Two days later Khrushchev, turning his face from west to east, said that “only madmen” could hope to destroy capitalism by nuclear war; “a million workers would be destroyed for each capitalist. . . . There are people who see things differently. Let them. History will teach them.” The next day the delegation of those who saw things differently arrived in Moscow, and the Russo-Chinese ideological talks began. They dragged on in the greatest secrecy from July 5 to adjournment, without communiqué, on July 20. But a long and emotional statement by the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party on July 14 suggested how things were going. Citing Mao Tse-tung as prepared to sacrifice millions of lives in nuclear war, the Russians replied that they could not “share the views of the Chinese leadership about creating ‘a thousand times higher civilization’ on the corpses of hundreds of millions of people.” Such views were “in crying contradiction to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism.” The nuclear bomb “does not distinguish between imperialists and working people: it devastates entire areas.”
This was the mood in Moscow when on the following day the American and British delegations began discussion of the test ban. Harriman had a delegation according to his own specifications: small and brilliant. It included Carl Kaysen, Adrian Fisher, William Tyler and John McNaughton. Macmillan had originally wanted David Ormsby Gore to head the British delegation, but the Ambassador felt that, from the Prime Minister’s own viewpoint, it would be better to have someone of cabinet rank who could not be considered an American stooge. The choice fell on Quintin Hogg, then Lord Hailsham, Minister of Science and an accomplished if impetuous lawyer. (Macmillan later confided to newspapermen that he had sent Hailsham because he thought he might amuse Khrushchev.) Hailsham, relying on the British amateur tradition, was ill prepared on the technicalities of the problem and was consumed by a desire to get a treaty at almost any cost.
The first meeting took place with Khrushchev in the Kremlin. The Soviet leader began by talking expansively and irrelevantly about farm policy—“like a county agent,” one of the American participants said later—discoursing at particular length about the virtues of investment in chemical fertilizer. Then, turning to the question of a comprehensive test ban, he said the Russians still considered inspection to be espionage; they did not think you could let the cat in the kitchen only to hunt the mice and not to drink the milk. Since the British and Americans disagreed, there was no point in wasting time in further argument. With the comprehensive ban thus dismissed, the limited ban was left on the table. Khrushchev now said nothing about his earlier idea of a concurrent moratorium on underground testing, but he did bring up the nonaggression pact he had mentioned in East Berlin.
Harriman quickly replied that the test ban treaty was something the three nations could complete in a few days in Moscow. The non-aggression pact would require extensive consultation with allies, and it might hold up the test ban for a long time. Moreover, he did not see how such a pact would be possible without assurance that interference with access to West Berlin would be considered aggression—a proposition which obviously irritated the Soviet leader. Assuming that the Americans were opposed because of Bonn’s hostility to the idea, Khrushchev observed sarcastically, “You conquered the Germans, and now you are afraid of them.” Harriman did assure Khrushchev, however, in accordance with his instructions from Washington, that the United States would consult with its allies in good faith about the possibility of a nonaggression pact.
For his part Harriman presented the idea of a non-proliferation treaty, forbidding the transfer of nuclear weapons from one country to another. Khrushchev drew back from this, arguing that as other nations signed the test ban treaty, it would have an anti-proliferation effect; but a no-transfer treaty should be deferred for future consideration.
The opening talk cleared away a certain number of issues. Then the hard negotiation began. The meetings took place at the Spiri-donka Palace, a castellated Gothic structure marked by a weird medley of architectural styles. Gromyko for the Russians and Harriman for the west began a close analysis of the treaty draft. Several issues gave special trouble. One arose from foggy language in the preamble seeming to ban the use of nuclear weapons even in self-defense. Harriman, knowing that this was inconsistent with our own stated policy and would cause trouble on the Hill, demanded that the wording be cleared up. A second problem was that of the withdrawal clause. Khrushchev, in an inadvertent admission of the Leninist view of treaties, had argued that a nation always retained the sovereign right to withdraw from a treaty which no longer served its interest; to include an explicit withdrawal clause in this treaty would therefore imply a diminution of that right in other treaties. Harriman knew that the Senate, faced with the probability that China would refuse to sign and then might become a nuclear power on its own, would insist on such a clause. In the end he flatly told Gromyko that, without a withdrawal clause, there could be no treaty. The result was the curious compromise phraseology in Article IV: “Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.’’
A third problem was that of accession to the treaty. The issue here was how to arrange for states not recognized by other states to join them in signing the treaty without thereby receiving implicit recognition. Our concern, of course, was to avoid conferring an inadvertent blessing on East Germany and China. Our first solution was an explicit statement that accession did not mean recognition by signatories of other signatories. The Russians, who wanted to improve the international status of East Germany, naturally objected.
The discussions proved long and difficult. Harriman, who dominated the negotiations on the western side, was evidently at his best—correct, forceful, his restraint masking a capacity for toughness and even anger. A member of the British delegation later called him “the great man of the meeting.” He would not give ground; and, as the talks dragged on, Hailsham became increasingly restive and unhappy. Soon he was complaining to London that Harriman’s rigidity might lose the whole treaty. His reports disturbed Macmillan, who finally instructed Ormsby Gore to call on the President and register official British anxiety.
