Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  1 Ignoring Churchill’s advocacy of negotiations to prevent needless conflict and Kennedy’s rejection of appeasement. It might be noted, however, that two other columnists, who regarded each other as “hard” and “soft” respectively, were asked unbeknownst to each other to contribute drafts, which were then blended, for the last speech quoted above.

  3 Nevertheless the Portuguese thereafter tried every form of diplomatic blackmail to alter our position on Angola, using as a wedge our country’s expiring lease on a key military base on the Portuguese Azores Islands. The President finally felt that, if necessary, he was prepared to forgo the base entirely rather than permit Portugal to dictate his African policy.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE WORLD LEADER

  THE ELECTION in 1960 of an American President young enough to be their son was greeted by most of the world’s other leaders with mingled misgivings and curiosity. At least two of them—West Germany’s Konrad Adenauer and Free China’s Chiang Kai-shek—had been almost openly pro-Nixon. The Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev had dismissed both candidates as “a pair of boots—which is the better, the right or the left boot?” But friendly, unfriendly and neutral leaders alike sought in 1961 to learn more about John Kennedy. To assert his own position, to allay their suspicions and to “begin anew the quest for peace,” he set out promptly to improve the channels of communication.

  Khrushchev made plain to U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson in Moscow his interest in meeting with Kennedy as soon as possible and sent him a cordial message upon his inauguration as he had upon his election. Promptly thereafter, in a gesture designed to renew Soviet-American communications, clogged since the Paris Summit failure, he released two downed U.S. airmen imprisoned virtually incommunicado since the previous summer. “This action,” said Kennedy, announcing the heartening news in a low-key, matter-of-fact manner at his first news conference, “removes a serious obstacle to improvement of Soviet-American relations.” Without calling it a quid pro quo, he made clear that U-2 and other aircraft flights over the Soviet Union would not be resumed.1

  On February 11 the President assessed our relations with the Soviets in a lengthy White House meeting with Rusk, Bundy and four experts who had served as Ambassadors to Moscow: Thompson, whom he continued in that position; Charles “Chip” Bohlen, whom he continued as the State Department’s Russian expert; George Kennan, whom he made Ambassador in the sensitive listening post of Yugoslavia; and Averell Harriman, whose first post under Kennedy was Ambassador at Large. None of these men, least of all the President, wanted a formal “summit” conference between the two heads of government. While such a conference, in Kennedy’s long-held view, might be necessary when war threatened, or useful as “a place where agreements…achieved at a lower level could be finally, officially approved…a summit is not a place to carry on negotiations which involve details.” Those had to be conducted through quieter channels and by full-time experts. Summitry raised undue hopes and public attention, thus producing unjustified relaxations, disappointments or tensions. It injected considerations of personal prestige, face-saving and politics into grave international conflicts.

  But the February 11 discussion distinguished between a personal, informal meeting with the Soviet leader and a summit with serious negotiations. It would be useful, all agreed, for the President to size up Khrushchev, to find out face to face his views on a test ban and other issues, to gain a firsthand impression against which he could then judge Khrushchev’s words and deeds, and to make more clear and precise than his letters could do or his predecessor had done the vital interests for which this nation would fight. It was Kennedy’s “basic premise,” as he later described it at a news conference, “that the channels of communication should be kept very widely open,” to “lessen the chance of danger,” to prevent the kind of miscalculation which had led to three wars in his lifetime, and to achieve the kind of understanding which could prevent a nuclear war and in time abate the cold war.

  Consequently, when Thompson returned to Moscow he carried with him a letter expressing hope for such a meeting. It was not inspired, as some believed, by Kennedy’s later setback at the Bay of Pigs; nor did the President entirely agree with those who thought that incident cast a shadow over the conference. He thought on balance that it provided all the more reason for the Soviet Chairman to be disabused of any misapprehension that Kennedy was either reckless or weak of will. “I had read his speeches and his published policies,” the President said.

  I had been advised on his views. I had been told by other leaders of the West…what manner of man he was. But…it is my duty to make decisions that no adviser and no ally can make for me…to see that these decisions are as informed as possible, that they are based on as much direct, firsthand knowledge, as possible…. At the same time, I wanted to make certain Mr. Khrushchev knew this country and its policies…to present our views to him directly, precisely, realistically, and with an opportunity for discussion and clarification.

  VIENNA

  The Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna on June 3 and 4, 1961, was neither a victory nor a defeat for either side. It was, as the American President hoped, useful. It was, as the Soviet Chairman later reported, necessary. It was not, both would have agreed, a turning point of any kind.

  In preparation for the meeting, Kennedy devoted both office and spare time to a review of all previous conversations held with Khrushchev, interviewed those who had met him, studied his personal ways as well as his policies and conducted intensive surveys of all the nuances and background of every issue likely to come up. In Paris the night before and on the plane en route to Vienna he continued to study right up to the last minute.

