Experience as a Foreign Correspondent in Washington, D.C.

Abstract

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE A graduate of Freiburg. Dr. Reifenberg has done post-graduate studies at Georgetown. He has worked on the bu-monthly "Die Gegenwart", was a member of the foreign affairs staff of the German News Agancy, and has been with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1955. He has covered presidential elections of 1956,1960,1964,and 1980, and took part in numerous trips with Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. He was with General DeGaulle in the USSR, Poland, and Rumania, and with President Pompidou in the US and the USSR.

SUMMARY Reifenberg reviewed the post WWII Marshal Plan and European recovery for which Europe is grateful to the United States. He also inventoried the current military standoff in Europe between US backed strategy of deterrence and Soviet military might. Sanctions do not work to contain the USSR. Instead, Germany prefers to coexist with the East through trade. For the United States such German "accommodation" of the USSR seems to risk "Finlandization." Europe worries about nuclear war because of U.S. errors such as NORAD mistaking geese for bombers.