The Cold War: Response to a Power Play

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Power—brute power—is the basic weapon of Communism. When the cold war going gets really tough, the Communists shove aside all their books of theory, all their piously professed concern for mankind. They fall back on force and fear, as they did in beating down the East Berlin riots in 1953 and the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and as they did last week, with the pressure mounting over Berlin. To a world that was surprised as much as it was dismayed (see THE WORLD). Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would resume test ing its nuclear weapons, boasted of a superbomb that had the force of 100 million tons of TNT—5,000 times the size of the A-bomb that leveled Hiroshima, and five times the size of the biggest bomb in the U.S. arsenal. Two days later, the testing began with a medium-sized bomb explosion in Central Asia. Thus ended a three-year moratorium on nuclear testing by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

The Chance. As students of psychological warfare, the Russians well knew that they risked being branded as enemies of peace by the bloc of neutral nations coveted by both East and West. But. as a man who lives by power. Khrushchev was forced by the requirements of power to take that chance. Russia badly needed to test its family of nuclear weapons. In particular. Russian scientists needed to test small, limited-yield battlefield weapons, a category in which the Soviet Union is thought to trail far behind the U.S. Moreover, with his eye on Berlin. Khrushchev was gambling that his ruthless maneuver would intimidate the U.S.. weaken the resolve of the Western Allies, and scare the East Germans into submission. Khrushchev blandly told two visiting British Laborites that he was hoping to shock the West into negotiations on Berlin and disarmament, negotiations in which the premier obviously felt he would be dealing from strength to Western weakness. In addition, Khrushchev was gambling that the neutrals would try to pressure the U.S. into concessions to avoid a thermonuclear holocaust.

The Soviet announcement of new nu clear tests did indeed hand the U.S. a major propaganda victory, although the leaders of 24 neutral nations meeting in Belgrade were slow to let their anger rise at the Russians. In the cold war of nerves, the U.S. had won its bet that it could out last the Russians at the test-ban conference table—the "bladder technique.'' as the approach was called by U.S. Negotiator Arthur Dean.

The Effect. But the crucial question was: Did Khrushchev's power play have its intended effect of destroying the nerve of the West, and particularly that of the U.S.? At week's end the effect was clearly just the opposite. Across the nation, angry U.S. leaders and citizens were more convinced than ever that now was the time to stand up to Khrushchev and that Berlin was the place. Said President Kennedy: "We. of course, stand ready to fight to defend our basic interests in Berlin." And. with the solid backing of Congress, the President made the basic decision to resume U.S. tests in the near future. In his reliance on the power of force and fear. Khrushchev had gained little—and may have lost much.