Khrushchev’s anger grew as he listened to Mikoyan. This was not 1958. He was not prepared to compromise with anyone. “Then nothing will change, in fact,” he declared. “If only we maintain air communication, then there will be no real changes, except for the legal ones. The Americans will accept what you suggested with pleasure because it maintains their rights.”
The unwelcome debate with Mikoyan forced Khrushchev to remind his colleagues why West Berlin mattered. The central issue for him was the defense of the Soviet bloc in general and the protection of East Germany in particular. Nothing that compromised either goal should be tolerated. He did not fear an attack by West Germany, although Konrad Adenauer’s drive for nuclear weapons was worrisome, or by the rest of NATO. The main threat to East Germany was internal. Every week thousands of German professionals were fleeing the country through West Berlin. Mikoyan’s compromise would not meet the Soviet leader’s needs.
“You see,” Khrushchev said, “if we maintain air communication, this will make the Germans, the Ulbricht government anxious. He already stresses that it is impossible, we train engineers, doctors, they leave the country and we can do nothing about it, it’s true that they are better paid out there; educated people have greater opportunities. This is how it is! Therefore, if we declare this position, then in the first place, our Warsaw Pact allies will sense in this action our inconsistency and uncertainty. As a result, we will shake their confidence in our policy and in the first place in the GDR, and not only Ulbricht’s confidence…. They will feel uncertainty…. We shouldn’t do this. It means introducing different legal grounds, but de facto it remains the same, the gates remain open.”
Annoyed by Mikoyan’s interruption, Khrushchev decided to go a step further. Not only would he force the closure of the air corridor, but he would make his determination known by shooting down any allied plane that attempted to land in West Berlin: “Our position is very strong, but we will have, of course, to really intimidate them now. For example, if there is any flying around, we will have to bring aircraft down. Could they take any acts of provocation? They could. If we don’t bring the plane down, this would mean that we capitulate. I think that they will put up with it…. This is also a confirmation that if we declare something, we do it. In a word, a policy is a policy. If we want to carry out our policy, and if we want it to be acknowledged, respected and feared, it is necessary to be firm.”
Khrushchev did not agree that the West would risk even a conventional war over Berlin. In his eyes, the balance of forces in Central Europe was so unfavorable to NATO that this would not make sense. There was an ecstatic quality to his speech as he made this point. In recent weeks the Presidium had been deciding questions for military assistance to countries as far-flung as the Congo and Laos. Khrushchev was plainly tired of having to find ways to neutralize the U.S. advantage in areas of interest to Moscow. Berlin should be different. Here the Soviets enjoyed a conventional superiority. “These days with regard to conventional weapons…these considerations do not concern Berlin. This is a matter of consideration for Laos, for Cuba, for the Congo, even, perhaps for Iran. But [in Berlin] meanwhile we are stronger than they are, and they say, ‘The Russians have the advantage….’ This means, they will agree. We will present this proposition and insist on it. Then this matter will be accepted.”
To ensure that the Soviet conventional advantage was as obvious as possible, Khrushchev ordered his three top marshals—Defense Secretary Rodian Malinovsky, Army Chief of Staff Matvei Zakharov, and Commander of the Warsaw Pact Andrei Grechko—“to thoroughly examine the correlation of forces in Germany and to see what is needed.”75
At the end of the meeting, a touch of absurdity crept into this high drama. Just as Khrushchev finished his speech on behalf of starting an international crisis, he was asked if the Foreign Ministry should go ahead with preparing gifts for President and Mrs. Kennedy and the members of the U.S. delegation. Knowing the president’s taste for fine foods and assuming he liked classical music, Gromyko’s team suggested giving him twelve cans of black caviar along with an assortment of phonographic records in leather covers filled with music by Russian and Soviet composers. For Mrs. Kennedy, the Soviets thought that a silver coffee service for six among other gifts might be appropriate.76 Khrushchev had a mordant response for his diplomats: “Presents can be made even before a war.”
