Kennedy (98 page)

The President immediately turned to his central thesis of the two major nuclear powers avoiding situations which committed their vital interests in a direct confrontation from which neither could back down. Time and again he returned to that point during the two days of talks. Khrushchev complained that John Foster Dulles had wanted to liquidate Communism. Kennedy replied that the real problem was the Soviet attempt to impose Communism on others. Not true, said Khrushchev, they expected it to triumph as a social development. The Soviet Union was against imposing its policy on other states. As feudalism gave way to capitalism, so the latter was being challenged by Communism.

Historical inevitability is not demonstrated by a minority’s seizing power against the will of the people, replied the President, even if they are called “wars of liberation.” The death of systems such as feudalism
and monarchy had brought wars in the past, and today both our countries would suffer in a new world war. The competition of ideologies should be conducted without affecting the vital security interests of the two countries; and he repeated his view of the dangers of miscalculation.

At this Khrushchev bristled. He did not like the term miscalculation or the President’s repeated usage of it, he said. Was the President saying that Communism should exist only in Communist countries, that its development elsewhere would be regarded by the U.S. as a hostile act by the Soviet Union? The United States wants the U.S.S.R., he said, to sit like a schoolboy with hands on the table, but there is no immunization against ideas. Even if he should renounce Communism, his friends would ostracize him but the doctrine of Communism would keep on developing. He didn’t even know who some of the indigenous Communist leaders were, he said; he was too busy at home. Smiling again, he suggested that the Germans be blamed for producing Marx and Engels. It was Soviet policy, he repeated, that ideas should not be imposed by war or arms.

Mao Tse-tung, the President interjected, has said that power was at the end of a rifle. No, replied Khrushchev, Mao could not have said that. He is a Marxist and Marxists have always been against war. In any event, said the President, miscalculation simply referred to an erroneous prediction of the other side’s next move. It applied equally to all countries. He had made a misjudgment earlier at the Bay of Pigs. Khrushchev had to make many judgments about the West. The whole purpose of their meeting was to introduce more precision into those judgments.

Khrushchev gave no ground on this or any other point. He returned time and again to the thesis that the Soviet Union could not be held responsible for every spontaneous uprising or Communist trend. Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah and Sukarno, he pointed out, had all said they wanted their countries to develop along Socialist lines. But what kind of Socialist was Nasser when he kept Communists in jail? Nor did Nehru favor the Communist Party in India. Nevertheless the Soviet Union helped them all and that was proof of its policy of noninterference. He predicted a popular overthrow of the Shah of Iran but asserted that Russia would have nothing to do with it. The Cubans turned against the United States, he said, because capitalist circles supported Batista. The Bay of Pigs landing only increased Cuba’s fears that the Americans would impose another Batista. Castro was not a Communist but U.S. policy could make him one, said Khrushchev, adding that as a Communist himself (not a born Marxist, he said, but the capitalists had made him one) he could not foretell which way Castro
would go. And if the United States felt itself threatened by tiny Cuba, what was the U.S.S.R. to do about Turkey and Iran?

Cuba alone was not regarded as a threat, replied the President, making clear he held no brief for Batista. It was Castro’s announced intentions to subvert the hemisphere that could be dangerous. Had Castro been selected by a free choice and not interfered with the choice of others, the U.S. might have endorsed him. What would Khrushchev’s reaction be to a pro-Western government in Poland, which might well be the result of a free election?

It was disrespectful of the President, said Khrushchev, to talk that way about Poland, whose election system was more democratic than America’ s. In the United States we have a choice, said Kennedy. U.S. political parties, responded the Chairman, are only for the purpose of deluding the people. There is no real difference between them. And what about the U.S. support of reactionary, undemocratic regimes—Nationalist China, Pakistan, Spain, Iran, Turkey, and the oppression of colonies? The Shah of Iran said that his power was given to him by God. Everybody knew how this power was seized by the Shah’s father, who was not God but a sergeant in the Iranian Army. The arms America gave to China after World War II to fight the Communists, he said, were not successful because the troops wouldn’t fight against the people. Chiang Kai-shek became a sort of transfer point for American arms to Mao Tse-tung. The U.S. should beware of setting a precedent of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries.
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Once, said the Chairman, the United States was a leader in the fight for freedom, so revolutionary in its creation that the Russian czar refused to recognize it for twenty-six years. Now the United States refused to recognize New China, indicating how things had changed.

The President, in replying, did not pretend that all our allies were as democratic as the United States. Some of our associations are for strategic reasons, he said, citing Yugoslavia (to Mr. K.’s discomfort) as well as Spain. But he recognized, he said, the advantage of those on the side of change. He was for change and was elected in the 1960 campaign on the basis of advocating change. He had supported Algerian independence as a Senator. He had incurred the wrath of Portugal and other allies for supporting self-determination in their colonies. The independence movement in Africa was unmistakable, unprecedented and a tribute to peaceful change. But the “wars of liberation” Khrushchev had endorsed in January did not always reflect the will of the people and they might dangerously involve the great powers.

The United States, replied Khrushchev, suffers from delusions of
grandeur. It is so rich and powerful that it believes it has special rights and can afford not to recognize the rights of others. The Soviet Union cannot accept the thesis of “don’t poke your nose” because whenever the rights of people are infringed upon, the Soviet Union will render assistance.

But he stuck to his story that his country opposed interference in the choice of local populations. The Communists have had great experience in fighting guerrilla warfare, he said. If guerrilla units should be sent from the outside and not be supported by the people, that would be a hopeless undertaking. But if guerrilla troops were local troops belonging to that country, then every bush was their ally.

