Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  That would be the equivalent for this country of five hundred World War II’s in less than a day.

  John Kennedy was not obsessed with these fatality figures. He often cited them in public, but they induced in him no panic or paralysis of will. He was still willing to face the ultimate risk of nuclear war to prevent defeat by nuclear blackmail. He neither shrank from that risk nor rushed out to embrace it. Much has been made of the fact that, after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, he received a highly secret, high-level briefing on the effects of a nuclear exchange. But this briefing was customary. Obviously it was not the basis of Kennedy’s earlier decision on fallout shelters, as claimed; and, to me, sitting across from him during the briefing, he did not appear “transfixed” or show any of the other reactions of stress reported in some stories.

  That briefing confirmed, however, the harsh facts he already knew: (1) that neither the Soviet Union nor the United States could “win” a nuclear war in any rational sense of the word; (2) that, except to deter an all-out Soviet attack, our threat of “massive retaliation” to every Communist move was no longer credible, now that it invited our own destruction; and (3) that a policy of “pre-emptive first strike” or “preventive war” was no longer open to either side, inasmuch as even a surprise missile attack would trigger, before those missiles reached their targets, a devastating retaliation that neither country could risk or accept. Nor had either country developed a reliable defense against missiles or even the prospects of acquiring one, despite claims on both sides to the contrary. No matter who fired first or was annihilated last, “there will not be ‘winners,’” remarked the President. “So we have to proceed with…care in an age when the human race can obliterate itself.”

  A favorite Kennedy word from my earliest association with him was “miscalculation.” Long before he read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August—which he recommended to his staff—he had as a student at Harvard taken a course on the origins of World War I. It made him realize, he said, “how quickly countries which were comparatively uninvolved were taken, in the space of a few days, into war.” Their leaders were talking as their successors are now, he added, about military strength keeping the peace, but strength alone failed to work. In 1963 he would cite the 1914 conversation between two German leaders on the origins and expansion of that war, a former chancellor asking, “How did it all happen?” and his successor saying, “Ah, if only one knew.” “If this planet,” said President Kennedy, “is ever ravaged by nuclear war—if the survivors of that devastation can then endure the fire, poison, chaos and catastrophe—I do not want one of those survivors to ask another, ‘How did it all happen?’ and to receive the incredible reply: ‘Ah, if only one knew.’”

  He had also considered the origins of World War II and admired the work of British historian A. J. P. Taylor. “Hitler,” said Kennedy, “thought that he could seize Poland, that the British might not fight [or]…after the defeat of Poland, might not continue to fight.” And then in Korea, he added, the North Koreans “obviously…did not think we were going to come in and…we did not think the Chinese were going to come in…as we moved to the north.” Thus “three times in my lifetime,” he told the nation at the time of the Berlin crisis,

  our country and Europe have been involved in major wars. In each case serious misjudgments were made on both sides of the intentions of others which brought about great devastation. Now, in the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history.

  His critics charged that this kind of talk was in pursuit of a “no-win” policy. Kennedy, however, believed that such traditional slogans as “unconditional surrender” and “no substitute for victory” no longer had meaning. “A total solution,” he said, “is impossible in the nuclear age.” Nor did he even assert that the cold war could be “won” in the traditional sense. He did not expect it to be lost. He simply desired to dampen it down, to outlast it, to make it possible for the long-run forces of liberty and truth to work their way naturally and peacefully, to prevent the cold war from monopolizing our energies to the detriment of all other interests. “Without having a nuclear war,” he said, “we want…to permit what Thomas Jefferson called ‘the disease of liberty’ to be caught in areas which are now held by Communists.”

  He saw no early end to the ideological struggle, or to economic, scientific and political competition with the Communists. The competition would not produce the kind of celebrated “victory” our traditions had prepared the American people to expect, only at best a long, slow process, he said, of evolution “away from Communism and toward national independence and freedom…. But if freedom and Communism were to compete for man’s allegiance in a world at peace, I would look to the future with ever-increasing confidence.”

  HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD COMMUNISM AND COEXISTENCE

  If those charging him with a “no-win” policy meant to say that he was not determined to drive the partisans of Communist ideology from the face of the earth, that charge was correct. He sought to halt the external expansion of the Soviet regime, not its internal philosophy and development. He regarded Communist aggression and subversion as intolerable, but not Communism itself. “What your government believes,” he wrote to Khrushchev in 1961, “is its own business; what it does in the world is the world’s business.”

