This led to considerable White House interest in a meeting of unaligned nations, called by Nehru, Tito, Nasser and Sukarno for Belgrade in early September 1961. George McGhee, as head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council, responded to our concern. But elsewhere in State there was the usual indifference, if not opposition, to the whole idea of taking special trouble with the third world. When we suggested a presidential message to the conference, State was very cold. A few days before the conference opened, I learned that the Department was about to inform Belgrade no message would be forthcoming.
With the President’s approval, I succeeded in stopping the cable and asked Alexis Johnson at State to call a meeting to reconsider the decision. The meeting later in the day was almost a travesty of those Foggy Bottom séances which haunt one’s memory. The men from the Department arrived with a whole series of feeble reasons for doing nothing. As Tom Sorensen of USIA and I knocked one down, they clutched for another, until, as Sorensen said later, he was sure that someone would argue that the cable would cost $12.20 and the Department couldn’t afford it.
Finally Carl Rowan, who was then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and plainly unsympathetic with his colleagues, scribbled an excellent draft on a yellow pad. At the end of the day, Alexis Johnson called to say that he was prepared to back the message if we would agree on a few changes. Most were trivial and unobjectionable, but, when he suggested that a passing presidential expression of good wishes be deleted, this seemed to carry caution to the point of inanity. Johnson, who was good-natured about these matters, consented not to press for this final excision, and the message went out. It was probably worth the effort—at least Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the sagacious editor of Foreign Affairs, who covered the Belgrade meeting, told us later that it had been a success and its omission would have been a serious error.
By this time, Kennedy was deep in the year’s troubles with the Soviet Union. As the American fight for a test ban met Soviet resistance in the spring and Khrushchev gratuitously reopened the Berlin crisis in the summer, the President was beginning to wonder why American policy had so little backing, or apparently even understanding, among the neutrals. Therefore, a fortnight before Belgrade, he addressed a series of pointed questions to Stevenson and Bowles, as the chief local champions of the third world policy, and also to Galbraith, as his specialist on Nehru. He asked, in effect, why we were failing to put across our position on Berlin to the third world; why the neutrals seemed to equate our firmness with belligerence, as over Berlin, and our moderation with weakness, as over Laos; and why they appeared to judge American actions with such severity and Soviet actions with such apparent charity.
The replies showed considerable convergence of diagnosis. The trouble with Berlin, everyone agreed, was that it was so far away. “These European quarrels,” Galbraith said, “are not for Asia. The outcome short of war has little implication for the Indian national interest.” If we seemed more belligerent, it was because our papers reported so much about the agony of decision. “Opinions, or alleged opinions, of Acheson, the Joint Chiefs, Joe Alsop and numerous other statesmen and sages have been exhaustively cited. The lineage from the USSR is infinitely less.” Moreover, as Stevenson emphasized, when questions involved the danger of war but not their own interests, “neutrals will almost inevitably favor compromise between Western and Communist positions with little regard for the rights and wrongs of the case.” The experts suggested that we could strengthen our case in Berlin if we would say something about negotiation, base our argument on self-determination rather than on legalistic talk about rights of conquest and prove the genuineness of our devotion to self-determination by extending the principle from white men in Berlin to black men in Angola and to Indians in Goa. As for the double standard, we should not be unhappy if the neutrals implicitly expected better behavior from us than from the Russians; and we had no choice but to accept the less agreeable fact that they knew us to be responsive to public criticism as the Russians were not. All this would naturally lead them to concentrate their pressure on us. In general, the consultants concluded, our wealth and power, the color of our skins and our association with the colonial nations of Europe, condemned us to an almost irreducible barrage of heckling, and we should have to grin and bear it.
