Cousins, a trained physician, noted the state of Khrushchev’s health. There were rumors in Moscow that his blood pressure was high. Cousins did not know for sure. “I can only say,” he later told President Kennedy, “that after ten or twelve minutes of badminton, he didn’t seem unduly out of breath for a sixty-nine-year-old man. He is agile, his reflexes were good, [and] his skin tone seems fine. When he sat down to talk, he is perfectly focused.” What Cousins thought unusual was that Khrushchev seemed able to drink a lot of alcohol. “I was astounded at his capacity.” At lunch the Soviet leader had two glasses of vodka, two glasses of wine, and a glass and a half of brandy.
Khrushchev warned Cousins that he was ready to end the negotiations with the West on a nuclear test ban treaty. Repeating his belief that he had given Kennedy what he needed to get a treaty through the U.S. Senate, he stated that he could make no further concessions. “We held out our hand, it was not accepted…and now I’ve got to look after the national security.” Khrushchev asserted that his scientists and military people had been pressuring him hard to resume testing. They had refinements that they hoped to work out. Moreover, the United States, they said, had undertaken 70 percent more nuclear tests than the Soviet Union. If Khrushchev were to keep these domestic opponents in line, he would have to sign a treaty that was not harmful to Soviet security. For this reason there would be no more concessions. “Take my word for it, I went as far as I could go; this is the end of the line for me.”
Khrushchev was planning to return to Moscow in a week or so, and he left Cousins with the distinct impression that the Soviets would probably withdraw the offer of on-site inspections and resume testing. “Mr. Chairman,” said Cousins, “you’ve broken my heart. If this opportunity is missed, there may never be another.” The Soviet leader replied: “That’s right, maybe not for twenty years, maybe we’ll go on for twenty years this way, but tell the president I tried…. You’re not the only one who’s had a broken heart.” He warned Cousins, thereby signaling to Washington, that he would have something to say in mid-May.
ALTHOUGH KHRUSHCHEV had not conspired to ratchet up the pressure in the third world, events thousands of miles away in Laos in April 1963 seemed to give credence to his warnings to Norman Cousins. An uneasy cease-fire in that troubled land had collapsed earlier in the month. A pro–Pathet Lao faction had split from Kong Le’s command and was now attacking the armed forces of the Souvanna government. Then, on April 8, the Pathet Lao leader, Prince Souphanouvong, left the Lao capital, Vientiane, for an area under Pathet Lao control, dramatizing the split in the coalition government. Although there was some question in Washington on whether the Soviets had any real control over the Pathet Lao, the administration had no doubt that the North Vietnamese and their Lao ally had launched an offensive in the region.
Kennedy met with his foreign policy advisers on April 19, 20, and 22 to discuss ways of putting pressure on Moscow and Hanoi to restrain their Lao ally. The president worried that the Geneva agreement on Laos was collapsing along with the neutralist forces in that country.
Unsure whether to respond with force or diplomacy, the president asked the Pentagon to outline U.S. military options, including the reintroduction of U.S. Marines in Thailand (they had been withdrawn in 1962), launching some kind of action against the North Vietnamese, or even applying some pressure on Cuba to get the Kremlin’s attention. Meanwhile Kennedy wanted Averell Harriman, who was already scheduled to go to Moscow, to raise his concerns about Laos directly with Khrushchev. The president still believed that Soviet world policy was at a tipping point and could be influenced.100
Cousins reported to Kennedy on his meeting with Khrushchev as the president weighed his options in Southeast Asia. In an Oval Office meeting secretly taped by the president, Cousins warned that Khrushchev would probably make a tough statement at the May plenum and advocated that the United States should do something to prevent that. Cousins made two proposals. First, he suggested that the United States accept a comprehensive test ban on Soviet terms for a six-month trial period. Kennedy turned this down. Cousins also suggested that Kennedy give a major address on peace. Recalling the president’s September 25, 1961, speech to the UN General Assembly, in which Kennedy had spoken of the need to replace the arms race with a peace race, Cousins argued that it was time to remind the Soviets of the U.S. commitment to peace. Kennedy listened with interest, agreeing when Cousin admitted that his greatest concern was that if the hard-liners grew stronger in the Kremlin, it would bring “a reaction to it, strengthening the hand of the Nixons over here.”101
In the first week of May the president’s principal speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, called Cousins with news that Kennedy had taken to heart his suggestion of giving a major address on peace. It seemed to the White House that a commencement address at the American University in Washington, D.C., which the president was expected to give on June 10, presented an excellent opportunity. Sorensen asked Cousins to send his ideas.