  Nothing in his term altered his view of Communism’s ruthless ambitions. Those he was determined to oppose. But different ideological interests alone did not justify endangering our common biological interest. Khrushchev’s first private letter compared the world to Noah’s Ark, where both the “clean” and the “unclean” wanted it to stay afloat, regardless of who listed himself with each group. Kennedy replied that he liked that analogy, that whatever their ideological differences, their collaboration was essential to prevent another war destroying everything. At the height or close of every crisis—in Berlin, Southeast Asia and Cuba—he sought to be in touch with Khrushchev, to return to the path of accommodation, to prevent violence and distrust from reproducing themselves.

  From his Inaugural onward, he referred to Communists not as “our enemies” but as “those who would make themselves our adversary.” Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” he said, was “a very good standard for us all.” “Our words need merely to carry conviction, not belligerence,” he wrote for his 1963 address in Dallas. “If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.”

  In 1963, his words at American University—backed by strength in the Cuban missile crisis—held out an olive branch to the Communist system. “We find Communism,” he said,

  profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements…. No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue…. World peace…does not require that each man love his neighbor…only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.

  To the editor of Izvestia in 1961 he had been even bolder:

  If the people of any country choose to follow a Communist system in a free election, after a fair opportunity for a number of views to be presented, the United States would accept that. What we find to be objectionable…is when a system is imposed by a small militant group by subversion…. If the Soviet Union were merely seeking to…protect its own national security, and permit other countries to live as they wish…then I believe that the problems which now cause so much tension would fade away.

  To the extent that Western defense and diplomacy could influence the evolution of Communist policy, he hoped to prevent the dominant force of that policy from being located in Peking instead of Moscow, from being shaped by the followers of Stalin instead of Khrushchev, and from seeking external instead of internal expansion. He knew that
Moscow, like Peking, believed in the world-wide triumph of Communism; and that Khrushchev, like Stalin, could be expected to exploit every fair and foul means of advancing those ambitions. But he hoped that in time American and Allied power and policy could persuade Moscow and Khrushchev that no safe or cheap route was open to world domination, that all channels were open for true negotiation, that any real grounds for the Soviet Union’s fears could be peacefully removed, and that realistic, effective steps to accommodation—enabling Moscow to devote more energies internally—would advance the interests and security of both sides.

  HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD NEGOTIATIONS

  In this context, the President believed more strongly than some of his subordinates that “we have nothing to fear from negotiations…and nothing to gain by refusing to take part in them.” Specific negotiations were needed to reduce specific areas of confrontation. He did not share the belief that no reasonable negotiations with the Soviets were possible and that no agreements reached would be kept, though he harbored no illusions about Communist good faith. Neither did he share the “illusion that negotiations for the sake of negotiations always advance the cause of peace. If for lack of preparation they break up in bitterness…if they are made a forum for propaganda or a cover for aggression, the processes of peace have been abused.”

  He carefully defined limits within which negotiations could take place. “We cannot,” he said, “confine our proposals to a list of concessions we are to make,” abandon our commitments to the freedom or security of others, or negotiate while the air is full of threats. (He briefly worried in 1961 that he might be making too many speeches about the virtues of negotiations and the horrors of nuclear war. To one writer he expressed the prophetic fear that an actual nuclear confrontation might be required before Khrushchev understood that Kennedy’s conciliation would not permit humiliation. “If he wants to rub my nose in the dirt,” said the President, “it’s all over.”) On the other hand, he did not believe in advancing meaningless, unattainable or obviously unacceptable proposals, or in deliberately taking ambiguous or flabby positions.

  He strongly objected to what Dean Rusk aptly called the “football stadium psychology” of diplomacy, in which someone wins or loses each day. “Negotiations,” said the President, “are not a contest spelling victory or defeat.” If they succeed because both sides regard their agreement as an improvement, that can hardly be called an American victory. If they fail because the only agreement possible would have damaged our interests, that can hardly be called a defeat. If they continue in seemingly endless, pointless talks, that is usually better than a battle. Indeed, the most successful diplomacy, in his view, was more often dull than dramatic. Drama usually came with what he called “collision courses,” direct confrontations—and “You can’t have too many of those, because we are not sure on every occasion that the Soviet Union will withdraw.” Nuclear devastation could be accomplished instantly, but peace, he said, was a long haul, “the sum of many acts.”

  He undertook such acts in his first months as President. Responding to Khrushchev’s dropping of the U-2 incident and release of the RB-47 fliers, Kennedy removed restrictions on the importation of Soviet crab-meat, proposed a pact on more consulates and sought broader Soviet-American exchanges in science and culture. Later Khrushchev would release U-2 pilot Gary Powers in exchange for convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. These were all small steps, but others would follow.