  Some skeptics had been fearful that Khrushchev had sought the meeting in order to create another international incident. Such was not the case. Both men were unyielding but courteous. Both argued vigorously but civilly. Generally, Kennedy carried the conversational initiative, introducing topics, keeping them specific, bringing straying discussions back to the question and pressing Khrushchev for answers. Khrushchev usually talked at much greater length. Kennedy usually talked with much greater precision. Both often cited history and quotations, although Khrushchev’s language was far more colorful and lively. Between the two men, despite the divergence of their views, a curious kind of rapport was established which was to help continue their dialogue in the months and years that followed.

  Three meals presented the only real opportunity for idle personal conversation; Kennedy was the host for lunch on the first day at the American Embassy. Khrushchev hosted the second in the Soviet Embassy. A splendiferous dinner and after-dinner ballet at Vienna’s glittering Schönbrunn Palace were arranged by the Austrian Government for the evening in between. (The President almost sat in Mrs. Khrushchev’s lap through a mix-up in seating directions, and the Chairman kept Jacqueline amused with almost nonstop humor and a promise to send an offspring of the dogs flown in space.)

  During these meals the conversation was light. When Kennedy, lighting up a cigar, dropped the match behind Khrushchev’s chair, the latter asked, “Are you trying to set me on fire?” Reassured that this was not the case, he smiled: “Ah, a capitalist, not an incendiary.” Kennedy noted that not one of the top capitalists of industry and finance whom Khrushchev had met in 1959 had voted Democratic in 1960. “They are very clever,” responded Khrushchev, certain it was all a trick. When Khrushchev said that the medal he was wearing was for the Lenin Peace Prize, Kennedy retorted with a smile: “I hope you keep it.”

  Khrushchev chatted about his country’s need for fertilizer and corn, its new emphasis on submarines instead of surface craft and the President’s special message to Congress the previous month. It was clear that he had read—or had been briefed on—all Kennedy’s major speeches and messages, and a good many obscure Congressional debates as well. Kennedy’s defense requests, he said, put pressure on him to increase his forces, just as both of them were under pressure from their scientis
ts and military to resume nuclear tests. “But we will wait for you to resume testing and, if you do, we will.”

  The Soviet leader also made clear his belief in summitry. If the heads of state cannot resolve problems, how can officials at a lower level? He liked as much personal contact as possible, he said, no matter how able one’s ambassadors might be—just as natural love is better than love through interpreters. While it was difficult for both of them to speak on behalf of their “jealous” allies, the President would surely not be concerned by objections from an ally such as tiny Luxembourg—and Russia, too, had allies “whom I do not wish to name” but who, “if they were to raise a belligerent voice, would not frighten anyone.”

  Describing the historic space orbit of Soviet Cosmonaut Gagarin, Khrushchev said they had feared the psychological effects of such a flight on Gagarin’s ability to take over the controls. Consequently they gave him sealed instructions coded in such a way that only a normal person could decode them. He was even more doubtful, he said, about going to the moon. Perhaps the two nations should go together, the President suggested. Khrushchev first replied in the negative, but then added half-jokingly: “All right—why not?”

  The Chairman said he had respected Kennedy’s predecessor. He was almost sure that Eisenhower had not known about the U-2 flight deliberately designed to sour Soviet-American relations but had taken the responsibility in a spirit of chivalry. Eisenhower’s trip to the U.S.S.R. had necessarily been canceled, but he hoped Kennedy would come “when the time is ripe…. The road is open.” Then he could see whomever and whatever he liked. For the Soviets were unafraid for their system. But Mr. Nixon, Khrushchev said, had thought he could convert the Soviet people to capitalism by showing them a kitchen that never existed, even in the U.S. “I apologize for referring to a citizen of the United States,” he said, “but only Nixon could think of such nonsense.”2

  The Soviet people admire the American people and their technological success, Khrushchev went on, and had decorated American engineers who helped them build their country after the Revolution. One of them, he said, had later visited the Soviet Union and mentioned that he was building houses in Turkey. Of course, the Soviets knew “that in fact he was building bases there—but this is a matter for his own conscience.” Toasting the President’s health, he envied his youth. “If I were your age, I would devote even more energy to our cause. Nevertheless, even at sixty-seven, I am not renouncing the competition.”

  In his toast at the second luncheon, with both men more preoccupied by the gravity of their problems, Khrushchev said he would “raise my glass to their solution. You are a religious man and would say that God should help us in this endeavor. For my part, I want common sense to help us.”

  Kennedy’s toasts at both luncheons were confined to expressions of hope for peace and understanding and to a recognition of the special obligations which rested upon the two leaders. “I hope we will not leave Vienna,” he concluded on the second day, “a city that is symbolic because it indicates that equitable solutions can be found, with a possibility of either country being confronted with a challenge to its vital national interests.”

  The talks themselves began with the two men recalling their brief introduction at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting during Khrushchev’s 1959 tour of the United States. The President mentioned that the Chairman had commented on the then Senator’s youthful appearance, adding that he had aged since then. Khrushchev doubted that he had really said that, because he knew that young people want to look older and older people like to look younger. In his own youth, he added, he was offended when someone misjudged his age because of his youthful appearance, but he began to gray at twenty-two and that ended the problem.

