44. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council (Rostow) to the Ambassador at Large (Thompson)1
SUBJECT
- German Unity Proposal
- 1.
- We face an eventual need to put forward a proposal regarding German
unity which will meet three tests:
- (a)
- It will not be wholly implausible in terms of negotiability with the Soviets and will not damage East-West relations.
- (b)
- It will meet German domestic political needs, so as to strengthen moderate German leadership against Strauss et al.
- (c)
- It will be a proposal that we could live with, if the Soviets accepted it.
- 2.
- I doubt we can, until after the German 1965 elections, get German agreement to a substantive proposal on unity which meets the first test, i.e., which is at least as good as the revised Western Peace Plan.2
- 3.
- Nor is a proposal for convening a Four Power Conference on Germany likely to get us very far. The Conference would almost certainly fail, as the Geneva 1959 Conference failed; this would not be helpful in terms of either East-West relations or of German domestic needs.
- 4.
-
I suggest we propose, instead, creation of a standing Commission on Germany and Central Europe, which would serve as a form for discussion of these issues, year in and year out, until they were ripe for settlement. The analogy of the Austrian State Treaty discussions may be relevant.
The Commission might be opened, like the Geneva Disarmament Conference, with Foreign Ministers (or Deputy Foreign Ministers) in attendance for the first week or two. Then it would descend, as the Disarmament Conference did, to the Ambassadorial level.
Vienna might be the site. It is more a symbol of successful negotiation (Austrian State Treaty and IAEA) than Geneva, which has become a symbol of deadlock. Vienna might be attractive to the Soviets, and it would symbolize the Central European focus of the group’s work.
The US, UK, France, and USSR would be members of the Commission. The USSR would probably want East (and West) Germany represented [Page 99] on the same terms as at Geneva in 1959. Perhaps this could be somewhat blunted by including Germany’s four neighbors—Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Holland—in the same “observer” status.
The terms of reference of the Commission should be broad enough and vague enough to satisfy the Germans that it was going to talk about German unity, without forcing the USSR to acknowledge the four occupying powers’ responsibility for unification.
- 5.
-
What would the Commission actually discuss? I suppose at first the West would run through the virtues of the Western Peace Plan, and the USSR would say that German unity was for East and West Germany to decide.
But perhaps the Four Powers could then agree to talk about the security provisions that would be appropriate to a peace treaty with a united Germany—leaving aside the question of how unity came about. Through such discussions we could try gradually to get the Soviets to see that German unification could be hedged about with sufficient safeguards to assume [assure] their security. This might be helpful if and when the time came (e.g., against the background of a succession crisis) for the Soviets to consider seriously the possibility of German unification.
The Commission could also talk about Berlin; safeguards against war by accident and miscalculation in Central Europe; and other topics related to stabilizing this area.
- 6.
- But the proposal’s merit is not tied to the view that any of the above
would be on its agenda. It lies rather in the fact that:
- (a)
- The Commission’s existence would help to assure German opinion that the German question was still on the front burner.
- (b)
- It would offer the Soviets a forum for talking out some of their concerns about security in Central Europe.
- (c)
- Over time, its deliberations might be one more factor working for gradual constructive evolution in Soviet attitudes and East-West relations.