An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek
The distinguishing feature of the second day of the summit, which took place at the Soviet embassy, was a focus on Germany, but not before Kennedy turned aside fresh attempts by Khrushchev to provoke a renewed ideological debate. When Kennedy began by asking the chairman what part of the USSR he was from, Khrushchev answered, in the vicinity of Kursk, near the Ukrainian border, where thirty billion tons of iron ore had been found, six times the amount in the entire United States. Kennedy did not take the bait. A discussion of Laos brought the renewed complaint that “the United States is so rich and powerful that it believes it has special rights and can afford not to recognize the rights of others.” Moscow could not accept this, Khrushchev said, and intended to help subject peoples seeking freedom. “Look, Mr. Chairman,” Kennedy countered, “you aren’t going to make a communist out of me and I don’t expect to make a capitalist out of you, so let’s get down to business.”
The principal “business” of Khrushchev was to attack U.S. proposals for a nuclear test ban and disarmament, and American resistance to a Soviet peace settlement with Germany. Unwilling to stop testing, which Moscow believed essential if it was going to achieve nuclear parity with the United States, Khrushchev objected to on-site United Nations inspections to prevent underground testing as “tantamount to espionage, which the Soviet Union cannot accept.” The U.N.’s behavior in the Congo, Khrushchev claimed, demonstrated that Moscow could not trust Dag Hammarskjöld, whom it accused of complicity in Lumumba’s assassination. Three inspections would be possible, but they would have to be done by a three-member commission consisting of an American, a Soviet, and a truly neutral representative. Moreover, Khrushchev argued, a test ban would be superfluous if the United States agreed to “general and complete” disarmament.
Kennedy agreed that a test ban would not inhibit arms production by the U.S. or the USSR but pointed out that it would make the development of nuclear weapons by other countries less likely. Without a test ban, the number of nuclear powers could multiply to ten or fifteen in a few years. Kennedy urged Khrushchev to balance the risk of espionage with the peril from nuclear proliferation, which “is bound to affect the national security of our two countries, and increase the danger of major conflicts.” A test ban could be a first step, since it would take a very long time to reach agreement on general disarmament. When Khrushchev repeated his arguments about giving general disarmament priority over a test ban, an exasperated Kennedy declared that “the conversation was back where it had started.”
The discussion of Berlin was even more frustrating to Kennedy. Whereas the failure of test ban talks would present long-term dangers, Berlin loomed as an immediate crisis. Khrushchev spoke with considerable passion; conditions in central Europe were clearly his greatest concern, and everything that had occurred in the first day and a half of the summit had been a prelude, a run-up to the real business of the conference—ensuring that a reunited Germany would be incapable of inflicting fresh suffering on Russia and closing off Berlin as an escape hatch for those oppressed by communist rule.
Khrushchev reminded Kennedy that the USSR had lost twenty million people in World War II and that Germany, the architect of that conflict, had regained the kind of military strength that opened the way to a third, even more devastating world war. The USSR intended to sign a peace treaty with both Germanys, if possible, or at least with East Germany, to guard against a united nation. Such a treaty, Khrushchev explained, would invalidate all post-1945 arrangements, including the West’s access by road and air to Berlin through East Germany. If the U.S. signed a peace agreement, Berlin could remain a “free” city, but a refusal to sign would end all rights of Western access to Berlin.
Kennedy left no doubt that the United States would not be bullied into an agreement. “Here we are not talking about Laos,” JFK said. “This matter is of greatest concern to the US. We are in Berlin not because of someone’s sufferance. We fought our way there. . . . If we were expelled from that area and if we accepted the loss of our rights no one would have any confidence in US commitments and pledges.” He urged Khrushchev not to threaten the existing balance of power in Europe and provoke a response from the United States.
But Khrushchev was unrelenting. “No force in the world would prevent the USSR from signing a peace treaty,” he said. Khrushchev’s only concession to Kennedy’s strong response was a pledge not to sign the treaty until December. He declared that America would be responsible for any war fought over Berlin, and only a “madman, who . . . should be put in a straightjacket” would want such a conflict. Kennedy’s counter that Moscow’s assault on the existing power balance would be the cause of any war seemed to make no impression. Khrushchev ended the discussion by saying that Moscow had prepared an aide-mémoire on Berlin that would allow the U.S. to “return to this question at a later date, if it wished to do so.”
Exchanges over lunch offered no respite from Khrushchev’s hostility. He raised the subject of nuclear weapons and noted that, like the United States, the Soviet Union had nuclear-armed submarines, that it had short-range, medium-range, and intercontinental missiles in production, and that renewed Soviet nuclear tests would only occur if the U.S. resumed testing. The USSR would not try to reach the moon ahead of the United States, he said, because it would weaken Moscow’s defense buildup. Indeed, the president’s message on defense spending had led him to consider increasing Soviet land forces and artillery.