TANNED AND APPARENTLY buoyant, Khrushchev returned to Moscow on April 20.102 Three days later he met with U.S. Ambassador Kohler and British Ambassador Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, who carried identical test ban proposals from their governments. “There’s no substance to this message,” Khrushchev said to the ambassadors. Washington and London still insisted on an agreement with more than three on-site inspections. “You want the right to position your spies who will get instructions from the intelligence agency,” said Khrushchev. “We are not willing to go along with this. We will not tolerate any spies.” Once more raising Berlin, he reminded the two governments that there was no hope of an arms control agreement without progress on that issue. “You don’t want to decide the German issue, but it’s the most important one. This is not what’s important, but the German question is, while you don’t want to resolve it.”103 It was the last time that this lecture represented Soviet foreign policy.
John Kennedy had been right to see the spring of 1963 as a turning point in the Cold War. On April 25 Nikita Khrushchev invited his defense minister, Rodion Malinovsky, to attend the meeting of the party Presidium. The Soviet leader wanted to outline a new course for Moscow and prepared Malinovsky to convince his colleagues that this new approach would not harm Soviet national security.104
Khrushchev had brought back with him from Pitsunda two new convictions: first, that the Berlin issue should no longer be a roadblock to serious U.S.-Soviet agreements and second, that if a comprehensive test ban would be impossible to achieve with the West, Moscow should accept a partial ban that outlawed tests in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater. Only underground testing would continue. Since November Khrushchev had shied away from the pressure tactics that had characterized his foreign policy strategy since 1958. Since then he had also toned down the rhetoric on Berlin. Over the course of a Presidium discussion on April 25 Khrushchev intended to formalize these tendencies as a new approach to dealing with the United States.
After recounting his sterile talk with the Western ambassadors, Khrushchev proposed a new arms control policy. Explaining that his military advisers were telling him that the country would not need to test in the atmosphere any longer, he suggested seeking a partial test ban agreement without any conditions attached. In September he had offered a partial test ban treaty to Kennedy but then stipulated that the Americans would also have to agree to a five-year moratorium on underground testing. He had also made plain that the Soviet Union would consider abrogating the partial test ban if after five years there was no agreement on a permanent ban on underground tests.105 Now Khrushchev made no reference to underground testing and stressed instead the propaganda advantages of eliminating the major source of radiation poisoning in the water and the air. In announcing that Moscow should be prepared to offer this treaty to the West, Khrushchev said nothing about the Berlin negotiations. Kennedy and Macmillan would get a partial test ban without paying the Berlin price.
As he had done on October 25, 1962, when he sought his colleagues’ approval t
o offer the swap to Kennedy that would end the missile crisis, Khrushchev reserved for himself the timing of this offer to the Americans and the British. “I think that on this issue we may reach an immediate agreement…it is only a matter of drawing up a draft…. [W]e can now just develop the tactics and the timing, when it is most advantageous for us.”106
Khrushchev revealed nothing of this sea change in Soviet foreign policy when he met Kennedy’s special envoy Averell Harriman to discuss Laos the next day. Khrushchev merely tried to convey to Washington that though he still believed in the Geneva settlement, the superpowers really had better things to worry about than tiny Laos. With a population of only two million, he told Harriman, there was “nothing really serious going on in Laos.” He thought that the U.S. and the USSR should try hard to “ignore it.”107 Khrushchev’s American guests found his lack of interest in picking a fight with Kennedy over recent events in Southeast Asia puzzling and quite comical. “Khrushchev impatiently exclaimed that he did not know all those silly Laotian names or the individuals to whom these names belonged,” NSC staffer Michael Forrestal, who made the trip with Harriman, later reported to the White House.108 In just a matter of weeks, however, Khrushchev would exploit an unexpected opportunity to reveal to Kennedy and the world his new priorities.
