of Czechoslovakia; Norwegian Mayor Brynjulf Bull concluded a scientific agreement in Budapest; and a delegation of Polish parliamentarians arrived in Brussels to have a look at the Common Market. Poland's Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki turned up in Stockholm; Hungarian Boss Janos Kadar talked to Tito in Bled; the Shah of Iran left Rumania for an eight-day state visit to Yugoslavia. No sooner had Rumanian Postal Minister Mihai Balanescu arrived in Paris to inspect French telecommunications than Kentucky Governor Ed Breathitt popped up in Poznan for a Polish tool fair.

How Many Germanys? If De Gaulle is ever to achieve the Europe of his vision, he must surmount two tall hurdles: German reunification and the mili tary presence of both American and Russian troops. World War II's solution was to split Germany among the victors; yet Germany--West and East --has proved itself the strongest economic entity in Europe. East Germany provides fully one-fifth of Russian imports each year, while West Germany's gross national product is the free world's second highest (after the U.S.). Alone among World War II's victors in publicly pushing for German reunification, the U.S. has been hampered in securing it by the West's adamant attitude against recognition of East Germany. The Soviet-East German position on reunification is that it can come about only through a "confederation" of two sovereign Germanys. The concept may sound farfetched to the casual observer, but in fact there is already considerable administrative cooperation between the two Germanys in communications, transportation and trade--a cooperation that is never spoken of publicly.

France, which has been the target of German aggression three times in the past century, is understandably leary of a reunited Germany, as are Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia. Among Gaullists, the problem has always been pushed to the background or else treated with gallows humor, such as the crack Novelist Franc,ois Mauriac once made: "I love Germany so much that I want there to be two of her." Yet recently the inevitability of German reunification has become part of the French consciousness. "All will go very slowly," De Gaulle said last month. "Germany itself must evolve."

Arm Twisting. Unfortunately for that slow and easy philosophy, reunification fever is at a higher pitch in West Germany today than at any time since the war. Triggered by the proposed Red-neraustausch (speakers' exchange) between West German Social Democrats and East German Communists tentatively set for July 14, the fever was further heated by Christian Democrat Rainer Barzel's sweeping proposals for reunification in his "Unity Day" speech in New York (TIME, June 24). Barzel's concessions for reunification included leaving Soviet troops within a reconstituted Germany as a protection of Soviet interests in the "northern tier" of Warsaw Pact nations. Barzel believes that even in a "neutralized" non-nuclear Germany, with a legal Communist Party and Soviet presence, West German wealth and pro-democratic institutions would ultimately triumph.

Barzel's propositions were merely an attempt to sweeten the pot for the Russians in their poker-face view of the European future. Yet troop presence remains at the very heart of Europe's past history and future development. Both of the world's two great powers have every reason to want their soldiers out of the frigid zones of occupation. In Paris last March, Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin announced: "The War saw Pact nations will either reduce their military forces or even abolish them if a corresponding move is undertaken by the NATO allies in West Europe." Moscow quickly quenched any flaming hopes over that issue by reiterating its hard line on the subject of Viet Nam, but still it was obvious that Zorin's bosses were floating a trial balloon.

Russia obviously has much to gain by restructuring the Warsaw Pact. Pressure is on from Moscow's allies--principally Rumania--to cut back on defense costs and remove Russian troops from East Germany, Hungary and Poland. After all, they have a way of discouraging nationalism. Nearly half of the Soviet ground force is currently stationed west of the Urals--where much less than half the danger to Russia now originates. The only hot war in the world is in the Far East, and Red China is still hungry for the Mongolian territory Russia claims as its own.

By contrast, the U.S. finds it equally expensive to maintain 225,000 men in Western Europe. Washington is perennially faced with the problem of offsetting the balance-of-payments deficit ($1.3 billion last year) that the troops generate, and must make up for it by selling weapons to its NATO allies. Recently, the Defense Department had to twist Bonn's arm to speed up payment on $675 million in reciprocal purchases.

