COLD WAR: The Weighing Room

• Share

On both sides of the Iron Curtain last week the atmosphere was scented with soft words and occasional gentle deeds. Russian Propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg announced that the Russians are "sick and tired of the cold war" and want to end it. Premier Georgy Malenkov beamed a velvety message to the U.S.: "With all my heart I wish the U.S. people happiness and a peaceful life ... I believe there are no obstacles to the improvement of relations." Radio Moscow even enlivened one broadcast with the long-forbidden "decadent" music of George Gershwin.

Moscow advised Washington that it will discuss President Eisenhower's atomic pool proposal. Washington said fine. The Red Danube was suddenly opened to shipping of all countries. The U.S. prepared to withdraw two divisions from Korea (leaving eight there and in Japan), and though this was accompanied by hints that the U.S. would retaliate to the heart if the Communists resumed the Korean war, many Europeans drew their own wishful conclusions from U.S. defense budget cuts, and gossiped of a general U.S. withdrawal into something called "peripheral defense."

No Word for It. Something, in fact, was happening to the cold war, but no one had yet found the right word or phrase for it. Some called it an easement, others, a thaw. Many, including Prime Minister Churchill and Pravda editorial writers, preferred to speak of "relaxation of tension." The Italians talked of distensionse. No phrase yet minted combines both the reality and the illusion of the moment: the reality of the new Russian regime's need to relax tension, and the Communists' manipulation of this need. Reality and illusion have a rendezvous date: Jan. 25 in Berlin. Then, the foreign ministers of Russia and the West will gather together for the first time since Paris, 1949.

It was a conference that many of Europe's people seemed to want. But their governments had assented to it without enthusiasm (even to Churchill, this was no substitute for meeting Malenkov in Moscow). It was fairly safe to predict in advance that it would produce no dramatic settlement, or even a peace treaty for Germany or Austria. Yet it was fast building into an important testing time in the cold war. In this weighing room, after four years, the Big Four will test ,anew the jiggling scales of world power.

Never That Easy. Last week Western diplomats were preparing "position papers" in the event Russia's Vyacheslav Molotov comes equipped with surprise proposals for unifying Germany and signing a peace treaty. But they were confident that the Russians were neither able nor willing to pay the price of losing East Germany. Western strategy, according to word in Washington and London, will be to expose Russia's unwillingness to make a settlement, trumpet it to the world, then adjourn the conference in the hope that Europe might thereupon unite in firm purpose. But with the Russians, it has never been that easy.