THE WEST GERMAN chancellor took the Soviet ambassador to one side at the diplomatic reception in Bonn. It was late May 1963, and eighty-eight-year-old Konrad Adenauer had only a few months left before retirement, but there was something he wanted to do before leaving office. Adenauer told Ambassador Andrei Smirnov that he hoped for a broad normalization of relations with Moscow. The chancellor explained that he had long wished for such an arrangement but that for domestic and foreign reasons, this had not been possible.109
Adenauer tried to convey to the Soviets that he had often had to fight alone for better relations. In 1955, when he decided to reestablish diplomatic relations with Moscow, he had faced opposition not only from his foreign minister, Heinrich von Brentano di Tremezzo, and the secretary of state in the German Foreign Office, Walter Hallstein, but also from many others in his government. Von Brentano and Hallstein, however, had continued their opposition to an Eastern policy. It was they who had chosen the first German ambassador to Moscow, a man who had proved supremely unsuitable, and when the second, Hans Kroll, succeeded in establishing a direct line to Khrushchev, the enemies of good relations with Moscow did everything they could to have him recalled. “In the end,” Adenauer said, “Kroll was placed in such a position that remaining in the post of ambassador to Moscow became impossible.” Adenauer described himself as almost a passive participant in Kroll’s removal. “And of course all of this could not have turned out this way without the advice of our allies.”
Adenauer designed his comments to have maximum effect on the Soviets. He told Smirnov that the Soviet Union should not pay too much attention to reports that he would retire in October. “The date of my resignation is up to me alone,” he said, “and I have not stopped and do not intend to stop fighting for the realization of my plans.” He also took credit for the recent positive discussions that former Ambassador Kroll had been having with Soviet representatives in Bonn.
In April and early May Kroll had visited Smirnov with Adenauer’s approval. At these meetings Kroll not only complained about his treatment at the hands of the pro-U.S. lobby in the West German Foreign Ministry, which feared a better relationship with the USSR, but tried to encourage the Kremlin to make use of the dying moments of the Adenauer era to do something dramatic. Kroll explained that Adenauer was hinting that he should return to Moscow. “Don’t you usually go to Russia for your holiday?” the chancellor had asked Kroll. The former West German ambassador told Smirnov that he wouldn’t go back to Moscow unless the Soviets offered a new proposal. He also dropped a hint that Adenauer might not resign in 1963 if there was some movement with Moscow.110
The West German chancellor’s decision to talk to the Soviets directly transformed these tentative feelers coming from Kroll into a serious opportunity. Khrushchev had long believed that an alliance with West Germany was possible, that despite the huge ideological differences, the two countries shared geographical and economic interests. Although he had not expected Adenauer to be the German leader who would acknowledge these mutual interests, he did not dismiss the possibility that the chancellor had had a late conversion. In 1955 Adenauer had surprised the Americans by establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union despite years of promising not to do this.
