ONCE MORE, TROUBLE IN BERLIN

Crises elsewhere may flourish and then fade, but West Berlin persists as the West's perennial and most exposed pressure point. Isolated 110 miles inside hostile East Germany, militarily indefensible and dependent for econom ic survival on easily sundered access routes, it is the place where the cold war began 21 years ago--and where the Communists refuse to let it die. Last week Berlin was once again the center of an incipient crisis. By a sudden decree, the East German regime of Stalinist Walter Ulbricht barred a large number of West German legislators and all military personnel from traveling by road or rail through East Germany on their way to and from West Berlin.

The action was largely symbolic, since the travelers could fly to West Berlin on Allied civilian airliners, which are not subject to East German control. But the ban was yet another cut at one of West Berlin's most vital assets, its free access--one that the Communists have been whittling away since last March. War of Nerves. Even more important, the East German move touched on the very status of West Berlin. West Germany has always maintained that West Berlin is a part of the Federal Republic, though, of course, under special Allied control. As symbolic support for that claim, the Bonn regime has three times in the past 15 years convened the Federal Assembly in West Berlin to select a President. Next month German legislators will meet again in the former German capital to choose a successor to retiring West German President Heinrich Liibke. Until now, East Germany has maintained that West Berlin was "a separate political entity." But now the East Germans, eager as always to assert their identity as a sovereign and equal German state, claim that West Berlin is on their soil and belongs to them. They thus regard West German political activity in West Berlin as a direct provocation against their own independence.

Meanwhile, the Communists have stepped up the war of nerves, peppering West Berliners with public warnings of harsher measures to come and delivering chilling private threats to political leaders in West Berlin. Against that backdrop of anxiety, Soviet Marshal Ivan Yakubovsky, the commander of the Warsaw Pact, arrived in East Berlin for a conference--held, according to the East German news agency, in a "brotherly fighting spirit"--with military leaders from the other six Warsaw Pact countries. Yakubovsky has a Btfsplkian habit of turning up just before something big happens; he visited Berlin shortly before the Wall went up in 1961, and his tour of East Europe last summer preceded the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia.

West Berliners feared that his presence this time might foreshadow Warsaw Pact maneuvers in East Germany that could be used as a pretext for closing all ground routes to the city--and perhaps even for sending MIGs to buzz civilian airliners in the air corridors, as the Soviets did in 1965. Those fears were reinforced by Allied intelligence reports that the Soviets and East Germans had begun to move troops into the vicinity of West Berlin's land access routes.

President's Signal. Faced with the Communist threat, the Western Allies firmly reminded the Soviet Union that they hold the Russians responsible for maintaining free access to West Berlin. After talks in Bonn with Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson jetted to West Berlin for a seven-hour visit. "We shall continue --you can count on this--to do all that is in our power to ensure that your freedom is preserved," he said on television. Berliners were pleased and somewhat reassured. But they were even more pleased by the prospect of next week's visit by President Nixon. As the Berliners see it, Nixon's determination to press on with his visit, despite the present tension, serves notice on the Communists that the new American President will back up the old U.S. pledge to protect Berlin.

Western diplomats felt that it was highly unlikely that the Soviets would allow the East Germans to aggravate the Berlin situation into an American-Soviet dispute while Nixon was en route there. After all, the Soviets have so far been careful not to provoke the new President. They hope that he will work with them to forgo the building of an anti-ballistic missile system and to keep West Germany from getting nuclear weapons by pressuring Bonn into signing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Those Soviet goals would be imperiled by a new showdown in Berlin. As West German Foreign Minister Willy Brandt put it, "The higher interest of the Soviet Union argues against a big crisis."

Still, it was significant that the Soviets had allowed the East Germans to go as far as they did. Perhaps the most plausible explanation was that the Soviet leaders felt compelled to allow their most loyal and important ally to kick up a minor fuss, while all the time stage-managing the crisis so that its timing and proportions would not seriously impair U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations.

Unfortunate Delay. Whatever the Soviet motives, the West Germans' inept handling of the election plans probably tempted the Russians to fasten on to that particular issue. Despite vague Communist warnings, the West Germans decided last December to go ahead with presidential selection in Berlin. But then the West Germans unfortunately failed to send out the formal summonses that would have made the decision final. The delay apparently led the Communists to believe that the West Germans could still be badgered out of holding the elections in Berlin.

Consequently, the Communists openly stepped up their threats. At the urging of West Berlin's Mayor Klaus Schiitz, the West Germans felt that under the circumstances they could not back down. Britain, France and the U.S., who had previously been skeptical about the political wisdom of holding the election in Berlin, felt obliged to back up the West Germans. So last week Bonn finally sent out 1,036 invitations to federal and state legislators, convoking them in Berlin on March 5 to choose between the Christian Democrats' Gerhard Schroder and the Socialists' Gustav Heinemann for the office of President of the Federal Republic.

If the present Berlin situation develops into a genuine crisis, it will perhaps reflect above all the realities of a divided Germany. The wartime Allies, of course, remain the final authorities in Berlin. But between statute and practice there is a large grey area in which the two Germanys have room for maneuver and can, up to a certain point, manipulate the other powers for their own domestic advantage.

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