Robert Kennedy’s recommendation sparked a debate in the room. Bundy rejected the attorney general’s prediction of Soviet behavior. The president’s assistant for national security was a brilliant analyst who nevertheless lacked a feel for the Soviet mentality. He was looking for institutional patterns instead of thinking about how Khrushchev had acted under pressure in the past. Noting that everything that the Soviets had sent to Cuba thus far “really is, insofar as you can make these distinctions, a defensive weapon,” Bundy predicted more of the same. The deployment of strategic missiles, he suggested, would represent an unlikely break with past practice. “[This would be] a much larger step,” he said, “than the development of the kind of thing we’ve seen over the last year and a half, which is fully consistent with their behavior in a lot of other countries.”46 Secretary of State Rusk shared Bundy’s optimism and was concerned that overreacting to the Soviet buildup in Cuba might complicate matters in the Berlin stalemate. “If we designated ground-to-ground missiles or we specified the nuclear weapon, I think we could create a kind of panic that the facts themselves don’t now justify.”47
The issue wasn’t settled that morning. Before the group broke up, the president asked that a statement on Cuba be drafted and that the group meet again in the afternoon. The attorney general was due to meet Anatoly Dobrynin at 2:15 P.M., an appointment that the Soviet had asked for a few days earlier. Despite the almost uniform skepticism of his national security experts, President Kennedy was now leaning toward adopting his brother’s strategy, but he decided to wait to hear what Dobrynin had to say.
It was a very determined Bobby Kennedy who met with the Soviet ambassador. “The U.S. government,” the attorney general said to Dobrynin, “was viewing with growing anxiety the increase in Soviet military supplies to Cuba and the appearance there of Soviet military specialists.” The United States worried that the most technically advanced of the new Soviet weapons, the SAMs, would be turned over to the Cubans. “Who will stop the emotional Cubans,” he asked, “from firing on American planes?” He then brought up his pet theory. “How do we put such supplies to Cuba in perspective, following the line of logic? Won’t more powerful weapons that could reach the territory of the United States appear? Could these not ultimately carry nuclear warheads? The United States in this case definitely cannot allow its security to depend on this or that decision of the current government of Cuba.”48
Robert Kennedy would not let go of this fear. In what seemed to Dobrynin a half-joking manner, he asked, “And what if rockets with small nuclear charges appear with the Cubans, what then?”
Dobrynin dismissed this possibility. “As [you] must…know well from the meetings between A. A. Gromyko with Rusk, the Soviet Union supports the nontransfer and the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.” Dobrynin knew nothing about Anadyr. So sure was he of the correctness of his denial that he added, “In future I will have this position emphasized, if the U.S. side would put it forward this way.”
At that point Kennedy rose, saying that he had to get back to the White House to finish work on a presidential statement on Cuba. “I only wish that in the Soviet Union it was understood what feeling was stirred up in American society as a result of the reports of Soviet military supplies to Cuba, a distance of only 90 miles from the United States.”49
Nothing Dobrynin said had altered Robert Kennedy’s determination to get a warning out to Moscow in his brother’s name. The presidential statement was ready by 6:00 P.M., and although the language was more muted than he would have liked, the attorney general had essentially carried the day. The president’s warning to the Soviets about not putting missiles on the island had survived the skeptics. An hour later Press Secretary Pierre Salinger read the presidential statement: “There is no evidence of any organized combat force in Cuba from any Soviet bloc country, of military bases provided to Russia, of a violation of the 1934 treaty relating to Guantánamo, of the presence of offensive ground-to-ground missiles, or of other significant offensive capability either in Cuban hands or under Soviet direction and guidance. Were it to be otherwise, the gravest issues would arise.” Dobrynin, who read the statement that night, must have thought the young Kennedys were overreacting.
KHRUSHCHEV LEARNED about Kennedy’s statement at his summer retreat in the Caucasus. In 1961 he had used his holiday at Pitsunda to find a way to reduce tensions in the Berlin crisis. A year later Kennedy’s sudden announcement elicited a different response. As of September 1, none of the strategic nuclear weapons had been installed in Cuba. The missile technicians were on the island and beginning their work, but the first shipment of missile parts was still days from landing in Havana. As for the nuclear warheads, these were under lock and key in the Soviet Union. According to the revised plan for Anadyr, the warheads were not scheduled to go to sea until early October.