Galling Years. But can the U.S. safely pull out of Europe now or in the future? Obviously not now, or at least not all at once. The pullback becomes a matter of pace--De Gaulle notwithstanding. Basic American policy remains firmly rooted in the strength of the Atlantic Alliance and NATO, France or no. The shibboleths of the past still permeate American policy. Under Secretary of State George Ball presents the hardline position of the State Department's "theologians" in terms right out of the deep freeze.

In a recent speech before the American Society of International Law, Ball traced the "persistent rivalry among the individual nation-states of Europe" through three centuries of war, then recapitulated the U.S.-inspired moves toward Western European and Atlantic unity since World War II: the Schuman Plan and the Coal and Steel Community, the European Defense Community and NATO, the Treaty of Rome and the Common Market. "This then," he said, "was the prospect in the early part of the 1960s--a Europe making massive strides toward unity with the strong prospect that its geographical boundaries would be expanded to include the United Kingdom and certain other European nations--a Europe growing prosperous with its burgeoning Common Market under the protective umbrella of NATO."

But in a few galling years, said Ball, France has managed to "transform the Common Market into a mere commercial arrangement," shut Britain out of Europe by whim, deny Germany participation in nuclear control "so as to preserve its own exclusive position as the sole nation with nuclear weapons on the Western European continent," and force the restructuring of NATO "in order to achieve freedom of political maneuver that could permit it to deal, to its own advantage, with what it has described with a curious impartiality as 'the two great hegemonies.' "

Ball's conclusion: "Such a Europe [as De Gaulle envisions]--a continent of shifting coalitions and changing alliances--is not the hope of the future; it is a nostalgic evocation. It would not mean progress but a reversion to the tragic and discredited pattern of the past--a return to 1914, as though that were good enough, and with the same guarantee of instability--yet made more dangerous, not less, by the ideological drive of the Soviet Union and the existence of nuclear weapons."

Former High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy shares Ball's fear of the Gaullist proud tower. "Nationalism breeds nationalism," McCloy told the Senate last week, "and if we do not watch our step, we shall find Europe again engaged in a struggle for national dominance with cross-alliances." In Britain, Whitehall skeptics are more succinct; to them De Gaulle's Europe is one that stretches "from the Atlantic to the Urinals."

Alternative to Theology. By contrast to Ball's rigid view of the shape of tomorrow's Europe--and to a large extent thanks to Charles de Gaulle--there is a new view of Europe burgeoning in Washington. Last week ex-White House Adviser McGeorge Bundy advocated before the Fulbright committee that West Germany accept the Oder-Neisse frontier with Poland and renounce its claims to Heimatsrecht in the lost territories of Silesia and East Prussia. His sentiments were reinforced by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in testimony last week on Capitol Hill. In reply to a question by Bobby Kennedy, McNamara gave hopeful credence to a rumor that had originated in Berlin, to the effect that the Russians might withdraw five of their 20 divisions in return for a quid pro quo by the U.S. "Would we be willing to lessen our presence in Europe and perhaps make some changes in NATO?" asked Kennedy. Said McNamara: "The direct answer to your question is yes."

Six months ago, that response would have been unthinkable. If the shifting movement among the allies and Eastern Europe had any merit at all, it was in this new affirmation of change--cautious as it might be--which threw a harsh spotlight on the old frozen ground of East-West intransigence. In that context, De Gaulle is more than a mere spoiler; with his feints and forensics, his antique nationalism and farsighted vision of a Europe that will endure long after Communism has faded into historical obscurity, he is speeding the process of change. All through his Russian trip, he has remained consistently a man of the West: prideful and unyielding when he told Brezhnev that he will not accept Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe, plastic and malleable when he endorsed the U.S. presence in Western Europe as the only alternative to Russian aggression.

Shifting Climate. Thus, for all the pique Charles de Gaulle has caused in Washington with his NATO policies, he has also been doing Washington's work by forcing a reappraisal of what the cold war and the alliance are all about. Washington has been reacting to the initiatives of others for too long a time, and should have taken the lead in NATO reform months, if not years, ago. Concern with Southeast Asia has made that imaginative approach to Europe well-nigh impossible, but the U.S. is still deeply, enduringly involved in Europe. If De Gaulle can find opportunities within the current shifting climate of Europe to enhance the West's position vis a vis Russia, then surely the West's leaders should be able to transmute those opportunities into policy.

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