Harriman, however, had negotiated with the Russians before and knew precisely what he was doing. “I am always right when I know I am right,” he said on his return. “Sometimes I only guess I am right, and then I may be wrong. This time I knew I was right.” When Ormsby Gore arrived at the White House, a call came in from Kaysen in Moscow just as the President initiated a call to Macmillan in London. Kaysen’s report was optimistic. The Russians had accepted a revision of the preamble eliminating the language which we had disliked. As for accession, the lawyers Fisher and McNaughton had worked out an ingenious system of multiple depositaries, leaving every signatory free to sign only in association with nations of which it approved. (This idea offended the purists of international law, since it seemed to mean that no one could definitively know who the signatories were, but it did not bother practical minds.) Kaysen recommended that this solution be accepted, and the President nodded his approval to Bundy, who was conducting the conversation. Just at this point, the London call was completed. Macmillan came on the phone with a certain elaborateness: he was terribly sorry, he told the President, but he had had to ask David to express his concern about the progress of the Moscow negotiations. Kennedy, a broad smile on his face, broke in: “Don’t worry. David is right here. It’s been worked out, and I’ve told them to go ahead.” Macmillan, having accomplished one of the dreams of his life (and at the same time having strengthened his government against the problems of John Profumo, Miss Keeler and Dr. Ward) was deeply moved.
In Moscow, after the treaty had been initialed, Harriman and Khrushchev took up the questions of France and China. The American found the Russian prickly and adamant. China was another socialist country, Khrushchev said, and he did not propose to discuss
it with a capitalist. Harriman persisted: “Suppose we can get France to sign the treaty? Can you deliver China?” Khrushchev replied cryptically, “That’s your problem.” Harriman tried again: “Suppose their rockets are targeted against you?” Khrushchev did not answer.
In due course Khrushchev said, ‘‘Let us walk over together to our dinner.” They left his office and strolled through the Kremlin, once Stalin’s gloomy fortress, now a public park, toward the Old Palace. Harriman remarked that he saw few security men around. “I don’t like being surrounded by security men,” Khrushchev said. ‘‘In Stalin’s time we never knew whether they were protecting us or watching us.” As they walked, a large crowd collected behind them. Khrushchev turned and said, “This is Gospodin Garriman. We’ve just signed a test-ban treaty. I’m going to take him to dinner. Do you think he’s earned his dinner?” The people applauded and applauded. On his return Harriman went straight to Hyannis Port. The President, without ceremony, said, “Well, this is a good job.”
It was a good job, and it would not have come about without the intense personal commitment of Kennedy and Macmillan. America and Britain had offered the Soviet Union a limited test ban four times in four years; now it was accepted the fifth time around—two less than Robert Bruce and the spider. Left to itself, the Soviet Union, to judge from Khrushchev’s attitude in the spring of 1963, would not have perceived that a test ban was to its own interest and would not have understood its potentialities as a key to the future. Left to itself, the Department of State would not have persevered with the issue, nor would it have ever proposed an American University speech—that speech which, in its modesty, clarity and perception, repudiated the self-righteous cold war rhetoric of a succession of Secretaries of State. Mao Tse-tung was also entitled to credit for his indispensable assistance in making the treaty possible.
One more man deserved mention. When Harriman arrived in Washington on July 28, his Georgetown neighbors staged an impromptu welcome for him. Bearing torches and candles, they marched to his house on P Street, serenading him with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and then one of his old campaign songs, adapted from George M. Cohan, “H-A-double-R-I-M-A-N spells Harriman.” Finally Averell, tieless and in shirtsleeves, came out on his front steps and spoke a few quiet words of thanks. One girl with a very small baby in her arms said to him, “I brought my baby because what you did in Moscow will make it possible for him to look ahead to a full and happy life.”
