(2 of 2)
The second phase, if it got that far, would presumably consist of a Russian attempt to "unpack the package" by throwing out a series of isolated counterproposals, each designed to catch the fancy of one of the Western powers and to horrify the others. (Example: an appeal for a mutual reduction of armed forces in central Europe, which would hold out to Britain the prospect of dismantling her costly Army of the Rhine, but would strike France and West Germany as the forerunner to U.S. military withdrawal from Western Europe.) Aware of the West's well-publicized failure to formulate any agreed-upon "fallback" positions, the Soviets could thus hope to set the four Western powers squabbling among themselves.
The Hole Card. In somber anticipation of this train of events, many of Europe's pundits had already dismissed the Geneva meeting as "the useless conference." But most of the Western diplomats directly concerned believed they held at least one strong hole card: Nikita Khrushchev's seemingly overriding desire for a summit meeting. Trading on this, the U.S. had already served indirect notice that any Russian move during the conference to shut off Western access routes to Berlin, or even to sign a separate World War II peace treaty with its Communist East German satellite, would result in an immediate Western walkout at Geneva and an end to all hope for a later summit conference.
The betting was that nothing would really be agreed upon at Geneva, except the necessity to take differences to a higher level.