VIEWPOINT
Peace in our time
GEORGE GALE
err Willy Brandt when he was Lord Mayor West Berlin once said to me: 'I would e a future in which Berlin would not be point which attracted so much attention.' Very shortly after the war, with deter- 'fled speed, and certainly by the fag end of 7, the relations between the major white o-American nations were set, super- led, solidified. Diplomacy to all intents d purposes died, became no longer a vivid d moving series of explorations and enter- but merely its shell, a hard and brittle ing of ceremonious usage, a carapace anded by the tide, nothing within it, flesh d blood and muscle and brain all gone. By time Stalin had finished creating his don of satellite buffer states from the top the bottom of central Europe, his foreign licy was reduced to the absolute mini- m: the preservation of the status quo in European sub-continent. This was the st desirable and essential part of Soviet licy. The United States recognised this. ashington as much as Moscow accepted status quo. A line through Europe was wn. That was that. That, still, is it. Berlin
and is an anomaly. So be it. Britain was ite content to let it be so.
Now quite a strong case can be made for 1 having much of a foreign policy, and ling off diplomacy altogether, or letting it ther away. There is, and has been for the t twenty years, no great ambiguity about tish foreign policy. It can be stated quite dely (and it is, indeed, a very crude licy) as the maintenance of the American lance, the support for the American mill- presence in Europe and, consequentially, port for that presence elsewhere so long the European priority is unchallenged; port for NATO but as cheaply as possible; vague reliance on our own minuscule lear deterrent as a trigger, if the worst to the worst, for forcing the use of the erican massive retaliation; the liquidation the Empire; and an official desire to ere to the Treaty of Rome. usually iucti- on economic grounds when the British nomy needs strengthening, and to politi- grounds otherwise.
ow apart from the Common Market ct, British foreign policy, imperial and nvise, is in essence a policy of total reli- e upon the United States and of total ptance of the European status quo. ish Foreign Secretaries and indeed British me Ministers will rock no boats, nor even any kites. Suez was an adventure, out of racter. The Malayan campaign and the onesian confrontation were almost cer- IY the final discharging of our imperial mitments. Among America's allies we Y technically be considered as no more N first among equals, but in the degree of subservience we are, now that Adenaeur one, unequalled. As I have suggested. this Y be no bad thing. It can be argued that Policy has served us well enough over last twenty years. in that it has kept us of a European war that must have been mately disastrous for us, and that it has itted us to grow richer pretty steadily if fast enough for some. Also, the policy been such that fools can understand it,
apply it, support it: it has been, to that extent, safe. It has also been cheap. We have done without conscription. Our forces in Europe are essentially token. We have whittled our Navy and our Air Force away. And yet our defence has seemed sure, for our defence has been, and is, the United States.
To be sure, such a foreign policy lacks the appearance of dignity and the reality of freedom of expression and movement: but then, no bargain's perfect, and in most other respects we can reckon to have struck a fine, in the sense of mean, bargain. Since a respectable definition of politics, particularly in the low Tory fashion, could be the busi- ness of striking fine, in the sense of mean. bargains, we may conclude that British post- war foreign policy, even if it be allowed to be undignified, is not in the least uncharacter- istic but is, instead, in the best, or at least the second-best, British tradition.
Existing alongside this generally abject and popular foreign policy—which has been very much a bipartisan policy, as are all abject and popular policies, foreign or domestic— has also been a bipartisan myth. This myth is not particularly or peculiarly British : it flourishes throughout the west and east. It is the Munich myth. Put otherwise, it is the belief that all appeasement is not only with- out virtue but is also prone to failure. Appeasement, throughout most of its life, has been a reputable word meaning pacifica- tion, satisfaction: a neuter word, useful. It is only since Abyssinia and Munich that it has acquired its condemnatory tone, the meaning as given in a postwar Webster but not in the OED of 'the policy of giving in to the demands of a hostile or dangerous power in an attempt to prevent trouble'. Western politicians in all their confrontations with hostile powers have stated their horror of appeasement. No one since the war, as far as I can recall, has justified a policy on the grounds of appeasement. To appease is bad; to resist appeasement is good. This myth, like all myths, springs from the past. It may well illumine that past, as do all myths. It obscures the present, as must all myths.
To defend or to uphold a status quo, unless that status be one of war, is to appease. When east Germany tried to rebel in 1953, the west did nothing, which was to appease the Soviet Union; nothing was done when Poland revolted in 1956, nothing was done when Hungary went far further and cried out from her bloody revolution for help. The Soviet Union was appeased. Last year, again, the Soviet Union was appeased when the Czechs struggled, hopelessly and uselessly as it turned out and as they ought to have had the brutal sense to know, to struggle free. The Poles, the Hungarians, now the Czechs learn how to appease their rulers as their rulers learn how to appease the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, too, can be said to have appeased the United States when Iron Curtain territory was ringed with aircraft and then missile bases directing nuclear threat upon the Russian homeland from the European continent.
During the past twenty years, although appeasement has been proclaimed to be anathema. the policies pursued by east and by west have been, by upholding a somewhat arbitrary and unnatural and accidental territorial status quo, to appease each other.
The instances in which true crises have occurred have been when one or other power has behaved beyond the confines of the de facto postwar settlement, has sought to expand beyond its implicitly allotted sphere of influence; or when subservient countries, particularly within the communist camp. have sought to break out of their subservi- ence. These crises have been resolved on the basis of the status quo ante wherever the initial subservience has been to the Soviet Union or to the United States; otherwise, the crises have been minor, a lack of order in the processes of disintegration of the French, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese and British empires. Cuba provides a notable exception to the general rule, but otherwise the 'fifties and the 'sixties have been decades of mutual appeasement, and therefore decades of dead diplomacy.
Personally. I would have wished that it might have come about that a British Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary would have begun the inevitable business of resuscitating diplomacy, of exploring the possibility of a détente based other than upon sterile reliance upon a status quo. President de Gaulle, I suppose. could be said to have tried; but if he tried, he certainly failed. Willy Brandt seems far more likely to succeed. He has already attempted direct negotiations with the east. Two factors hold the east together: the Russian armies, and fear of a militarist and irredentist Germany. The raisons d'etat of the Polish. Czech. East German and Hungarian communist regimes are very similar indeed. Will the Russian armies suffice, should fear of Germany recede? Brandt seeks an accommodation. He has done so consistently for several years: would like a future in which Berlin would not he a point which attracted so much atten- tion. If Brandt seeks to create the conditions for such a future, then the 'seventies will see diplomacy revive; and countries which have for twenty years done, and done well enough as many would say, without much in the way of a foreign policy will no longer be able so to do. Britain. in particular. may well find itself forced, against its inclination, even against its better judgment, to have a foreign policy of its own again.
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