These remarks coincided, I believe, with Kennedy’s own fundamental view. But it was hard to be philosophical in the midst of the Berlin crisis, and even harder when, after the Soviet Union resumed nuclear testing, the neutral leaders gathering at Belgrade reacted with stupefying forbearance. We all knew how they would have blackened the skies with resolutions if we had been the first to resume; and the contrast drove Kennedy to great and profane acrimony. He said in a moment of irritation, “Do you know who the real losers were at Belgrade? Stevenson and Bowles.”
As it turned out, the Belgrade conference disappointed Moscow about as much as it did Washington. The Soviet Union conspicuously failed to win neutral support for its positions on Berlin, on disarmament and on the troika approach to the UN; there was considerable resentment in the corridors about the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing; and anti-American speeches and statements were notable for their absence. (Our embassy in Belgrade, summing up the conference, reported that the patience with which the United States had recently been treating the neutrals was evidently having its effect.) Indeed, the Belgrade meeting disappointed everybody, even its sponsors, for it revealed such internal differences among the twenty-eight participating nations that it destroyed the dream of a neutral bloc as a unified force in world affairs. In their devotion to the principle of non-alignment, the new states were evidently prepared to apply it to each other.
Their final declaration dealt very largely with colonial questions, the one great bond which held the very motley group together. Then Nehru, with Nkrumah of Ghana, was dispatched to Moscow and Sukarno, with Keita of Mali, to Washington to carry the Belgrade gospel to the great powers. Kennedy observed, “Khrushchev certainly drew the pick of the litter,” but he received the emissaries politely and ended up having a spirited and enjoyable talk with the African.
For a moment the Belgrade interlude strengthened those in the State Department who opposed the neutralist experiment, whether because they regarded neutralists as potential communists or because, in the more sophisticated version, they believed that the neutralists would always throw their weight against the more reasonable party to a conflict. The White House took the matter more calmly. A few weeks after Belgrade Walt Rostow sent the President a memorandum arguing that neutral states, like all other states, were moved by their own views of their national interests. As Keita had pointed out to Kennedy, most of the neutrals were militarily weak; their extremely serious domestic problems generally determined their foreign policies; and their foreign policy interests were in any case local and regional. Their attitudes toward the cold war, Rostow argued, depended on the policies most likely to help them maintain their independence and pursue local advantage.
Our interest, Rostow continued, lay primarily in building this independence, in steering their energies toward internal development and in leading them into long-term association with the west. This, he added, was one vital role of foreign aid. Keita and Sukarno had told Kennedy that the unaligned countries, in their positions on international issues, did take into account where the aid came from; and, in analyzing the Belgrade conference, Rostow was able to show that, of the eighteen moderates, the great majority had either received most of their aid from the United States or were hoping for increased American aid, while, of the six extremists, all except Yugoslavia (and including Indonesia) had received substantially more aid from the Soviet Union.
This, I believe, made great sense to Kennedy, and the Belgrade meeting did not deflect him long from his chosen course.
5. NEHRU
Of all the neutral countries, Kennedy was most interested in India, which he had long regarded as “the key area” in Asia. The spectacle of
this great nation, weighed down by legacies of centuries, making a brave attempt to achieve economic modernization within a democratic polity captured his imagination. The struggle between India and China “for the economic and political leadership of the East, for the respect of all Asia,” he said in 1959, would determine the Asian future. Along with John Sherman Cooper in the Senate and Chester Bowles in the House, both former ambassadors to New Delhi, he had introduced a resolution calling for a joint American-European financial effort in support of India’s five-year plan. “We want India to win that race with China,” he said . . . If China succeeds and India fails, the economic-development balance of power will shift against us.” He added characteristically: “It is not enough merely to provide sufficient money. Equally important are our attitude and understanding.” Nor should anyone be put off by the Indian commitment to neutrality: “Let us remember that our nation also during the period of its formative growth adopted a policy of noninvolvement in the great international controversies of the nineteenth century.”
