Just when Khrushchev believed he had laid out the strategy for dealing with the crisis, an unexpectedly heated challenge rose from a Stalinist ghost in the Kremlin. Echoing some of the concerns hinted at by the military in the fall of 1957, the grand old man of the Soviet Army, Marshal Voroshilov, declared that he did not like the direction the Soviet government was about to take in the Middle East. “I think that we should avoid using expressions that have a somewhat threatening tone,” he argued, “that [for example], ‘we cannot remain neutral.’” Referring to the Soviet government’s two previous statements on the Mideast crisis, Voroshilov warned about the declining value of repeated threats.
Voroshilov was not a Kremlin heavyweight, and probably never had been. Despite his popularity with the average Soviet citizen, his reputation among his colleagues was that of a dimwitted political general who had been no better in the field. Many historians later blamed him for the disastrous Soviet showing in the Finno-Soviet War of 1939 and 1940 and for mistakes committed in his later defense of Leningrad against the Nazis.76 Voroshilov’s political sense was no better. He had sided with Khrushchev’s opponents in the June 1957 coup attempt and managed to get back on Khrushchev’s good side only by helping him remove Marshal Zhukov four months later.77 Just recently Voroshilov had again gotten himself into trouble by admitting at a reception at the Finnish Embassy in Paris that the Soviet Union welcomed the inauguration of Charles de Gaulle as president of France. The comment offended the French Communist Party and required several diplomatic letters and a firm Presidium reprimand to set things right.78
Despite the flaws of the messenger, Voroshilov’s message revealed the concerns of some in the Kremlin that embracing progressive regimes in the Middle East might provoke a war with the United States. No one supported Voroshilov, but as he prodded Khrushchev, it became clear that neither the Soviet leader nor anybody else in the room wanted to go to war with Washington. All were acting out of the belief that the only way to protect Soviet interests in the Middle East was to threaten a war that neither side wanted.
KHRUSHCHEV: If we don’t repeat [this threat of using force], they will take it as our backing off.
VOROSHILOV: If we are going to repeat it, then we should prepare somehow. We have declared that we cannot be indifferent; this means that we will have to intervene.
KHRUSHCHEV: That’s not correct.
VOROSHILOV: This is disadvantageous for us.
KHRUSHCHEV: This is exactly what they want; they are saying, “Go ahead, act, the Russians will not act.”
VOROSHILOV: Well, they are not heeding our statements; they will continue with the same policy, which means we should be thinking about what to do next. We should not go to war.
KHRUSHCHEV: We aren’t talking about declaring war, we are talking about a letter. What should we say to them? “We beseech you, If you do swallow up the Arabs then be careful not to scratch your throat.” But this is what [the letter] would convey. Then it would be better not to write the letter.79
At this point Mikoyan, who also believed it was in the interest of the Soviet Union to defend the new anticolonial regimes in the third world, came to Khrushchev’s defense. He was convinced that there was a debate going on in the Eisenhower administration over whether to intervene in Baghdad and that its outcome hinged on an assessment of Soviet willingness to go to war to defend Iraq. To influence the outcome in a way helpful to Soviet interests, Mikoyan argued, the Americans “should feel fear.” But Voroshilov would not give in. He was convinced that the West was determined to invade Iraq to overturn the revolution. So, by repeating this pledge not to be on the sidelines, the Soviet Union was putting itself into the position either of having to fight a war it didn’t want or of having to back down ignominiously. Khrushchev rejected this logic: “We will have to repeat it, or they will take advantage of us if we are silent.”
When Voroshilov still wouldn’t give up, an exasperated Khrushchev asked him, “You don’t read documents: What did the commander of the [U.S.] Sixth Fleet say?” To Voroshilov’s reply, “He [Vice Admiral Brown] threatens that he has enough power,” Khrushchev asked, “What did he say that for [?]: In order to scare us.” Voroshilov realized that he had been boxed in. “But we are not afraid,” he replied. “[So],” Khrushchev said in resting his case, “we should say that.”