  The President immediately turned to his central thesis of the two major nuclear powers avoiding situations which committed their vital interests in a direct confrontation from which neither could back down. Time and again he returned to that point during the two days of talks. Khrushchev complained that John Foster Dulles had wanted to liquidate Communism. Kennedy replied that the real problem was the Soviet attempt to impose Communism on others. Not true, said Khrushchev, they expected it to triumph as a social development. The Soviet Union was against imposing its policy on other states. As feudalism gave way to capitalism, so the latter was being challenged by Communism.

  Historical inevitability is not demonstrated by a minority’s seizing power against the will of the people, replied the President, even if they are called “wars of liberation.” The death of systems such as feudalism and monarchy had brought wars in the past, and today both our countries would suffer in a new world war. The competition of ideologies should be conducted without affecting the vital security interests of the two countries; and he repeated his view of the dangers of miscalculation.

  At this Khrushchev bristled. He did not like the term miscalculation or the President’s repeated usage of it, he said. Was the President saying that Communism should exist only in Communist countries, that its development elsewhere would be regarded by the U.S. as a hostile act by the Soviet Union? The United States wants the U.S.S.R., he said, to sit like a schoolboy with hands on the table, but there is no immunization against ideas. Even if he should renounce Communism, his friends would ostracize him but the doctrine of Communism would keep on developing. He didn’t even know who some of the indigenous Communist leaders were, he said; he was too busy at home. Smiling again, he suggested that the Germans be blamed for producing Marx and Engels. It was Soviet policy, he repeated, that ideas should not be imposed by war or arms.

  Mao Tse-tung, the President interjected, has said that power was at the end of a rifle. No, replied Khrushchev, Mao could not have said that. He is a Marxist and Marxists have always been against war. In any event, said the President, miscalculation simply referred to an erroneous prediction of the other side’s next move. It applied equally to all countries. He had made a misjudgment earlier at the Bay of Pigs. Khrushchev had to make many judgments about the West. The whole purpose of their meeting was to introduce more precision into those judgments.

  Khrushchev gave no ground on this or any other point. He returned time and again to the thesis that the Soviet Union could not be held responsible for every spontaneous uprising or Communist trend. Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah and Sukarno, he pointed out, had all said they wanted their countries to develop along Socialist lines. But what kind of Socialist was Nasser when he kept Communists in jail? Nor did Nehru favor the Communist Party in India. Nevertheless the Soviet Union helped them all and that was proof of its policy of noninterference. He predicted a popular overthrow of the Shah of Iran but asserted that Russia would have nothing to do with it. The Cubans turned against the United States, he said, because capitalist circles supported Batista. The Bay of Pigs landing only increased Cuba’s fears that the Americans would impose another Batista. Castro was not a Communist but U.S. policy could make him one, said Khrushchev, adding that as a Communist himself (not a born Marxist, he said, but the capitalists had made him one) he could not foretell which way Castro would go. And if the United States felt itself threatened by tiny Cuba, what was the U.S.S.R. to do about Turkey and Iran?

  Cuba alone was not regarded as a threat, replied the President, making clear he held no brief for Batista. It was Castro’s announced intentions to subvert the hemisphere that could be dangerous. Had Castro been selected by a free choice and not interfered with the choice of others, the U.S. might have endorsed him. What would Khrushchev’s reaction be to a pro-Western government in Poland, which might well be the result of a free election?

  It was disrespectful of the President, said Khrushchev, to talk that way about Poland, whose election system was more democratic than America’ s. In the United States we have a choice, said Kennedy. U.S. political parties, responded the Chairman, are only for the purpose of deluding the people. There is no real difference between them. And what about the U.S. support of reactionary, undemocratic regimes—Nationalist Chi
na, Pakistan, Spain, Iran, Turkey, and the oppression of colonies? The Shah of Iran said that his power was given to him by God. Everybody knew how this power was seized by the Shah’s father, who was not God but a sergeant in the Iranian Army. The arms America gave to China after World War II to fight the Communists, he said, were not successful because the troops wouldn’t fight against the people. Chiang Kai-shek became a sort of transfer point for American arms to Mao Tse-tung. The U.S. should beware of setting a precedent of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries. 3 Once, said the Chairman, the United States was a leader in the fight for freedom, so revolutionary in its creation that the Russian czar refused to recognize it for twenty-six years. Now the United States refused to recognize New China, indicating how things had changed.

  The President, in replying, did not pretend that all our allies were as democratic as the United States. Some of our associations are for strategic reasons, he said, citing Yugoslavia (to Mr. K.’s discomfort) as well as Spain. But he recognized, he said, the advantage of those on the side of change. He was for change and was elected in the 1960 campaign on the basis of advocating change. He had supported Algerian independence as a Senator. He had incurred the wrath of Portugal and other allies for supporting self-determination in their colonies. The independence movement in Africa was unmistakable, unprecedented and a tribute to peaceful change. But the “wars of liberation” Khrushchev had endorsed in January did not always reflect the will of the people and they might dangerously involve the great powers.

  The United States, replied Khrushchev, suffers from delusions of grandeur. It is so rich and powerful that it believes it has special rights and can afford not to recognize the rights of others. The Soviet Union cannot accept the thesis of “don’t poke your nose” because whenever the rights of people are infringed upon, the Soviet Union will render assistance.