AS KHRUSHCHEV RODE a train through the Ukraine and Czechoslovakia, Kennedy and his delegation flew to Paris for a presummit discussion with the French president. De Gaulle had hosted the last meeting of an American president and the Soviet leader, and Kennedy was seeking some pointers. De Gaulle’s principal advice was that it did not make sense to negotiate on Berlin. It was up to Kennedy to stand up to Khrushchev, so that the Soviets would finally learn to accept the status quo. “It is annoying to both sides that Berlin should be located where it is; however, it is there.”77 De Gaulle did not worry about Khrushchev’s ability to retaliate. He reminded Kennedy that the Soviet leader had a habit of issuing ultimatums and then forgetting about them. “If he had wanted to go to war,” de Gaulle explained, “he could have already.”78
De Gaulle found Kennedy very concerned that Khrushchev doubted Western resolve. “[T]he West is not as weak as people think in regard to the Berlin question,” de Gaulle told Kennedy, revealing that just recently the Soviets had bought sixty thousand tons of meat from France.79
The Kennedy-Khrushchev discussions began the day after Kennedy left Paris. Midmorning on June 3 the two leaders met on the steps of the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. The smiles at that point may well have been genuine, but they did not last long.
After exchanging some pleasantries over Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s first brief meeting in 1959 during Khrushchev’s visit to Capitol Hill, the opening session dissolved into a fruitless exchange over the possibility of miscalculation in world politics.80 At its core the disagreement reflected the disparate views of world politics that each leader had brought to the table. Khrushchev knew that the United States could dominate militarily in any part of the third world. Kennedy, for his part, did not understand that in the third world Khrushchev had rarely been the initiator of conflicts. More often than not the Soviets had reacted to opportunities.
The afternoon session went no better. Kennedy had taken stock during lunch and seemed to realize that the discussions had gotten off to a bad start. In the hope of developing some kind of rapport, he asked Khrushchev to join him for a short walk in the embassy’s garden, with only their interpreters present. Khrushchev was more than half a foot shorter than Kennedy, so the stroll put additional strain on Kennedy’s tender back. But it seemed worth the effort. Kennedy recalled that at the otherwise frosty discussion at the ice rink, Khrushchev had told Thompson that he would be able to speak more openly with the president when the two men were not surrounded by aides.81
Kennedy asked how it was that Khrushchev was able to find the time to give lengthy interviews to the journalist Walter Lippmann and to the visiting U.S. senator Hubert Humphrey, both of whom had been to Moscow in the spring.82 Khrushchev explained that the Soviet system permitted him the time for these sorts of meetings. Kennedy was amazed and pointed out that because of the tripartite nature of the U.S. system, he spent a lot of time persuading, cajoling, and consulting with the various branches of government. “Well, why don’t you switch to our system?” Khrushchev asked.
With rapport still elusive, Kennedy suggested the leaders continue the discussion inside but without reconvening the rest of their delegations. Returning to very general themes about what each country was doing to advance its vision of the future in the third world, the president gave the impression of wanting some sort of general meeting of the minds on reducing military tensions in the third world before delving into the specifics of the various problems facing them, especially the test ban and Berlin. Feeling good about how the discussions were going, Khrushchev agreed to devote another few hours to talking about such abstract propositions. The
re was still another day for the Americans to present him with something new on Berlin, and he was not hopeful that a confrontation could be avoided anyway.
So the two world leaders spent another three hours talking about very little of consequence to Khrushchev. From an Olympian perspective—if that is possible—Kennedy said nothing of which he might later be ashamed. But the conversation played to Khrushchev’s strengths. Before long Kennedy found himself having to explain why the United States maintained relations with dictatorships in Spain and Iran. “U.S. policy,” said Khrushchev in attributing Fidel Castro and the slain Patrice Lumumba’s behavior to simple anti-imperialism, “is grist on the mill of Communists.” Unwilling to give up all hope of developing some understanding with Khrushchev, Kennedy refused to counterattack. He never once mentioned Hungary or the riots in East Berlin in 1953.
The two leaders finally got down to specifics the next day.83 Kennedy, again in search of the human side of Khrushchev that his Soviet experts had told him about, started with some biographical questions about the Soviet leader’s childhood.