Khrushchev insisted on getting the letters out to the Western leaders as soon as possible. “It would be good to have it done by two o’clock,” he said, “but it would be better if could be done by ten minutes to two.” He was going to recommend July 22 for a conference of the six leaders in Geneva. There was no time to lose if there was any hope of arranging this meeting, so he instructed that the letters be transmitted by Moscow Radio. This was an unorthodox means of delivering a sober diplomatic message. Generally the West expected only propaganda from Moscow Radio, and there was a risk that these letters would receive similar treatment. Nevertheless, Khrushchev believed that Washington was still considering an attack on Iraq. “History,” he wrote to Eisenhower, “has not left us much time to avert war.”80
AS THE MIDDLE EAST crisis neared the end of its first week, John Foster Dulles was gloomy. The Iraqi revolutionaries had consolidated their hold on the government. The fates of Jordan and Kuwait hung in the balance, and among the Arab weakling regimes only Lebanon’s seemed momentarily stable. The threat of the Soviet fist gloved in Nasserism remained. The European reaction to Khrushchev’s letter of July 19 only increased Dulles’s despondency. The rambling letter, which was also broadcast in almost identical versions addressed to de Gaulle and Macmillan, had created a stir among Washington’s allies. The British public, in particular, was clamoring for a summit to head off a superpower clash. It was frustrating that Khrushchev was so successful at a time when the Soviet Union was so weak.
Dulles tried to get British officials, who shared the concerns of their public, to keep the larger picture of the Cold War in mind. Over drinks at his residence Dulles mused with the British ambassador, Lord Hood, over the state of Soviet insecurity. In recent months U.S. spy planes had proved that despite fears of a bomber gap favoring the Soviets, the opposite was true. The Soviets had made a strategic blunder by not building enough long-range bombers. Given that they also lacked long-range missiles, the Soviets could not fight a war with the Americans and win. Dulles began to speculate on what this opportunity could mean for Washington. “We would probably not have another such chance. But probably we did not have the nerve to take advantage of the probabilities.” Dulles lamented that no one in Washington was prepared to go to war with Moscow, despite this being “our last fair chance.” He added, “Our successors, a decade from now, might pay the price.”81
Eisenhower didn’t share either Dulles’s gloom or British alarm. By July 20 the crisis seemed to him to be less threatening. Having encountered little armed resistance from any of Chamoun’s opponents, the United States experienced light casualties in Lebanon, and negotiations were proceeding to ease Chamoun out of office.82 Nothing in Khrushchev’s letter of July 19 altered the president’s confidence. The Soviets seemed to have accepted the U.S. presence in Lebanon. Instead it appeared that Khrushchev’s main concern was an Anglo-American attack on Iraq, something that both governments had already ruled out anyway. Given all these excellent signs, there was no reason for the White House to give Khrushchev the summit he wanted. It would achieve little in the way of positive results for the United States or its regional allies, while providing a marvelous opportunity for the Soviets to rain additional criticisms on U.S. policy.
On July 21 the administration decided to encourage the Soviets instead to use the Security Council at the United Nations to settle their quarrel. The United States would be prepared to discuss the Middle East there but saw no need for a special meeting of the great powers plus India. Khrushchev did not see the letter, which was turned over to the Soviet ambassador on the evening of July 22, until July 23.83
As he awaited a response from the
Americans, Khrushchev encouraged the Kremlin to consider ways of strengthening the Iraqi regime. Nasser had warned that the Iraqi Army was in poor shape, but up to now Khrushchev had not considered doing anything to help Qasim’s force that might provoke a hostile Western reaction. On July 25 the chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, V. D. Sokolovskii, and the chairman of the State Committee on Foreign Economic Relations, S. A. Skatchkov, submitted a plan to outfit two Iraqi infantry divisions with Soviet equipment.84 It was to be done on a crash schedule with everything in Iraqi hands in a month’s time. The bill of lading would include fifty armored personnel carriers, one hundred tanks, and a massive amount of Soviet artillery pieces, rifles, machine guns, and ammunition. The Soviet Union lacked a border with Iraq, so Cairo was asked if this matériel could be off-loaded at the Syrian port of Latakia and conveyed by land to Baghdad. The Kremlin approved the plan the next day, though it encountered some unexpected reluctance from Nasser, who suggested that the weapons come from Soviet stockpiles already in Egypt.85 “There are disagreements within the Iraqi regime,” Nasser explained, over whether to turn to Moscow for military assistance.86 The Iraqis did not want, he added, “that the USA, England and the Baghdad Pact should know about the military deliveries from the Soviet Union.”87 Moscow detected in the Egyptian reluctance that it was Nasser who worried about the consequences of a direct relationship between the Kremlin and Qasim.88 Egypt, it seemed, hoped that Iraq would soon join Syria in the United Arab Republic and did not want anyone to encourage too much independent action by Baghdad. Iraq, as it turned out, agreed to take Soviet military assistance directly.