He had not been authorized or requested to speak on Red China’s behalf, Mr. K. said twice, but he wanted to make clear his own belief that Red China belonged both in the UN and on Formosa. No, said the President, withdrawal of American forces and support from Formosa would impair our strategic position in Asia. That proves that Red China will have to fight for Formosa, said Khrushchev, and that was a sad thing. It forced him to doubt America’s sincerity about peaceful coexistence. Kennedy might even occupy Crimea and say that this would improve his strategic position. That would be the policy of Dulles. Times had changed and this was doomed to failure. Were he in Red China’s position, he said, he already would have fought for Formosa. After the Revolution Russia had fought off stronger countries similarly interfering in her territory. Like colonial battles for liberation, he added, such wars were not aggressive, they were holy wars.

Three specific substantive issues dominated the discussion: Laos, a nuclear test ban and Berlin. On the subject of Laos, as noted in a later chapter, Kennedy’s persistence helped pin Khrushchev down on their only substantial agreement, a small but unexpected gain. Khrushchev claimed that the President had ordered and then rescinded a landing of U.S. Marines in Laos. There was no such order, said the President. The Chairman said he had assumed it from press reports.

His administration did not want to increase U.S. commitments but decrease them, said Kennedy. There was no point in raking over the past history to which both sides might have some objections. That was not an issue in Vienna. Very well, said Khrushchev, but Kennedy could not avoid responsibility by saying all the commitments were made before he took office. The Soviet Union had rescinded all the unreasonable decisions made by the previous governments. By overruling Molotov on Austria, for example, he had made a peace treaty possible. Westerners, he went on, were much better than Easterners at making threats in a refined way, talking about “commitments” and hinting at Marines. But the law of physics says that every action causes counterreactions. Nevertheless, he agreed finally that Laos was not worth a war to either power,
that a government both sides could accept was called for and that the cease-fire should be observed.

On banning nuclear weapons tests there was no agreement. Any more than three on-site inspections a year would be for espionage purposes, said Mr. K., adding his belief that that was what the Pentagon had wanted all along—and that Eisenhower’s open-skies proposal was a part of that scheme. Moreover, he said, events that year in the Congo had taught the Russians that no UN neutral or other third party could be trusted to inspect their actions without being subject to a veto. If the United States wanted him to be fired, he joked, it should pursue that line.

The President asked him whether he believed it was impossible to find any person strictly neutral between both countries. The Chairman answered in the affirmative. In that case, said Kennedy, the Troika veto would leave both sides uncertain whether the other was secretly testing, and the Senate would never approve such a treaty. Then let us have complete disarmament, said Khrushchev, and the U.S.S.R. will drop the Troika and subscribe to any controls as developed by the U.S. without even looking at the document. Almost any other measure would be a better beginning than a nuclear test ban, and he listed the prohibition of nuclear weapons, their manufacture and military bases.
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Russia’s alleged fear of espionage, replied the President, will pale in comparison to the problem of a half-dozen other countries developing nuclear weapons while disarmament talks drag on. He cited a Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and urged Khrushchev to take that step. Apparently you know the Chinese very well, said the Chairman, but I, too, know them quite well. You might get to know them even better, the President shot back. I already know them very well, concluded Khrushchev.

The grimmest talks were on Germany and Berlin. As noted in a subsequent chapter, Khrushchev was belligerent, Kennedy was unyielding. It was this portion of the conference that most sobered the President.

“I did not come away,” he later said, “with any feeling that…an understanding…—so that we do not go over the brink…—would be easy to reach.” To more than one newsman he described Khrushchev’s demands and his own determination not to give in. If Khrushchev had meant what he said about Berlin, the prospects for nuclear war were now very real—for Kennedy had meant what he said. He was discouraged also that Khrushchev clung to all the old myths—about inspection as the equivalent of espionage, about West Germany as a source of danger, about the United States as a supporter of colonialism and about Kennedy as a tool of Wall Street.

With less than six months to prepare for a possible nuclear war over Berlin, he wanted no newsman or citizen to be under any impression that the complacency he had battled so long could be tolerated any longer, or that there were any easy, magic ways to deflect the Soviet drive. He wanted Congress, dawdling on his foreign aid and related programs, awakened to support his next moves. He wanted no one to think that the surface cordiality in Vienna justified any notion of a new “Spirit of Geneva, 1955,” or “Spirit of Camp David, 1959.” But he may have “overmanaged” the news. His private briefings of the press were so grim, while Khrushchev in public appeared so cheerful, that a legend soon arose that Vienna had been a traumatic, shattering experience, that Khrushchev had bullied and browbeaten the President and that Kennedy was depressed and disheartened.

In fact, as several newsmen would later report on the basis of Khrushchev interviews, the Soviet Chairman had found Kennedy “tough,” especially on Berlin. He liked the President personally, his frankness and his sense of humor—but Eisenhower had been more reasonable, he said, and, until the U-2 incident, easier to get along with.

Actually, neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev emerged victorious or defeated, cheerful or shaken. Each had probed the other for weakness and found none. Khrushchev had not been swayed by Kennedy’s reason and charm, nor had Kennedy so expected. Kennedy had not been panicked by Khrushchev’s tough talk—and had Khrushchev so expected, he learned differently. (“We parted,” he told a reporter, “each sticking to his own opinion.”) There was no progress toward ending the cold war—and neither had expected any. But each made a deep and lasting impression on the other. Each was unyielding on his nation’s interests. Each had seen for himself, as a leader must, the nature of his adversary and his arguments; and both realized more than ever the steadfastness of the other’s stand and the difficulty of reaching agreement.

The President, after a one-day stopover in London for a report to Macmillan, a family christening and a dinner with the Queen, returned to Washington for his own report to the American people. The speech was hammered out overnight in the plane and during the few hours he
was back in the White House, with less time for the usual departmental clearances and cautions. The words “sober” and “somber” appeared often in a very candid text.