RELATED ISSUES CZECH STRUGGLE BEARS ON STABLE EAST-WEST BALANCE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 12

RELATED ISSUES CZECH STRUGGLE BEARS ON STABLE EAST-WEST BALANCE

(By BRIAN BEEDHAM, Foreign Editor of the “Economist”) It was in mid-July that Russia’s campaign to cow the Czechoslovaks took hold of the world’s front pages. This had the effect of almost blotting out another story which also directly concerned both Czechs and Russians: the story of the latest attempts to curb the arms race.

For in mid-July American and Soviet negotiators, and those of fifteen other countries, including Czechoslovakia, met in Geneva to explore the new perspectives that may open up in arms control, and even In actual disarmament, now that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has been approved by the United Nations Assembly and signed by more than 60 governments. No Movement The resumption of the Geneva conference brought no immediate sign of movement toward an American-Russian deal on the limitation of the super-Powers’ arsenals of nuclear missiles. Although Moscow agreed at the end of June to take up Washington’s invitation to discuss the curbing of the missile race, a month then parsed without even the setting of a date for bilateral talks.

tion talks, Moscow was converted to the idea of verification (or safeguards, or control, or inspection, as you please), but only for other countries: not for Russia. And when the Geneva negotiators touched on proposals for thinning out the two alliances’ forces in central Europe, Moscow likewise conceded that these reductions might be verified—so long as no inspector peeped across the border from Polish or Czech or Hungarian territory into Soviet territory. Balanced Reductions At this point it seems worth recalling that in June the N.A.T.O. Council gave high priority to proposals to negotiate balanced reductions of the two alliances' forces in Europe. And that, in late July at Geneva, Czechoslovakia’s representative, Mr Lahoda, put an interestingly similar stress on similar proposals. When Mr Lahoda spoke.

the Russians were already rolling their tanks around ominously both inside and just outside his country. His words make people look back sharply at the catalogue of arms control items which Moscow had listed on July 1 as topics for early discussion at Geneva or elsewhere. The idea of balanced reductions in central Europe turned out to be almost the only longfamiliar item that was missing from that list. Why? Because Moscow must now at last face the fact that its main reason for keeping so many troops in eastern Europe is not so much to counter - balance western forces, but rather to prevent Czech, East German, Polish, or Hungarian breakaways? If that is so, it can be seen that the Czechoslovak struggle bears very directly on the problems on maintaining a stable military balance between east and west and of scaling down both sides’ military strength.

Not surprisingly, many people assumed that this latest delay was mainly due to the Russians’ preoccupation with bringing Czechoslovakia to heel. Certainly, the Russians would not have found it very comfortable to start discussing such an important arms control deal with the United States just at that moment. Not just when they were sternly telling Mr Dubcek that he must toe their line because of a supposed western threat to the whole Communist world. Not just when they were backing up these words with menacing concentrations of their own forces. But I doubt whether their timetable for disarmament talks was decisively affected, either one way or the other. Of course, if they end up unable to think of any less stupid and brutal action than an onslaught against the Czechs like their onslaught against Hungary in 1956, they will set back—a long wayall hope of progress in arms control, and in general international relaxation. But it has not come to that yet, and if the Soviet leaders have any sense at all, it will not.

A Date For Talks

Let us assume they have sense enough to remember that they have recently put much effort into the non-prolif-eration treaty, and have staked a great deal on its success. From their point of view, nearly all of that will be lost if West Germany rejects the treaty. As things now stand, the Germans can be expected to sign the treaty—but not until after the non-nuclear nations’ conference which is to begin late in August and run on to the end of September. In view of the need to impress that conference, 1 would guess that Moscow may agree in late August or early September to set a date for talks about curbing missiles—a date in late September at earliest.

Even if there were no specially complicating influences—no Czechoslovakia, no Vietnam, no Israel-Arab tension—any talks on this problem would necessarily be long and difficult, because the curbing of the missile race requires a certain amount of verification. Like justice, it must be seen to be done. And nearly all the postwar attempts to negotiate disarmament have been obstructed by the way the Russians have shied away from every practical proposal about verification that directly affected them. During the non-prolifera-