Among the many decisions he had faced as Soviet leader, this would be among the most fateful. Khrushchev could still turn back the missiles and keep the defensive munitions on the island. Soon he would have more than fifty thousand Soviet troops and technicians in Cuba, and their presence could prove a powerful deterrent. After all, would the United States really take a chance on killing thousands of Soviet citizens to overthrow Castro? Furthermore, in August 1962 Castro had suggested to the Kremlin that the two countries announce the signature of a joint defense treaty. Moscow had demurred then, afraid that a treaty would awaken the Americans to Khrushchev’s plans for the island. In response to Kennedy’s statement of September 4, however, it might be the time to announce that a U.S. attack on Cuba would represent an attack on any member of the Warsaw Pact, with consequences that the United States understood.
But having Soviet troops on the island and a Soviet-Cuban defense treaty in place would not allow Khrushchev to achieve the larger objectives that he now associated with this Cuban missile operation. He wanted to change the international balance of power. He wanted the United States to respect him when he defined something as a Soviet interest. Canceling Anadyr now would mean giving up on the grand settlement with the United States that had been his dream since his first visit to Eisenhower in 1959. More than any member of even the Kennedy administration, Khrushchev had become a disciple of the U.S. statesman he had always feared most. He had come around to the unshakable conviction that there was no alternative to John Foster Dulles’s policy of peace through strength. Once the Americans were truly afraid of Soviet military power he could get them to accept what he considered a reasonable basis for better relations.
Kennedy’s September 4 statement on Cuba complicated this strategy, especially when three days later the White House seemed to give it teeth by requesting stand-by authority to call up 150,000 reservists. The Soviet leader had not expected a U.S. invasion of Cuba until just before the presidential election in 1964, if at all. The statement and the call-up, however, raised the possibility that instead of the Berlin crisis that he wanted, he might end up facing a military confrontation over Cuba in the fall. Too committed to his grand strategy to back down, Khrushchev made two decisions on September 7. First, he asked the Ministry of Defense to assign twelve tactical nuclear weapons to the Soviet motorized brigades already deployed in Cuba.50 Unlike the strategic missiles, which could strike targets in the United States, these missiles had a range of less than forty miles and were intended solely for use on the battlefield. Also unlike the strategic missiles, these were missiles that Khrushchev was prepared to use against the United States should U.S. Marines attack Soviet positions on the island.
Fearing that Kennedy might be planning an attack in the near future, Khrushchev asked the Ministry of Defense to send the tactical missiles by plane. But here his military advisers successfully advocated caution. Were any of the planes carrying these munitions to crash, there might be a nuclear incident. Instead these tactical nuclear weapons, known as Lunas, to the Russians and Frogs to the Americans, could go by the ship Indigirka, already slated to carry the warheads for the medium-range ballistic
missiles.
Khrushchev’s second decision on September 7 was to instruct the Soviet Navy to bolster the security of the ships carrying the nuclear missiles and to increase the firepower of the flotilla sent to protect the island. He wanted submarines with nuclear-tipped torpedoes to trail the ships carrying the warheads as they made their way to Cuba and then to be permanently stationed in the Caribbean.
As these military changes took place, Khrushchev sought to deter any rash U.S. action with words. On September 11 the TASS news agency issued an official warning to Washington that Moscow had the right to help the Cubans defend themselves and that any attack on Cuba or on the Soviet ships on their way to that island would be interpreted as an attack on the Soviet Union.51
The unintended consequence of Khrushchev’s reaction to the Kennedy announcement and the call-up was to delay further the deployment of the long-range missiles in Cuba. The shortage in Soviet shipping meant that sending the Luna short-range missiles would delay the dispatch of the ballistic missiles. The two ships carrying the intermediate-range ballistic missiles, the R-14s, were now rescheduled to arrive in Cuba between November 3 and November 5.52 Khrushchev was apparently not worried. He had decided not to do anything about Berlin until after the U.S. congressional elections on November 6, and he was determined to first make his case at the UN.53 In mid-September 1962 a couple of days one way or the other did not seem to make a difference.