As the manner of sending Soviet assistance to the Iraqi Army was being settled, Khrushchev was distracted by a challenge in a different part of the world.89 Sino-Soviet relations, which before the Iraqi Revolution Khrushchev had expected to be his main foreign policy concern in July, refused to stay quietly in the background. His effort to draw China into a new defensive alliance was backfiring.
To a large extent, Khrushchev’s difficulties with Beijing were as much an unintended consequence of his new cost-cutting military doctrine as were his current anxieties in Iraq. Believing nuclear-armed submarines would be a more cost-effective way to defend worldwide Soviet interests than aircraft carriers, Khrushchev faced the problem of how to deploy Soviet submarines in the Pacific. The Soviet far eastern port of Vladivostok would be vulnerable to a NATO blockade in the event of war. Khrushchev turned to Mao to see if China would offer the use of its ports, at least in wartime. He also hoped that Mao might permit Moscow to establish radio stations along the Chinese coast to maintain contact with the Soviet Pacific fleet.90
In the crush of events surrounding the Iraqi situation, however, Khrushchev had mishandled Chinese sensitivities. On July 15 the Kremlin received a letter from Mao requesting assistance in expanding and modernizing the Chinese Navy.91 For months Soviet military advisers in China had encouraged the Chinese leadership to request Soviet military aid. The advisers were not simply trying to do their best for China. Khrushchev’s efforts to restructure the Soviet Navy had set off a battle at home, which had contributed to Marshal Zhukov’s downfall in 1957, and the Soviet advisers were trying to bring the Chinese in on the side of those still arguing against Khrushchev’s drive for a smaller navy.92
It was no surprise to Khrushchev that Soviet military representatives were complicating Sino-Soviet relations. Khrushchev’s relations with the military were strained, and he had come to mistrust the advice his military men were giving him.93 Joking with Nasser in May 1958, he had warned that military officers never met a new weapons system they did not like and generally exaggerated threats to get the procurement they wanted.94
Khrushchev’s mistake was that instead of following through with an initial plan to send a private letter to Mao, which would have been drafted by the ever-cautious Mikoyan, he had decided on his own to send an oral message through the Soviet ambassador, Pavel Yudin.95 Whatever Yudin told the Chinese leader managed to annoy Mao, who got the impression from the ambassador that Khrushchev thought he could speak to him as if he were Moscow’s vassal. What was supposed to be a Khrushchevian plea for Chinese assistance in achieving his goals for the Soviet Navy, Mao interpreted as a Soviet demand for Chinese involvement in a joint Sino-Soviet Pacific fleet that would be controlled by the Kremlin.
On July 22 Yudin sent to Moscow a desperate message that Mao opposed the request as an “expression of Great Russian chauvinism.” Mao had a bad habit of referring to Soviet acts as Russian acts, something that always annoyed Khrushchev.96 Now Mao was demanding a summit to discuss this insulting idea of a “joint Sino-Soviet” navy, to complain about the behavior of some of the Soviet advisers in his country, and to discuss the many wrongs committed by the Soviet Union in China.