Adenauer and Kroll met on June 4 to discuss how to stoke Soviet interest further. On June 11 the Soviet ambassador met with Kroll. Adenauer had nothing new to offer, but he was prepared to send Kroll to Moscow to negotiate some kind of agreement before he left office. He spoke of achieving “civil peace” and told Moscow he could accept freezing the situation as it was—with two Germanys, a divided Berlin, and no change to the postwar Polish-German border—for thirty years.111
AT THE SAME TIME that Adenauer was making his secret approach to the Soviets, the Kennedy administration was well along in preparing an eloquent case for superpower peace to be given at American University on June 10. In late May McGeorge Bundy asked Arthur Schlesinger and other thoughtful liberals on the president’s staff to send some ideas to Theodore Sorensen, who had already been in contact with Norman Cousins.112 Sorensen dug up some fragments of an address that Kennedy was supposed to have given on Soviet television in the spring of 1962.113 The broadcasting of speeches by the two leaders had fallen victim to Kennedy’s decision to resume nuclear testing and Khrushchev’s meniscus strategy. What the president had in mind would go much further than the ideas of mutual understanding that he had considered espousing a year earlier. The Cuban missile crisis allowed a new rhetoric. “He may well have believed the key elements of his American University speech before 1963,” Bundy later recalled, “but he did not feel he could say them publicly.”114 After nearly two decades of Cold War, the American people were extremely skeptical of politicians who argued that the Soviets were not demons. Kennedy was not naive about the repressive nature of communism, but he had learned something very important about Khrushchev in the past year. Khrushchev’s behavior in the crisis, after his deception had been exposed, showed a prudent respect for U.S. power and a mature concern about the possibility of accident and misjudgment. In the last years of his administration Dwight Eisenhower had tried to educate the U.S. public about the reality of the Soviet threat. Ultimately unsuccessful, Eisenhower had given way to a young man who had won in part on fears that the old World War II general had allowed the wily Khrushchev to sneak past him while he was playing golf. The young man, after nearly a thousand days in office, now understood his misjudgment of the Soviet threat. He also believed that in the wake of his success over Cuba he enjoyed enough public credibility to use the Oval Office as what Theodore Roosevelt had called the bully pulpit early in the century.
In front of the class of 1963 Kennedy suggested that the world they were joining might be a much happier place than the one into which their fathers had graduated in the late 1930s. He believed that enduring peace was possible but it could not be dictated by one side. “Not a Pax Americana,” he said, “enforced on this world by American weapons of war…not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men: not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”115 Kennedy spoke beyond the students to the rest of the country and the world. “Some say it is useless to speak of world peace…until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them to do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude.”116 In his inaugural address Kennedy had challenged Americans to “bear any burden” for the cause of justice at home and freedom abroad. Now he called on Americans to cast off their intellectual isolationism, to stretch their minds to imagine how their adversaries thought. Appeasement was not the goal; just understanding was. “We must conduct our affairs in such a way th
at it becomes in the Communists’ interest to a agree on a genuine peace…to…let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choice of others.”117 Kennedy accepted the premise that the two superpowers could peaceably coexist. “[In] the final analysis our most basic common link is the fact that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” Kennedy committed himself, and with hope the nation, to put an end to this dangerous moment in the Cold War. “Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.”118
THREE DAYS LATER Khrushchev gathered his colleagues to initiate his own strategy of peace. He did not mention the speech that President Kennedy had just given at the American University, but it had had a strong effect on the Soviet leader. He told his staff that Kennedy’s speech was the best given by any American president since Roosevelt.119 In explaining his reasons for détente to the Presidium, Khrushchev did not refer to the new climate with the United States. Instead he discussed the meaning of Adenauer’s secret approach.
The Soviets had been hoping for something like this from the West Germans since 1955. Although there were reasons to doubt Adenauer’s sincerity, the West German initiative finally gave Khrushchev a pretext to kill off the Kremlin’s unsuccessful Berlin policy. “Let’s change the tactic,” he said at a formal Presidium session on June 13. “We will not get an agreement from the Americans.” He recalled the failed logic of the Berlin crises. The United States always held in its hand the weapon of an economic embargo that would have damaged East Germany severely. For that reason Khrushchev could press the Americans for only so long. Now the West Germans were providing a possible way around the Americans.
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