AS HE MADE these momentous decisions, Khrushchev met with two distinguished Americans at Pitsunda, the poet Robert Frost and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Khrushchev was careful not to reveal his plans to either of these men. The aged Frost was touring the Soviet Union to give poetry recitals and talk up peace. He expected to meet Khrushchev and tell him, in a crusty but grandfatherly way, that the Soviet leader would have to stop “blackguarding” to create the right climate for superpower conciliation. Khrushchev acted gently with the eighty-eight-year-old poet, who fell mildly ill at Pitsunda, but raised with him the question of whether Kennedy was a strong enough man to fight for peace. Frost did not understand that Khrushchev was calculating the president’s reaction to a choice of war or compromise peace over Berlin.54 With Udall, Khrushchev was tough, hinting broadly that soon Soviet power would reach a point where it could compel the United States to do things that it didn’t want to do. “Now, we can swat your ass,” he said.55
He did, however, leak to another Westerner that something very big was in the offing. Khrushchev decided to tell the West German ambassador to the Soviet Union, Hans Kroll, of his strategy for the coming Berlin crisis. Khrushchev knew that Kroll had been punished for his efforts to improve Soviet–West German relations. The pro-Washington faction in the West German Foreign Ministry had considered Kroll too friendly with Khrushchev. The only explanation for his survival was that Kroll seemed to have Adenauer’s personal backing. Khrushchev had found the ambassador intelligent and understanding, and the fact that Adenauer kept him around had always deepened the mystery of the clever German leader. But by September 1962 Kroll’s luck had run out, and he was about to replaced in Moscow.
Khrushchev had a soft spot for Kroll, who since his days as a junior foreign service officer in the 1920s had been an advocate of making better relations with the Russians a cardinal point in West German foreign policy. Kroll was not a Communist, but the Russian-speaking diplomat believed that geography and culture made Russians, whatever the ideology of their regime, essential trade and political partners. Since 1958 he had figured in Khrushchev’s efforts to interest elements of the West German government in a special relationship with Moscow. Now that Kroll was being reassigned, Khrushchev let down his guard somewhat and talked more openly than he had with any other foreigner. Kroll went alone to the meeting, and Khrushchev was accompanied only by a senior member of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.56
After some time spent discussing Kroll’s difficulties with the pro-American faction in the West German Foreign Ministry, the ambassador asked an indulgence of Khrushchev. The Berlin crisis had ruined Kroll’s personal efforts to improve relations between Moscow and Bonn. In 1960 Kroll had told Khrushchev that West Germany could accept a number of concessions, including recognition of East Germany and of the new German-Polish border on the Oder-Neisse line, but it could never accept the loss of West Berlin. “And this will always be so,” Kroll had insisted. “Berlin is our historical capital and Bonn is only temporary.”57 In the two years since, Khrushchev and Kroll had agreed to disagree on what to do about West Berlin. Now that he was leaving, Kroll wanted to know if Khrushchev would reveal to him Soviet intentions toward Berlin in the remaining months of 1962. Six months earlier Khrushchev had apparently told him that there was no crisis on the horizon, but now the situation seemed different. In its September 11 statement on Cuba the Soviet government had mentioned Berlin in passing. While acknowledging that no resolution of the issue could be expected during a U.S. election season, the statement called for the “earliest conclusion” of a German peace treaty.58 “Of course, you are not obligated to answer this question now and I would understand,” said Kroll. “But when I return to Bonn, the chancellor will in the first instance ask me.”59
No doubt to Kroll’s surprise, Khrushchev did not duck the question. “I have very much enjoyed our meetings,” the Soviet leader explained, “and I consider you to have a realistic approach to the necessity of improving relations, to the problems confronting us. I like the energy with which you pushed for the resolution of these problems.”
Khrushchev had concluded reluctantly that John Kennedy was a prisoner of domestic U.S. politics. The United States had a president who lacked the courage to lead his people to a Cold War settlement with the Soviet Union. “I have regularly said in my meetings with Americans: if only Kennedy rose to the occasion and understood his obligation before history to resolve international problems!” Khrushchev told Kroll that the U.S. president was making a grave political error: “If only Kennedy understood that in solving the Berlin problem and thus consolidating peace, 90% of Americans (and not just Americans) would carry him in their arms.”