Khrushchev, who was in no mood for personal recollections, responded with a speech on the magnificence of Soviet iron ore deposits, especially those near his birthplace. Kennedy then switched to Laos, the only area where there seemed to be any semblance of agreement. Had Khrushchev been interested in engaging Kennedy, this was his chance. Khrushchev had his own problems in Laos, where the Chinese, the North Vietnamese, and the Pathet Lao were trying to force his hand away from neutralization. He could have mentioned that the superpowers had a shared interest in seeing that these regional conflicts did not spin out of control. Had he done so, Kennedy would have given him a knowing nod. But Khrushchev didn’t. Instead he attacked U.S. policy and its allies like Thailand and Taiwan as if these were the only sources of instability in Laos. He also attacked Kennedy personally when the president tried to pass off the situation in Laos as something he had inherited. Khrushchev disagreed. He had heard that Kennedy himself had ordered the U.S. Marines into the region but that then the order had been rescinded. Kennedy knew this to be untrue, but he also knew that he had come very close to giving that order.
Tiring of the Laos discussion, Khrushchev took the initiative to move the conversation to disarmament, nuclear testing, and Germany, knowing that otherwise their time would run out without their covering these subjects. Before they turned to these matters, Kennedy nailed down the fact that he and Khrushchev agreed that Souvanna Phouma should be supported and that the neutralization of Laos should be achieved. Gromyko and Rusk, who had joined the leaders for this session, were then given instructions to follow up over lunch.
The discussion on Laos turned out to be the brief high point of the meeting. Kennedy would be disappointed in what Khrushchev had to say about the test ban treaty. Years later Robert Kennedy explained his brother’s disappointment as having been a by-product of some deception the Kremlin fed to the White House through Bolshakov.84 Soviet records make the existence of this deception highly doubtful.85 More likely Kennedy just couldn’t understand the basis for Khrushchev’s stubbornness. He spoke as if he wanted détente, yet here was a first step, and he was afraid to take it.
Khrushchev spent some time trying to explain that he wanted disarmament, not arms control. He was not about to admit to Kennedy, as he had to Cabot Lodge in a careless throwaway line in February 1960, that the Soviets were facing a missile gap. Instead he explained that he wanted to eliminate all weapons, in stages, and that the United States could have its inspections but not before these weapons were destroyed. He characterized the test ban as far less important than disarmament. Indeed, in a world without nuclear weapons the test ban would be a natural by-product. If Kennedy insisted on a test ban, Khrushchev would agree to one, but the Soviet Union had to have a veto on any enforcement mechanism, and in any case, there could not be a significant number of on-site inspections of suspicious seismic activity in the USSR. Khrushchev’s one concession was that the Soviet Union would permit three inspections a year. Kennedy was downcast. He had come to Vienna expecting Khrushchev to accept ten on-site inspections and thought the Soviet leader understood that there could be no veto for either party. He told Khrushchev that his proposition was akin to a situation in which Khrushchev and he lived in adjacent rooms and neither could visit except by invitation. “Under such conditions, how could any of the two be certain that nothing suspicious is going on in his neighbor’s room?” Khrushchev had no response other than to insist that the United States display the necessary courage to embrace disarmament.
Then came Berlin. For a day and a half Khrushchev had been well behaved. There had been no shouting, and the truculence that he had displayed in the Kremlin had remained discreetly veiled. The veil came off as he handed Kennedy an aide-mémoire that outlined the new ultimatum from Moscow.86 Khrushchev admitted that his position on Germany would affect U.S.-Soviet relations “to a great extent and even more so if the United States were to misunderstand the Soviet position.” He then set out his basic position. The Soviet Union sought no special advantage in Central Europe. It merely wished to extinguish the last embers from World War II. To do so, it was eager to sign a peace treaty with East Germany that would automatically bring an end to all the institutions of the occupation, including the corridors to West Berlin. Before he took this step, he wanted to reach an agreement with Kennedy personally so that the United States would accept the new situation. But if that proved impossible, he was determined to move ahead with a peace treaty unilaterally. What kind of agreement? Western troops could stay in the free city, but only if the Soviets could also place their own troops there. There could also be an international agreement to protect West Berlin’s communications with the world, but no more special-access routes—air, road, or rail—for NATO.
