Russia: The Adventurer

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What Next? Since Moscow usually produces new pressures to camouflage defeat, many Westerners braced themselves for a crisis at some other trouble spot. Moscow might start making diversionary noises about Turkey and its U.S. bases, or beat the drums again along the Azerbaijan border of Iran. But it seems doubtful that the Soviet Union will get really tough anywhere for quite a while. Berlin, for once, was dropped almost entirely by the Soviet press and radio during the Cuba crisis, and last week East German papers abruptly stopped referring to the peace treaty that Khrushchev has promised them so long.

For one thing, Nikita would scarcely want to mar so quickly the image that he is building as "peacemaker" in Cuba. Moreover, Cuba must have convinced him, if he still needed convincing, that the U.S. will stand firm in Berlin. Since Khrushchev presumably is no more eager to start a nuclear war over Berlin than over Cuba, provoking a Berlin crisis now might be risking another and even more disastrous Russian backdown. The guess is that Khrushchev will simply not revive the East German question for several months.

Instead, it seems likely that Moscow will accelerate its "peace" offensive; this could mean a protracted period of pleading for negotiations, perhaps coupled with sweeping proposals for European disengagement, in the hope that time and soft words might erode the capitalist enemy's determination to the point where Moscow feels it is safe to resume tougher tactics. This would certainly fit in with the views of those in the West who continue to argue that if Russia was reasonable enough to give up its Cuban bases, the U.S. ought to give up some of its own bases. A first sign of the line came at a Bonn reception last week when Soviet Ambassador Andrei Smirnov planted his tall, bearlike figure solidly before one of West Germany's top diplomats, Franz Krapf, head of the Foreign Office's Eastern section.

Smirnov: Now, Herr Krapf, as objective diplomats we must admit that American rocket bases in Britain, Italy and Turkey are legally and morally the same as the ones we are dismantling in Cuba, mustn't we?

Krapf: I admit no such thing. It seems to me they are entirely different.

Smirnov: Well, you must admit that Chairman Khrushchev acted in a very statesmanlike manner.

Krapf: One hopes he will continue to do so. One hopes further that after Cuba he will not make the mistake committed by two German governments and hold the illusion that Americans won't fight.