Foreign Relations: Smoothed Feathers

Aboard the plane that brought him to the U.S. last week, West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer looked apprehensive. A few days later, after three meetings with President Kennedy at the White House, the old man was smiling joyfully. In the interval, some weighty worries had been lifted from Adenauer's mind.

He had feared that he might meet with anti-German feeling, stirred up by the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel. That worry was dispelled when he visited the U.S. Senate, was introduced on the floor by Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and drew warm applause from Senators and spectators in the galleries. Adenauer had also fretted that he might be unable to establish with John F. Kennedy the same goodfriend terms that he had built up with Dwight Eisenhower.* That worry was also evaporated: after the meetings with Kennedy, Adenauer felt that he had established a "great spirit of friendship" with the new President.

Higher Threshold. Adenauer's gravest cause of uneasiness was his suspicion that the new Administration was softening in its resolve to use nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe against a Russian attack with conventional forces. Adenauer knew that the new Administration wanted to build up NATO's conventional military forces and to raise the "threshold" at which the U.S. would employ nuclear weapons. He also knew that the Kennedy Administration was doubtful about previous plans to build up a new deterrent force of Polaris missile submarines, under the control of NATO rather than the U.S. —a proposal that Adenauer had endorsed.

Adenauer feared that if NATO failed to acquire an independent nuclear force and if the U.S. raised the threshold for employment of its own nuclear weapons, the Russians might be tempted to marshal their superior conventional military forces and march into West Germany.

Adenauer got no clear-cut explanation of Kennedy Administration plans for NATO defense. But Kennedy did assure Adenauer of the U.S.'s continuing readiness to use nuclear weapons, if necessary, to defend West Germany and the other NATO nations against a Russian attack.

Full Agreement. Moving on from NATO defense, Kennedy promised Adenauer that he would be kept "fully informed" about U.S. plans in disarmament negotiations with the Russians. Adenauer assured Kennedy that West Germany would set up a continuing program of economic aid to underdeveloped countries, as the U.S. had urged. The two leaders, in the words of their joint communique, "renewed their pledge to preserve the freedom of the people of West Berlin pending the reunification of Germany."

After the meetings with Kennedy, Adenauer smilingly told newsmen that the talks had produced "100% agreement." Noting that the great difference in age—85 and 43—had not created any difficulties in communication, he twinklingly added that "43 is a very respectable age to be. When I was 43, I was mayor of Cologne. That was the best job I ever had."