5. THE TEST BAN ON THE HILL
Negotiation, however, was only half the problem; ratification remained. The President regarded the test ban treaty as the most serious congressional issue he had thus far faced. He was, he told us, determined to win if it cost him the 1964 election. But the opposition was organized and strong; and, while he felt sure the great majority of the people were for it, he was not sure they could make themselves heard in time. I happened to be with him ten days after the American University speech when someone brought in the mail report. He noted that the mail received in the White House in the week ending June 20 totaled 50,010 letters as compared to 24,888 a year earlier and 9482 in the comparable period of the last Eisenhower year. Then he looked at the breakdown. Of this vast accumulation, the American University speech had provoked 896 letters—861 favorable and 25 hostile. In the same period, 28,232 people had sent letters about a freight rate bill. The President, tossing the report aside, said, with disgust, “That is why I tell people in Congress that they’re crazy if they take their mail seriously.”*
Addressing the nation the day after the treaty was initialed in Moscow, Kennedy recalled mankind’s struggle “to escape from the darkening prospects of mass destruction.” “Yesterday,” he said, “a shaft of light cut into the darkness.” He did not exaggerate the significance of the agreement. It was not the millennium: it would not resolve all conflicts, reduce nuclear stockpiles, check the production of nuclear weapons or restrict their use in case of war. But it was “an important first step—a step toward peace—a step toward reason—a step away from war.” He concluded with the Chinese proverb he had put to Khrushchev two years before in Vienna: “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
The prospective end of radioactive fallout was, of course, an immense boon for humanity. But I think that Kennedy saw the main point of the treaty as a means of moving toward his Vienna goal of stabilizing the international equilibrium of power. After all, both America and Russia knew that each had enough nuclear strength to survive a surprise attack and still wreak fearful destruction on the other: the test ban now indicated a mutual willingness to halt the weapons race more or less where it was. In the Soviet case this meant acquiescence in American nuclear superiority. Though our superiority was not decisive, it was still considerable; in 1964 the Defense Department said that we had twice as many intercontinental bombers on constant alert and at least four times as many intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Russian willingness to accept such margins showed not only a post-Cuba confidence in American restraint but a new understanding of the theories of stable nuclear deterrence. And, in addition to slowing down the bilateral arms race, the treaty held out the hope of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to new nations. Moreover, the effect, both practical and symbolic, of Soviet-American collaboration in stopping nuclear tests and dispersion might well lead to future agreement on more general disarmament issues.
So the supporters of the treaty saw it. But sections of the military and scientific community continued in strong opposition. Some, like General Thomas D. White, a former Air Chief, considered the whole theory of stable deterrence as “next to unilateral disarmament . . . the most misleading and misguided military theme yet conceived.” True security, he and others argued, lay in unlimited nuclear supremacy, and this required unlimited testing. Much of the dissent focused on the contention that the ban would block the development of an anti-missile missile—this in spite of firm statements by McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor and a number of scientists that the hard problems here were nonnuclear and required analysis in the laboratories, not testing in the atmosphere. Edward Teller predictably called for the immediate resumption of atmospheric testing, though he was willing to ration this to one megaton of radioactivity a year. To the Senators Teller cried: “If you ratify this treaty . . . you will have given away the future safety of this country.” Admiral Lewis Strauss said, “I am not sure that the reduction of tensions is necessarily a good thing.” Admiral Arthur Radford, a former Chairman of the Chiefs, said, “I join with many of my former colleagues in expressing deep concern for our future security. . . . The decision of the Senate of the United States in connection with this treaty will change the course of world history.” General Thomas Power, the chief of the Strategic Air Command, attacked the treaty in secret hearings before the Armed Services Committee.
The assault had its effect, if not on the treaty itself, on the nature of the Senate debate. Given such opposition, ratification would be impossible without the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the spring the Chiefs had opposed a comprehensive test ban on the ground that the Russians would assuredly cheat; and General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief, testified now that he would have opposed the limited ban if the signing of the treaty had not created a situation where its rejection would have serious international consequences. (People sometimes wondered why Kennedy kept on Chiefs who occasionally seemed so much out of sympathy with his policy. The reason was that, in his view, their job was not policy but soldiering, and he admired them sis soldiers. “It’s good to have men like Curt LeMay and Arleigh Burke commanding troops once you decide to go in,” he told Hugh Sidey. “But these men aren’t the only ones you should listen to when you decide whether to go in or not. I like having LeMay head the Air Force. Everybody knows how he feels. That’s a good thing.” He was in addition sensitive to the soldier’s role—dangerous in war and thankless in peace. He had copied an old verse in his commonplace book of 1945–46 and often quoted it late
r:
God and the Soldier all men adore,
In time of trouble and no more;
For when War is over and all things righted,
God is neglected—the old soldier slighted.*)
Now the Chiefs, in effect, exacted a price for their support. General Maxwell Taylor, whom Kennedy had appointed Chairman of the Chiefs in August 1962 and who had played a judicious and effective role in bringing his brethren along, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “the most serious reservations” of the Chiefs had to do with “the fear of a euphoria in the West which will eventually reduce our vigilance.” The Chiefs accordingly attached “safeguards” to their support: vigorous continuation of underground testing; readiness to resume atmospheric testing on short notice; strengthening of detection capabilities; and the maintenance of nuclear laboratories. The President, determined that the treaty should be ratified, gave his “unqualified and unequivocal assurances” that the conditions would be met. Secretary McNamara, while questioning whether “the vast increases in our nuclear forces” had “produced a comparable enhancement in our security,” nevertheless assured the Senate that he would move in the next years further to raise “the megatonnage of our strategic alert forces.” Senators, reluctant to be associated with what critics might regard as disarmament, seized with delight on the chance of interpreting the renunciation of atmospheric tests as a green light for underground tests. The effect for a moment, as Richard Rovere put it, was to turn “an agreement intended to limit nuclear testing into a limited warrant for increasing nuclear testing.”
A Thousand Days Page 108