Yet this desire to aid India coexisted with a certain skepticism about Indian leadership. When Kennedy had visited New Delhi in 1951, Nehru for some reason—perhaps because all he could see was an unknown young Congressman—treated him with marked indifference. The visitor had been warned that, when Nehru became bored, he would tap his fingers together and look at the ceiling. Kennedy was in the office, he later liked to recall, for about ten minutes when Nehru started to tap his fingers and gaze abstractedly at a spot over his visitor’s head. Moreover, Nehru’s talent for international self-righteousness led Kennedy in some moods to view him as almost the John Foster Dulles of neutralism. Still, Nehru was unquestionably one of the great men of the century; and, even if he were not, India remained the key area of Asia.
In sending Galbraith as his ambassador to New Delhi, Kennedy deliberately chose a man who could be depended upon to bring to Indian problems his own mixture of sympathy and irony. Kennedy was delighted by Galbraith’s wit, effrontery and unabashed pursuit of the unconventional wisdom, and they were now exceptionally good friends. Nor did the President appear to mind Ken’s guerrilla warfare against the ikons and taboos of the Department of State. From time to time, the President took pleasure in announcing that Galbraith was the best ambassador he had.
Galbraith went to New Delhi with several advantages: an acquaintance with Nehru, his own prestige as an economic and social philosopher, and the President’s strong belief in increased economic assistance to India—this last quickly resulting in a $500 million appropriation for Indian development. But he also had the disadvantage of the Dulles legacy and especially of the policy of American military aid to Pakistan. Soon after his arrival, for example, he learned that Washington was planning a delivery of F-104 airplanes to Karachi—planes which the Indians assumed could only be used against themselves. When Galbraith proposed that he inform the Indian government that there were only twelve planes involved, the State Department refused. Finally—“more or less by physical violence,” he later said—he was able to extract permission from Washington to communicate the number of planes to Nehru. “Parliament assembled a week or two ago,” he wrote me toward the end of August, “and during the recess two things had happened: We had committed a half billion in aid to India and the twelve F-104 planes to Pakistan. The ratio of questions, words, comment and emotion has been not less than ten to one in favor of the planes. Such is the current yield of the Dulles policy.”
Very early Galbraith decided that the best way to erase memories of Dulles was to expose Nehru to Kennedy. The two leaders shared that address, patrician instinct and long historical view which made them, next to Churchill, the two greatest statesmen on the British model of their day. But by 1961 Nehru, alas, was no longer the man he had once been. It had all gone on too long, the fathership of his country, the rambling, paternal speeches to his flock, the tired aristocratic disdain in New Delhi, the Left Book Club platitudes when his face was turned to the world. His strength was failing, and he retained control more by momentum of the past than by mastery of the present.
Galbraith thought that Nehru would prefer no fuss on his visit and that everything should be kept easy and private. The President was dubious, remembering other visitors (he had Prince Sihanouk especially in mind) who said in advance they wanted nothing special and then seemed unhappy when they were taken at their word. But Galbraith insisted that Nehru really would wish to be received in a home. Hyannis Port seemed a little too depressing to the Kennedys, and they decided to invite him to Newport. Nehru arrived in New York on November 5, 1961, was promptly subjected to a sharp and unceremonious inquisition by Lawrence Spivak on Meet the Press, and the next morning departed for Rhode Island.
The President met him at the naval base and brought him back to the Auchincloss residence on the Honey Fitz. Along the way, he gestured at the great mansions shining in the sun, their green lawns stretching down to the seawall, and said, “I wanted you to see how the average American family lives.” Nehru responded that the American Ambassador had been giving him special instruction in the affluent society. When they arrived at Hammersmith Farm, Jacqueline and Caroline were waiting at the front door. The little girl had picked a flower and now she made a curtsy and presented it to him. He smiled and was briefly gay with Mrs. Kennedy. But when the talk turned to Vietnam during luncheon, he fell into remote silence. It was heavy going, then and later.