So Kennedy had to be forced into making that historic decision. “We now have the freedom to choose when to implement this act,” explained Khrushchev. The Soviet Union would wait until after the congressional elections of November 6; then it would push for the establishment of a free city of West Berlin. “We have already prepared everything for this,” he added.
“But aren’t the Americans still against this?” Kroll asked skeptically.
Khrushchev explained the thinking behind his strategy of détente through fear: “I believe that Kennedy needs us to take the first step. Kennedy cannot be the first to say, ‘I agree to take my troops from West Berlin.’ Why? Because Adenauer and de Gaulle would use this against him. Kennedy is waiting to be pushed to the brink—agreement or war? Of course, he will not want war; he will concede. No rational being could not but agree with us.”
There were things Khrushchev did not tell Kroll. He did not reveal that the source of his confidence was the fact that forty Soviet nuclear missiles would soon be deployed in Cuba. Yet he did not completely avoid discussing Cuba with Kroll. At the end of the conversation, only minutes after laying out the psychological game of brinkmanship he intended to play with the American president, Khrushchev of his own accord raised the issue of Cuba. He didn’t give away the entire strategy, but his comment revealed that his greatest concern was not the possibility of a U.S. invasion of the island. “Kennedy claims that Cuba is threatening America. This is idiocy. For this reason we issued today’s appeal to America that were they to renounce the call-up of the reserves and reestablish normal relations with Cuba, then Cuba would not need to get weapons from us.”
Thanks to Khrushchev, Kroll almost had enough to connect the dots. Between the lines the Russian had revealed his plan for what he would do sometime after November 6. “I don’t know on which day we will sign the peace treaty with the GDR,” he sai
d. His Foreign Ministry had prepared all the documentation required to set up the new free state of West Berlin and to structure UN participation in the removal of NATO forces from the city. Khrushchev intended this to be the final crisis over Berlin.
Kroll understood the importance of what he had been told. Perhaps because Khrushchev knew he had revealed too much, he went out of his way to tell the West German that there was “nothing confidential” about his thinking on Kennedy’s likely reaction to the next crisis. “It seems I have already started talking about this,” he said. But Khrushchev hadn’t, and Kroll had reason to believe that his information was important. That same day, September 11, he communicated with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and with the Canadian ambassador about his meeting with Khrushchev and warned that a major Berlin crisis was brewing. But Kroll had little credibility with his Western colleagues. He had always seemed too close to Khrushchev for their liking. The State Department received a report on Kroll’s statements on September 14, and within four days this information reached the White House. It appears that only the office of the vice president took special notice. “Khrushchev stated quite emphatically to Kroll just before he left Moscow,” wrote Johnson’s military aide, Colonel Howard Burris, “that Soviet actions leading to a separate peace treaty will begin soon and in time to permit recourse to the UN if such an action appears appropriate or necessary.”60 He added ominously: “Khrushchev has come to the conclusion that Western leaders have proven themselves so anxious to avoid conflict that they will accept the treaty and accommodate themselves to it.” Frustrated that Kroll’s warning was not being taken seriously, Johnson’s military aide concluded his report: “Our diplomats and certain political appointees seem unable or unwilling to accept the fact that it is impossible to negotiate politely with the Soviets on an issue like Berlin. The Russians traditionally, and especially the Communists more recently, understand and respond only to recognized strength and willingness to apply it, and to firmly and clearly stated intentions to do so in support of national policy or position.” President Kennedy was already convinced that Khrushchev was seeking a confrontation over Berlin. This warning from a mistrusted West German diplomat, however, did not force Vice President Johnson and his military aide to consider why Khrushchev might have thought that an ultimatum in November 1962 could wrench concessions from United States when the very same tactic had failed miserably in 1958 and 1961. Nor did this new information force a reappraisal from the CIA. On September 13 the agency produced an update of its special estimate on Soviet tactics toward Berlin. Perhaps having heard about the Kroll conversation before the State Department heard, it noted that “the Soviets have recently encouraged rumors that they will raise the Berlin issue this fall at the General Assembly,” but it did not believe a major U.S.-Soviet confrontation any more likely than it had in August.61
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