  In a letter to Khrushchev as well as in a talk with his son-in-law, Kennedy urged a policy of patience and perseverance at Berlin, suggesting that neither side knew what future events or evolution might someday unify Germany without endangering either side. More broadly applied, that was a key to his own philosophy. He did not think it possible to achieve in his administration a sweeping settlement of East-West divisions. But he did hope that small breakthroughs could lead to larger ones, and that brick by brick a detente could be built, a breathing spell, a “truce to terror” in which both sides could recognize that mutual accommodation was preferable to mutual annihilation.

  THE INSTRUMENTS OF PEACE

  In the Presidential seal woven into the design of the carpet in his office, Kennedy pointed out in a speech, the eagle faced toward the olive branch of peace. In the older design of that seal on the ceiling, the eagle faced toward the arrows of war. A later chapter relates Kennedy’s strengthening of those arrows. But, as the foregoing pages make clear, his objective was peace; and he strengthened this nation’s olive branch in his efforts on disarmament, the United Nations, outer space and aid to less fortunate peoples.

  1. Disarmament

  The new United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency—the first full-scale, full-time research and planning agency of its kind in the world—grew out of Kennedy’s campaign complaint that fewer than one hundred scattered men in government were working on disarmament. Established in 1961 with a lot of legwork by one Republican, John McCloy, and headed by another, William Foster, it weathered Congressional opposition—and some foolish wrangling over its name—to symbolize the combination of scientific, legal, military and diplomatic talents needed to develop concrete disarmament proposals. While the agency was not an unmitigated success, and had little to do with the disarmament steps taken, it provided useful studies of small and immediate problems, such as joint measures to prevent surprise attacks, and large, long-range problems, such as the economic adjustments necessary when all arms production ceases. A religious leader complained to the President that the prestigious businessmen in the Agency’s leadership had no background in the professional peace movement. But the President pointed out that Pentagon and Congressional opposition would not be changed by long-time believers, and added: “You believe in redemption, don’t you?”

  The President underwent a degree of redemption on this subject himself. His initial interest in disarmament was largely for propaganda reasons—a desire to influence neutral and “world opinion.” He told his disarmament planners, as they were preparing for the spring, 1962, Geneva Disarmament Conference, that he wanted them to meet the sweeping, oversimplified Soviet proposals with counterproposals that were “not so complex and cautious as to lack all force and appeal.” But he increasingly recognized that there was no ultimate security in armaments, that tensions and danger were rising even as our nuclear stockpiles rose. Gradually and still skeptically he began to believe that disarmament was really achievable, that the money he was putting into the arms race could someday go into health and education, and that his administration’s own plan, formulated with considerable White House prodding of the new Agency, was a good beginning toward a goal he did not expect to achieve in his political lifetime.

  Seeing no reason why the Russians should be permitted to monopolize the label of “general and complete disarmament,” the President adopted that unrealistic title for his own, despite the fears of those who thought even the phrase was a Communist plot. The American plan differed sharply from the Soviet plan—particularly in its call for inspecting whatever arms each nation might have retained, not merely those it destroyed. It was also more realistic and specific than the Soviet plan in calling for an advance to complete disarmament by stages and for a parallel build-up of new peace-keeping institutions to police it. At Vienna the Kennedy-Khrushchev talks on this topic were their least illuminating. This was partly due to the fact that the U.S. did not yet have a plan of its own and neither man seemed too familiar with the Soviet plan. But it was largely due to the fact that Khrushchev talked grandly of general and complete disarmament—as a millennium when inspection would be unimportant, and compared to which a nuclear test ban was already unimportant—without ever saying how that millennium could be reached.

  To the leaders of a closed society as obsessed with secrecy as the Soviet Union, the whole notion of outside inspection of their country was unexplainable. “A totalitarian system cannot accept the kind of inspection which really is desirable…because [it] must exist only in secrecy,” said the Preside
nt in his candid three-man TV interview; and then he added significantly: “The camera, I think, is actually going to be our best inspector.” He may have been referring to the U-2 aerial surveys of Cuba. But it was also increasingly public knowledge that, even though U.S. planes no longer violated Soviet air rights, high-orbiting space satellites were covering all parts of the globe. Observation from outer space was as legitimate as observation from the high seas. But it was vastly more effective and placed all arguments about inspection and secrecy in a somewhat different light.

  To the President’s surprise, Soviet negotiators in the fall of 1961 accepted—with one very major exception on the inspection of retained arms—a new U.S. “statement of principles” on disarmament as a joint declaration. In doing so, they conceded several points they had long opposed. But “all issues of principle are not settled,” said the President, and

  principles alone are not enough. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race: to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has actually been achieved….

  Today…every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness…. Unless man can match his strides in weaponry and technology with equal strides in social and political development, our great strength, like that of the dinosaur, will become incapable of proper control, and man, like the dinosaur, will vanish from the earth.