THE BERLIN AGREEMENT A fair swap?
Any chink in the Berlin Wall is to be welcomed, if only in that it makes the day-to-day lives of West Berliners a little less intolerable. But much of the optimism that greeted Monday's statement, one can't help feeling, is somewhat premature. The affair is by no means all sewn up' as the Soviet Ambassador is quoted as saying. The draft agreement has yet to be approved by the various governments, its exact terms published, and formally signed by the Big Four foreign ministers. With the best will in the world it will be almost next year before the deal is sewn up. Then the terms of the agreement have to be put into practice on an administrative level, and there is a vast gulf between the bonhomie of diplomats and the creaky, often arbitrary, machinery of officialdom. Little seems to have been changed in that area : East Germans will continue to man the checkpoints and spot checks, apparently, may still continue. There can be little comfort in the news that practical details will have to be worked out between East and West German authorities. And there is no argument that this will present quite considerable difficulties. The East Germans show none of the signs of the urgeticy which have characterised the Russian approaches. Publicly they have played down the draft far below its real importance and have been no less zealous of late in their guarding of the Wall than they ever were. The West German Opposition is openly suspicious about Eastern co-operation and is adopting an unhelpful 'wait and see' policy. West Berlin is still as vulnerable to shifts in East-West tension as it ever was. Not by anw stretch of the imagination was it 'The Day the Wall fell down' or an end to the cold war' as some commentators called it.
Still, eighteen months of negotiation — in fact it would be truer to say ten years of similar negotiation — have produced an agreement, with both sides declaring themselves thoroughly satisfied. And that can't be bad, even if all it adds up to is a series of swaps in the diplomatic game Which have changed the status quo without bringing it any nearer a visible resolution. Of the four players the Russian ambassador was the most demonstrative in his jubilation on Monday, beaming, handshaking, raising his arms in victory, and' with jolly good reason. With President Nixon's effusive overtures to China and Romania's rejection of Moscow's ultimatum for it to suspend its anti-Soviet activities, Russia went into the last round of talks with the most to gain. At last it was time to move the West Berlin pawn to counter the swiftly changing world balance of power. Is It not conceivable that for an easing of the pressure over Berlin, she might have been prepared to make more substantial concessions ' than just letting visitors into East Berlin and promising not to interfere with traffic on the Autobahn?
For that is in reality the sum total of her concessions. On the status of West Berlin, she has not budged one inch — indeed the concessions she has extracted from the West would seem to tend towards her desired political isolation of the city. The curtailment of Federal activities in Berlin emphasises what Russia has claimed all along, that West Berlin is not a part of the Republic. She has rubbed it in by demanding, and obtaining, the establishment of a Consulate-General which, in Soviet eyes (as we have discovered to our cost in this country) is more than just a diplomatic courtesy. It is a foothold for all manner of official and unofficial activities. This in itself would be enough to make the Russian ambassador crack a cele. bratory bottle of champagne. But there are further goodies. There will now, presumably, be a green light for the implementing of the Bonn-Moscow and Bonn-Warsaw treaties which themselves offered far-reaching concessions for little or no return. The way is also open — no, the West has practically committed itself — to meeting Russia's request for a European security conference. Such a conference could, of couse, prove constructive and no doors should be slammed just as they are being edged open. But the British Government's scepticism on the matter is quite justified; it is far too complex an issue on which to expect any sudden and dramatic developments, unless they are for propaganda reasons.
On the credit side, there are the patent benefits of the pact to West Berliners themselves, who are getting as frustrated by being an occupied zone as they are by the constant harassment from the East Germans. They will be grateful the heat is, for the time being, off Berlin and that they can go about their business without finding themselves helplessly in the centre of yet another irrelevant crisis. And they will certainly be hoping that Herr Brandt can present the terms to the West German people — who have a different view of Berlin from the Berliners themselves — in a way they will find acceptable. Any other encouragement the West can take from the treaty is more speculative.
Certainly the Russians have consciously mitigated their earlier intransigent demands ,though this has only been in the nature of dropping an unreachable reserve price to a more realistic level; the auction will be as tough as ever. But this new found realism has been eagerly seized on by many in the West as boding well for an imminent overall settlement on East-West frontiers. One would devoutly wish this to be true, but let it not be forgotten that what the West has done, in effect, is to gain short-term practical advantages in West Berlin at the sacrifice of its long-term political stance. It may be that that stance, in military terms, is no longer credible and worth the sacrifice in the effort to co-operate with any tangible signs of a change in Soviet sympathies. But it would be wrong to be complacent about the new status quo, and fatal to be over-impressed by the magnificent symbolism of Russia's 'opening-up' of the Wall. It's good news, but not one brick has been, or will be, removed in consequence of it.
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