Kennedy refused to give ground. He acknowledged the Soviet Union as a great power with weapons of mass destruction comparable to those held by the United States. It was essential, therefore, he said, that both countries act in responsible ways to avoid war. Germany was a case in point: “Each side should recognize the interests and responsibilities of the other side. . . . This goal can be achieved only if each is wise and stays in his own area.” Hoping to flatter Khrushchev, who had told Kennedy that at age forty-four he had been chairman of the Moscow Planning Commission, Kennedy said that when he reached the chairman’s age of sixty-seven, he would like to be head of the Boston Planning Commission and perhaps chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But smarting from JFK’s refusal to bend on Germany, Khrushchev “interjected that perhaps the President would like to become head of the Planning Commission of the whole world.”
Khrushchev’s unrelenting belligerence agitated Kennedy into asking him to meet privately for a brief review of issues. “I can’t leave here without giving it one more try,” Kennedy said to an aide. “I’m not going to leave until I know more.” As he went back upstairs to the conference room, he told Rusk, “This is the nut-cutter.” Kennedy began the final meeting by saying that he hoped Khrushchev would not confront the United States with an issue such as Berlin that “so deeply” involved its national interest. He also asked Khrushchev to see the difference between signing a peace treaty and challenging America’s rights of access to Berlin. Khrushchev showed no give: The U.S., he said, was trying to humiliate the USSR, and Kennedy needed to understand that Moscow intended to counter any U.S. aggression against East Germany with force. Kennedy “then said that either Mr. Khrushchev did not believe that the US was serious or the situation in that area was so unsatisfactory to the Soviet Union that it had to take this drastic action.” He regretted leaving Vienna with the impression that the U.S. and the USSR were heading toward a confrontation. Khrushchev replied that it was the United States that was threatening to impose the calamity of war on the world, not the USSR. “It is up to the US to decide whether there will be war or peace,” he said. Kennedy somberly answered, “Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be war. It will be a cold winter.”
Kennedy could not hide his distress over the harsh exchanges, which promised worse future relations. Before cameras, as the two men left the Soviet embassy, Khrushchev put on a show of merriment, but Kennedy was grim, unsmiling. In a conversation afterward with James Reston at the U.S. embassy, JFK came across as “very gloomy.” He sank onto a couch, pushed a “hat over his eyes like a beaten
His own performance especially troubled Kennedy. His anger and frustration were as much with himself as Khrushchev. For the second time in three months, he believed he had acted unwisely—first in approving the Bay of Pigs attack, and now in thinking that he could reduce differences with Khrushchev by rational explanation. Instead of being responsive to Kennedy’s expressions of regard for Soviet power and appeals to reason over Berlin, Khrushchev had become more assertive and unbending. Kennedy was angry with himself for not having shown a tougher side from the beginning of the talks. He believed that his behavior had strengthened Khrushchev’s conviction after the Bay of Pigs that he was an inexperienced and irresolute president who could be bullied into concessions on Germany and Berlin. Worst of all, he feared that his performance at the meeting had increased rather than diminished the chances of an East-West war.
On one hand, he could not imagine that Khrushchev actually meant to go to war over Berlin. He told O’Donnell shortly after he left the last meeting, “As De Gaulle says, Khrushchev is bluffing and he’ll never sign that treaty. Anybody who talks the way he did today, and really means it, would be crazy, and I’m sure he’s not crazy.” Fighting a war that would kill millions of people over access rights to Berlin or because the Germans wanted to reunify their country impressed him as “particularly stupid. . . . If I’m going to threaten Russia with a nuclear war, it will have to be for much bigger and more important reasons than that.”
Yet he also understood that smaller issues than those at stake over Berlin had sparked past wars, including World War I. And so he was “shaken” by and “angry” at Khrushchev’s rhetoric and behavior. It was the first time he had ever met “somebody with whom he couldn’t exchange ideas in a meaningful way,” Bobby Kennedy said later. “I think it was a shock to him that somebody would be as harsh and definitive”—as “unrelenting” and “uncompromising”—as Khrushchev was in Vienna. However difficult and frustrating the meeting had been, Kennedy understood that the greatest challenges to him as president now lay ahead.
CHAPTER 12
Crisis Manager
When I ran for the Presidency of the United States, I knew that this country faced serious challenges, but I could not realize—nor could any man realize who does not bear the burdens of this office—how heavy and constant would be those burdens.
— John F. Kennedy, Report to the American People on the Berlin Crisis, July 25, 1961
LONDON WAS A WELCOME RESPITE from the tension of Vienna. Although Macmillan had initially been “appalled” that someone so young was president and had feared that Kennedy would see him as “so old that he wasn’t worthwhile talking to,” they had established an excellent rapport at two meetings in Washington during Kennedy’s first months in office. Macmillan’s intelligence and dry, quick wit had delighted the president. Going to see the prime minister was like being “in the bosom of the family,” Kennedy told Henry Brandon. “I am lucky to have a man to deal with with whom I have such a close understanding.” “It was the gay things that linked us together,” Macmillan told Schlesinger, “and made it possible for us to talk about the terrible things.”
