Summit & Consequences

At the close of as confused and sundering a week as cold-war diplomacy has seen in years came some clarity on basic points:

1. Nikita Khrushchev has lost stature. His ranting has cost him respect around the world.

2. Summitry--the notion that top men, convinced of each other's good intentions, might succeed where the ordinary processes of diplomacy fail--was now discredited, perhaps for good.

3. Khrushchev's smashing of the summit and his violent abuse of the President of the U.S. were nonetheless followed by careful insistence that the Soviet Union did not want to be warlike and would postpone its demands on Berlin "for six to eight months."

4. Evidence mounted that the Russians' line had hardened even before the U-2 incident when they saw that they had little prospect of having their way at the summit (see FOREIGN NEWS). The U-2 was seized upon as a useful pretext for breaking off negotiations. Khrushchev's later assurances that the Communists did not want a war crisis was obviously intended not so much to mollify the rest of the world as the Russians themselves. His internal popularity still rests on the promise of peace and a better life.

5. There was widespread admiration through the free world for Dwight Eisenhower's dignified rebuff of Khrushchev's wild demands, but a concern--not confined to the U.S.--that Washington's handling of the U-2 affair had been clumsy and inept.

6. The brutality of Khrushchev's performance at the conference table, and later before an international gallery of newsmen, left no doubt who wrecked the summit, even among those always ready to believe the worst about the West and the best about the Soviet Union.

7. The revelation that the U-2 has been overflying Russia diminished the effects of Khrushchev's military bluster.

8. Western allies felt drawn closer together. Reality chilled but cleared the air.

9. If Khrushchev seriously needed an accommodation with Western powers and wanted it against right-wing domestic pressures and the opposition of Red China, he had recklessly forfeited the good will of Dwight Eisenhower, the one U.S. leader with the popularity and prestige to convince a doubting U.S. of Russian good intentions.

10. The world was now in for whatever cold strategy the Russians could devise. But the long-span view might be that Nikita Khrushchev had avoided a summit testing knowing that he was behind.

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