WAR AND PEACE AND GERMANY

F.W. Neal contradicts the commonly accepted American premises about Germany's relationship to the waging of the Cold War. To Neal, ""the most difficult aspect of the Berlin crisis (was) to see the crisis."" He denies the Kennedy Administration's assumption that simple de facto recognition of East Germany would or could be constructed as appeasement. He speculates in detail that West Germany's self-interest is not as precisely identical with American interests as Americans have been led to believe, and he rejects the manner in which the U.S. has been treating West Germany like Caesar's wife. He has worked out an argument in favor of limited recognition (and even more limited cooperation between East and West Germany, alleging it might lead to eventual reunification). Incredibly enough, however, he has failed properly to assess historical experience with Russian talk-vs.-actions (""the assumption that Soviet policy aims at military aggrandizement is simply not justified...""), and -- even more incredibly -- he has completely neglected to note that for America the practicalities of recognition pale beside the moral issue of granting profitable bona fides to a government that can hardly be said to reflect the will of its subjects. Despite the essential correctness of his demand that we re-evaluate our own self-interest in Germany and NATO, he omits entirely too many considerations from his view of the situation.