Kennedy’s meeting with Khrushchev, Macmillan thought, had left JFK stunned. “For the first time in his life Kennedy met a man who was impervious to his charm.” The chairman was “much more of a barbarian” than he had anticipated. Because Kennedy seemed so tired, Macmillan suggested that they meet without Foreign Office officials—“a peaceful drink and chat by ourselves.” Kennedy was pleased at the suggestion, but their discussion was anything but relaxing. Khrushchev’s threats were impossible to ignore, and for the better part of an hour the two allies explored ideas on a formal response. They believed it essential to stand by what Kennedy had told Khrushchev: The Russians could do what they liked about a peace treaty with the DDR, but “the West stood on their rights and would meet any attack on these with all the force at their command.”
Kennedy returned to Washington on the morning of June 6. He met with congressional leaders that afternoon and spoke to the American people from the Oval Office at 7:00 P.M. He gave the sixteen Senate and House leaders a candid assessment of the talks, reading some excerpts from minutes of the meetings rather than simply giving them his gloss on what had occurred. He had no intention, he told the leaders, of saying anything “that would seem to put Khrushchev in a corner where he must fight back.” But he also wanted them to understand that the United States was competing with an adversary intent on world dominance. Kennedy believed the test ban talks were now pointless and hoped to end them while making Soviet responsibility for the failure clear. On Berlin, Kennedy said that the U.S. would not cede its rights of access. “The Soviets feel that our edge is gone on the nuclear side,” he added, meaning not that Moscow had greater nuclear might than the United States but that it doubted U.S. resolve to fight a nuclear war.
Kennedy’s evening TV address struck a balance between signaling emerging dangers and avoiding rhetoric that could provoke a crisis. To mute the difficulties with Russia, he partly spoke about his successful meetings with de Gaulle and Macmillan. But, as with the congressional leaders, he left no doubt that the United States faced a tough challenge from the Soviet Union. “It was a very sober two days” in Vienna, he said. To be sure, although the gap between the two countries had not been materially reduced, “the channels of communication were opened more fully.” Yet no one should ignore the fact “that the Soviets and ourselves give wholly different meanings to the same words—war, peace, democracy, and popular will. We have wholly different views of right and wrong.” Yet both sides realized that they had the capacity to inflict enormous damage on each other and the world. Consequently, they owed “it to all mankind to make every possible effort” to avoid an armed clash.
Kennedy was not optimistic that Moscow would act sensibly. The Soviets had no desire to provoke a direct conflict with the United States and its allies, but it was clear that the contest between East and West would now spread to developing countries where Moscow gained a foothold. America, Kennedy said, needed to resist such communist advances with economic and military assistance programs to emerging nations struggling to remain free. And though he hid his private anxieties about a possible war over Berlin, his closing words left no doubt about the difficulties ahead: “We must be patient. We must be determined. We must be courageous. We must accept both risks and burdens.”
Renewed public and private expressions of doubt about Kennedy’s performance in Vienna made his sensible statesmanship all the more difficult. After the meeting, Time reported “a widespread feeling that the Administration has not yet provided ample leadership in guiding the U.S. along the dangerous paths of the cold war.” Privately, Macmillan shared this concern: “I ‘feel in my bones’ that President Kennedy is going to fail to produce any real leadership. The American press and public are beginning to feel the same.” Mac Bundy told Kennedy that he and columnists Joe Alsop and Walter Lippmann believed that “this problem of Berlin is one which you will have to master and manage, under your own personal leadership and authority.” He would n
Kennedy now worried that a defeat over Berlin or in Vietnam, where the Saigon government remained in jeopardy, could be a decisive blow to his presidency. He told Galbraith, “There are limits to the number of defeats I can defend in one twelve-month period. I’ve had the Bay of Pigs, and pulling out of Laos [or refusing to fight there], and I can’t accept a third.”
Kennedy had enough detachment about himself and the magnitude of the problems he confronted not to let criticism or negative perceptions control his public actions toward the USSR. The personal concerns underlying his father’s unwise isolationism remained an object lesson in how not to make foreign policy. He was determined to shape an image of himself as clear and firm about international affairs, but not at the risk of being reckless or allowing considerations other than avoiding a nuclear war to shape what he said and did. Where Bobby would explode in anger toward someone like Chester Bowles for seeming to criticize his brother, JFK was much more restrained. Being president, of course, was vastly different from being attorney general. The reflective temperament that set Kennedy apart from his father, Bobby, Acheson, and most American military chiefs served him well in a job one shudders to imagine in any of their hands in 1961.
THE BERLIN CRISIS as it evolved during the summer of 1961 was arguably the most dangerous moment for a nuclear conflict since the onset of the Cold War. It tested Kennedy’s ability to strike an effective balance between intimidating the Soviets and giving them a way out of their dilemma. How could Moscow halt the migration from East to West, which threatened the collapse of East Germany, without altering existing U.S. treaty rights of unfettered access to Berlin and pushing Washington toward war? Khrushchev had some hope that a Soviet-East German peace treaty might not cause the United States to fight. The Western press, which repeatedly described him as not believing that JFK would pull the nuclear trigger, encouraged the chairman to accept these reports as evidence that Kennedy would not act. But he could not be sure.