They all went back to Washington in the afternoon for a state dinner in the evening. It was the first big affair of the autumn, and the staff had forgotten to open the flue in the fireplace on the first floor. The smoke poured into the room, causing confusion and smarting eyes. My wife and I were among the party of about twenty-five, too many for the family dining room on the second floor but a little too few for the state dining room. During dinner Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, assailed the President about American policy, praised Krishna Menon, the professional anti-American of New Delhi, and otherwise elevated the mood of the evening.
The President, unperturbed, gave one of his graceful and witty toasts. “We all want to take this opportunity to welcome you to America, Mr. Prime Minister,” he began, “though I doubt whether any words of mine can embellish the welcome already extended to you by Larry Spivak.” Nehru listened without expression. His own toast was discursive and overlong, though rather touching. He spoke about Gandhi and other passages in what he called “life’s tortuous course.” One or two of his allusions, especially a bit on Ireland, seemed to me a trifle condescending. In conversation he displayed interest and vivacity only with Jacqueline. (When I mentioned this later to the President, he said, “A lot of our visiting statesmen have that same trouble.”) The next morning B. K. Nehru, the astute and delightful Indian ambassador to Washington, summoned a group of New Frontiersmen to the Indian Embassy for an audience with the Prime Minister. This session confirmed one’s feelings of the night before. I had the impression of an old man, his energies depleted, who heard things as at a great distance and answered most questions with indifference.
The private meetings between the President and the Prime Minister were no better. Nehru was terribly passive, and at times Kennedy was hard put to keep the conversation going. The President talked a good deal more about Vietnam, but the Prime Minister remained unresponsive. At one point Nehru expressed doubt about the American commitment to disarmament, citing Eisenhower’s valedictory warning about the “military-industrial complex.” Was it not a fact, he asked, that powerful interests would bring enormous pressures to bear against any policy that threatened an end to arms production? Kennedy, instead of indulging in statesmanlike banalities about American hopes for peace, answered frankly that his visitor did not know the half of it, that the pressures were indeed enormous; he named particular Congressmen, generals and industries. But even this candor failed to elicit much response. It was, the President said later, like trying to grab something in your hand, only to have it turn out to be just fog. It wa
s all so sad: this man had done so much for Indian independence, but he had stayed around too long, and now it was all going bit by bit. To Galbraith he once remarked that Lincoln was fortunate; Nehru by contrast much less so.
The following spring, reminiscing about the meeting, Kennedy described it to me as “a disaster . . . the worst head-of-state visit I have had.” It was certainly a disappointment, and Kennedy’s vision of India had been much larger before the visit than it would ever be again. Nehru was obviously in decline; his country, the President now decided, would be increasingly preoccupied with its own problems and turn more and more into itself. Though Kennedy retained his belief in the necessity of helping India achieve its economic goals, he rather gave up hope, after seeing Nehru, that India would be in the next years a great affirmative force in the world or even in South Asia.
6. GOA AND AFTER
Five weeks after Nehru left the United States he ordered his army to occupy the ancient Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of India. Galbraith, in a valiant last-minute effort to stop the military action, got it put off for three or four days. But Washington only authorized him to offer vague diplomatic pressure on Portugal in exchange for a six-month standstill by India. To be effective he needed more specific assurance that sooner or later we would get the Portuguese out.
In Paris, where NATO was meeting, Dean Rusk conversed with Dr. Franco Nogueiria, the Portuguese foreign minister, on the eve of the invasion. It was not a high point of American diplomacy. At no point did the Secretary express any reservations about permanent Portuguese control of Goa or even acknowledge that the Indians might have a legitimate point in resenting the Portuguese presence. In New Delhi Galbraith read the report of this session with incredulity and then sent what he described as “a surprisingly mild commentary” to Washington. “This job,” he later complained to me, “is taking all the edge off my personality.” Galbraith’s cable argued sensibly that, just as we had at all times made clear to the Indians our opposition to aggression, so we must at all times make clear to the Portuguese our opposition to colonialism.
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