What had become overwhelmingly clear was that not only had Mao misunderstood Khrushchev’s objectives, but he seemed to see this request as a covert effort by the sneaky Russians to reclaim some power over China. Historian Chen Jian has argued that even were it not for Mao’s paranoiac tendencies, he was especially sensitive in 1958 to what he perceived as challenges to his twin concerns of Chinese sovereignty and his personal authority as revolutionary leader. Like Khrushchev, he had just launched a major reform drive. That summer Mao unveiled the Great Leap Forward, a broad set of radical measures to accelerate Chinese industrialization and dismantle the traditional rural economy.97
Khrushchev was surprised by what had come of his initiative with the Chinese, but he initially believed he had to turn down Mao’s request for an immediate face-to-face discussion. There were daily developments in the Middle Eastern situation. “We are for a meeting, but the circumstances do not permit one,” Khrushchev instructed the Soviet Foreign Ministry to write to Mao.98 Having just received Eisenhower’s suggestion to resolve the Iraqi crisis within the framework of the Security Council, Khrushchev clung to his hope of a summit meeting perhaps now in New York. He knew from intelligence sources that despite American reluctance, the French government at least was applying pressure for some kind of summit meeting of the great powers.
Khrushchev changed his mind four days later after trading two more letters with Eisenhower.99 Convinced now that an early summit in New York on the Middle Eastern question was unlikely, Khrushchev thought he could divert his attention to Mao.100 Using the special high-frequency telephone link that Moscow maintained with its key embassies, he called Yudin in Beijing on July 28 to arrange an immediate meeting with the Chinese leader. He proposed beginning the talks on July 30 and asked the Chinese to decide if this ought to be an official or unofficial visit.101
Mao was out of the capital when the call came through. He had a meeting scheduled in Beidaihe, a town 250 miles east of Beijing, for the next day. The Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, and an aide met with Yudin. Once Zhou understood the Soviet ambassador’s request, he knew that he needed Mao’s approval before any definitive answer could be given to Khrushchev. He left the Soviet Embassy to contact the Chinese leader. An hour later he returned with Mao’s answer: The Chinese would welcome Khrushchev on July 30.102
The summit Khrushchev got in July 1958 was a difficult affair. Mao refused to accept Khrushchev’s explanation that Yudin had misunderstood the point of the oral message. Khrushchev tried hard to explain how his military reforms would improve the Soviet Union’s ability to protect its allies, including China. He recalled the success he had had in brandishing intermediate-range missiles, which could destroy Britain and France, at the time of the Suez crisis. “When we wrote letters to Eden and Guy Mollet during the Suez events,” he told Mao, “they immediately stopped their aggression.” Khrushchev said that “now that we have intercontinental missiles, we are also holding America by the throat.” Adding insouciantly, “And they thought America was unreachable,” he explained that this was the key to saving the new progressive regime in Iraq.103
Mao was keenly interested in how Moscow was handling the threats to Iraq. Besides bei
ng a test of the Soviet Union’s willingness to defend an ally, the Iraqi crisis provided insight into the willingness of the United States to accept changes in the developing world that went against its own interests. Mao was more optimistic than Khrushchev that the West would back down. Beijing had joined Moscow in recognizing the new republic of Iraq on July 17, adding its own warning that “the time when aggressors could rely on gun-boats to conquer a nation had gone forever.”104 But Mao doubted that an Anglo-American attack on Iraq would happen. He was convinced that London and Washington understood that the next step would be general war. While Khrushchev agreed in theory, he was less convinced of his ability to deter the United States in the Middle East.
Mao’s prediction proved to be insightful. Throughout the period that Khrushchev was in China the Americans and the British were considering whether to recognize the Qasim regime. The British were eager to do it.105 Now convinced that Qasim, who seemed in no hurry to have Iraq join Nasser’s United Arab Republic, was primarily an Iraqi nationalist, Macmillan argued for Western recognition of Iraq as part of a strategy of driving a wedge between Baghdad and Cairo. The Americans were more reluctant to press ahead with recognition, in part because of an unwillingness to court Turkish and Iranian disappointment. But ultimately the Eisenhower administration agreed with London that there was no way to avoid dealing directly with Qasim. Just before his last meeting with Mao on August 3, Khrushchev learned that the United States and Great Britain had recognized the Iraqi regime. “[T]hat is one more bitter pill for them to swallow,” said Khrushchev with satisfaction.106
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