Kennedy tried to explain why Khrushchev’s preferred settlement was as unacceptable to him as it had been to his predecessor. “Here, we are not talking about Laos,” said Kennedy. He depicted the Western alliance as fragile enough that a decision to abandon occupation rights in West Berlin would lead his allies to regard U.S. commitments “as a mere scrap of paper.” He added: “[W]hen we are talking about West Berlin, we are talking about West[ern] Europe.”
The president tried to understand why Khrushchev was so insistent on changing the status quo in Central Europe. He told the Soviet leader that he was convinced that the USSR was as powerful as the United States and that Khrushchev wished to improve relations. Then why try to force the United States to abandon the rights that it had won by fighting the last world war? Repeating his concern that the United States would lose its allies if he accepted Khrushchev’s position, Kennedy said that he had not become president of the United States “to preside over [the] isolation of his country.”
Khrushchev coolly interrupted Kennedy. “So I am to understand that you do not want a peace treaty?” He then added that Kennedy’s ambitions seemed to extend to downtown Moscow if what he wanted was to improve the strategic position of the United States. Khrushchev recalled that he had lost a son in World War II, Gromyko had lost two brothers, and Mikoyan had also lost a son. Ending the occupation of Germany would help block the revanchists in West Germany who wanted to reunify their country by force. Khrushchev regretted that Kennedy refused to see the value for world peace of eliminating that opportunity for mischief.
“No further delay is possible or necessary,” said Khrushchev. “Will a peace treaty block access to Berlin?” Kennedy asked. Khrushchev said it would. Then he calmly told Kennedy that he could still agree to a six-month interim agreement, the agreement he had hoped Eisenhower would accept in Paris. The gesture was as meaningless now as it had been then, for as Khrushchev explained, once the six months were up, the Soviet Union would sign the agreement that it wanted with the East Germans regardless. In any event, he told Kennedy that he would sign a peace treaty by the end of the year.
The meeting broke up for the last meal of the summit. It was an unp
leasant lunch for Kennedy, who was determined not to have the meeting end on such a sour note. His hopes of a concrete improvement in superpower relations had been dashed. Seeing this as his last chance, he asked Khrushchev to meet with him privately after lunch. The president still believed that Khrushchev’s hard-line opposition at home was the source of his obstinate positions. Perhaps he would speak differently alone.
Taking Khrushchev aside, Kennedy stressed that he did not want to travel home with the sword of a Soviet ultimatum hanging over his head.87 He wanted the Soviet leader to understand the differences for him between a USSR-GDR peace treaty and the loss of rights of access to Berlin. He could accept the former, but not the latter. Khrushchev was equally frank. He told Kennedy that if the United States tried to exercise these rights after a peace treaty had been signed, there would be a military response. He, who had already prepared the Kremlin for this possibility, was deadly serious. Kennedy could see that this was not a bluff. “It is up the United States,” Khrushchev said, “to decide whether there will be war or peace…. The decision to sign a peace treaty is firm and irrevocable and the Soviet Union will sign it in December if the U.S. refuses an interim agreement.”
“Then it will be a cold winter,” replied Kennedy. The summit was over.
Khrushchev had seen the effect of his bluntness on Kennedy and was pleased with his own performance. At their final meeting he had observed that the young American leader was “not only anxious, but deeply upset.”88 This impression of a somewhat crestfallen Kennedy was later confirmed by the Austrian chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, who met with Khrushchev just after seeing Kennedy off at Vienna’s airport. “The President was very gloomy at the airport,” Kreisky told Khrushchev. “He seemed upset and his face had changed. Obviously the meeting did not go well for him.” This was exactly the impression that Khrushchev had intended to create. He had hoped to get his way on Berlin, but now that he hadn’t, he wanted the U.S. president to be anxious. Khrushchev said as much in response to the Austrian’s observation. Kennedy was upset because “the President still doesn’t quite understand the times in which we live. He doesn’t yet fully understand the realignment of forces, and he still lives by the policies of his predecessors—especially as far as the German question is concerned.”89
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