dodis.ch/75752

The Deputy Director-General for Cultural, Scientific and Technical Cooperation Ferraris to the Director-General for Political Affairs Ducci1

CSCE

1. The announcement, by the German side to the Political Committee of the Nine in Brussels on 3 March and by the American side in the Atlantic framework in Geneva on 5 March, of an understanding reached between the United States and the USSR on the clause of the peaceful change of frontiers places the Atlantic allies and the Community partners before a fait accompli on an essential point of the entire CSCE.

2. It should be noted that, in their contacts with the Soviets (and in the solution chosen), the Americans acted without prior consultation, even of a general nature (except perhaps with the Germans), and without having any mandate or assignment. Until the other day the allies insisted on maintaining their support for the American formula of 26 July (thus still the Ministers of the Nine on 13 February in Dublin), itself at the time chosen without consultation, while the Americans were negotiating other formulas with the Soviets.

From this angle the consideration that imposes itself is that the Europeans, precisely on a point considered fundamental for the interests of European political unification, have seen the solution dictated by the autonomous will of the two superpowers without their knowledge. Unfortunately, the Americans have always considered that the question was of exclusive German interest, and the Germans, in the uncertainty and contradictions of their conduct, have supported this thesis, with the result that in the agreed solution the Americans thought only of taking into account the desiderata, moreover considerable, of the Germans. The Italian insistence on drawing attention to the European function of the problem was never truly supported by the Community partners.

3. The European Community thus once again emerges sacrificed on the altar of the Soviet-American understanding not only in the procedures, but also in the substance of the proposed solution, now destined to prevail. This for the following reasons:

a) the Germans, in urging the Americans to advance the formula of 26 July, had justified it by the need to have a text better than that of 5 April: this did not occur with the abandonment of that text;

b) on our part, instead, it was considered advisable to remain faithful to the formula of 5 April, but on condition of insisting rather on its exact and appropriate placement (if not under the inviolability of frontiers, at least under territorial integrity); the Community partners, and in particular the FRG, had repudiated the first understanding in this sense only to take it up again recently, but too late, with the result that we now have the formula of 5 April under the principle of sovereign equality;

c) this result coincides fully with the Soviet approach, so much so that one wonders why it was necessary to wait so long, with so many proclamations of intransigence (in particular, at least in appearance, by the FRG) only to then accede, without compensation, to the Soviet desiderata;

d) the transformation from negative to positive of the clause is a non-existent acquisition, both because in the Russian text the clause was already positive, and because such an adaptation was always necessary on the lexical level if the clause was to be placed under a principle other than the inviolability of frontiers.

4. From what was said in Geneva by the Americans it appears that the understanding with the Soviets also extends to the specific way of inserting the clause into the body of the principle of sovereign equality and to the timing of the operation. In this regard it is observed:

a) it is intended to insert the clause in the last part of the principle, that is, where the rights (or rather faculties) of States to conduct their relations as they see fit are indicated, and not among the true and proper rights of sovereignty. In this way the inconveniences of the connection with sovereign equality (that is, the affirmation of the absolute character of inviolability, of which peaceful change is an exception) are aggravated: peaceful change is not a right on a par with the other traditional rights connected with sovereignty, but an obvious faculty. It is the difference that exists for an individual between the constitutional right of freedom of assembly and association and the faculty of choosing one’s own friends. This interpretation, which the Soviets sought and obtained, is aggravated by the introductory verb (“they consider”), that is, by a verb that underlines the subjective and relative character of this clause;

b) as for the timing, the commitment with which the Americans would like to formalize at 35 the understanding reached between two will cause the understanding to lose any negotiating value. After the final summit has been accepted, as well as the principal objective of the USSR (the formal sanction of the inviolability of frontiers and the division of Europe into two), the possibilities of obtaining something either on the treatment of journalists or on military measures are entirely illusory. If moreover the establishment of a working group on the third phase were to be approved in whole or in part, as the neutrals propose in their blindness (false in the case of the Swedes), the West will have lost all its politically effective negotiating instruments.

5. It can be concluded that the patient Soviet waiting has finally prevailed over Western tenacity. The Soviets end up obtaining confirmation of the political status quo; they will obtain the sanction of the permanent division of Europe with the proclamation for the first time by 35 countries of different social systems of the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence; they will succeed in reducing to nothing the references to contacts between individuals (and indeed, taking advantage of the situation, they are reopening the points already agreed upon in order to exclude such references).

Western Europe therefore, in the logic of the theses affirmed by Kissinger2 last June, will emerge from the CSCE defeated in its aspirations by the joint will of the Soviets and Americans. The theses we have supported with such consistency have not prevailed before the two superpowers and the passivity and lack of political unity3 of the Community and Atlantic countries. The CSCE will reveal itself as an important but failed attempt in its potential for evolution towards different relations in Europe. The undeniable acquisitions on individual points will not be able to compensate for this political failure.4