Diplomacy

Beware of summitry

Wilfrid Sendall

For many years I have been liable to rear like a startled filly at the mere mention of the term, `Summit Conference.' I associate it at the best with farce, at the worst disaster to any cause I cherish. So you will understand the alarm with which I respond to the calamitous prospect that President _Nixon, of all people, intends to indulge in one of these capers in Moscow this summer. Naturally one prays that the Byzantine processes of impeachment will move fast enough to stop it.

My fears are only partially due to doubts about the statesmanship of Mr Nixon. Were he the wisest of all American presidents, they would still be acute. The historic record of meetings between international personalities to which the title 'summit' can be ascribed is sufficient, I contend, to frighten anyone. Those which have involved American presidents are, without question, the most terrifying.

The ancestor of what we call summit meetings was, I suppose, the Field of the Cloth of Gold. I cannot recall that any good came of that for any of the participants, though farce seems to have prevailed over disaster. Then there was that remarkable confrontation on a raft moored in the River Nieman at Tilsit, when Napoleon and the Czar Alexander redrew the map of Europe over a prostrate Prussia, with little benefit to either of them.

Versailles, I think, can be fairly classed as a summit, In many respects it was by no means the worst of them, but judged simply as the first venture of an American president into the diplomatic stratosphere it was totally catastrophic. Then we travel on to Munich. On the eve of the first of the trilogy of meetings which are nowadays lumped together as Munich — Neville Chamberlain's flight to Berchtesgaden — I recall a familiar, lisping voice coming on the telephone to the Night News Desk of the News Chronicle, where I was then sitting. It was Winston from Chartwell to ask us what the news was. Told that the Prime Minister was flying to Berchtesgaden, he paused an instant and then commented: "Huh. The last man to do that, I think, was Schussnigg." Winston's foreboding on that occasion should have served him as a warning for his own future, for those wartime encounters at Teheran and Yalta which are the classics of summit diplomacy. It is a chilling experience to re-read accounts of those meetings, to realise the lighthearted vanity with which Roosevelt was prepared to brush aside the experience of his own State Department and of the British Foreign Office in dealing with Stalin. Because he managed to make Stalin laugh at Teheran with a few undergraduate quips at Churchill's expense, Roosevelt really convinced himself that he had forged a relationship on which he could build the future of the world.

What is even more incredible is that Churchill, after his harrowing experiences at Teheran and Yalta, was unwise enough to revive and give new momentum to the summit idea five years later. It was in a speech at Edinburgh during the 1950 general election campaign that Churchill actually coined the expression, "summit meeting."

Very sensibly Attlee and Bevin tried to stamp on the project. But the sparks survived, and caught on. The silly notion that a meeting of heads of state could transform international relations, thaw the cold war and con jure up an era of harmony dominated foreign policy for the next ten years. The worst aspect of it was that it was a gimmick, a ritual in car...ation whereby politicians and people deluded themselves into believing that there was an easy escape from the harsh facts of East-West rivalry, and the necessity it imposed of spending huge sums of money on defence.

Harold Macmillan seized eagerly upon this inheritance from Churchill. The summit ap pealed strongly to his sense of theatre. It might also have helped him to bury the Suez affair and win the 1959 general election. For tunately for him, he won the election without its aid, for the famous 'U 2' summit must rate as one of the most gigantic farces ever.

At least the Crillon Bar did well out of it, for the event attracted to Paris a fabulous crowd of newspapermen of every nationality. Even Sam White found it difficult to attract the attention of the barman in his favourite hos telry. But it enabled Khrushchev to make a fool out of the President of the United States, and to a lesser extent out of de Gaulle and Macmillan, too. Yet such is the vanity of political persons that, scarcely had the Olympian laughter over the charade in Paris died away, than Eisenhower's successor, John F: Kennedy, decided to attempt a solo performance, disdaining Britain and France.

The Summit of the two Ks in Vienna came nearer than any other event to precipitating a nuclear catastrophe. I had my own forebod ings. They were fortified by an odd encounter. Accompanied by Robert Carve] of the Evening Standard and Trevor Smith of the Australian

Press, I made my .way to the station to witness Khrushchev's arrival. We found a place

on the platform well away from the red carpet and the guard of honour. Freakishly, the train stopped short and Mr K bounced out right in front of us.

For a moment he eyed us incredulously, and then set off along the platform to the right . reception point at a rate of knots. But the instant impression of exuberant vitality which he made was a startling contrast to the other' Mr K, whose airport arrival we also Observed: Whereas the Russian, burned brick red by the sun of some Czech health resort, looked like a concentrated ball of animal energy, the American was pale, nervous and obviously in pain from his back affliction. The portents did not look good for our side. .

I have no doubt that the low estimate which Khrushchev made in Vienna of the character' of his American opposite was the direct cause of the Cuban confrontation. Khrushchev evidently thought that it would not be difficult to break Kennedy's nerve, and his at

tempt to do so brought the world to the brink.

One would have thought that this dismal occasion in Vienna would have cured the world's leaders of summitry for good. But not a bit of it. The idea still thrives that by playing at supermen before the press and television cameras, politicians can change the course of history. Maybe they can, but not in the directions they desire.

We have had Wilson's mini-summitry with Rhodesia's Smith, with expensive warships of the Royal Navy fulfilling the functions of Napoleon's raft at Tilsit. We had the HeathPompidou shows. So far as I am concerned, they make me yearn for the old days, when professional ambassadors presented notes and made confidential reports, when diplomacy was a quiet, secret business. It may not have done much to promote international understanding, but it avoided a good deal of misunderstanding.

But the real danger of summitry is not just the attendant publicity. It is the fact that diplomacy is being made use of for domestic electioneering purposes. It is a show staged abroad for the purpose of impressing the home market. This objective is more vulgarly obvious than usual in President Nixon's projected Moscow jaunt. And the risk is that Brezhnev and Kosygin will be at least as well aware of it as the rest of us.

Wilfrid Sendall was until recently political correspondent of the Daily Express