Kennedy: The Classic Biography (95 page)

The President underwent a degree of redemption on this subject himself. His initial interest in disarmament was largely for propaganda reasons—a desire to influence neutral and “world opinion.” He told his disarmament planners, as they were preparing for the spring, 1962, Geneva Disarmament Conference, that he wanted them to meet the sweeping, oversimplified Soviet proposals with counterproposals that were “not so complex and cautious as to lack all force and appeal.” But he increasingly recognized that there was no ultimate security in armaments, that tensions and danger were rising even as our nuclear stockpiles rose. Gradually and still skeptically he began to believe that disarmament was really achievable, that the money he was putting into the arms race could someday go into health and education, and that his administration’s own plan, formulated with considerable White House prodding of the new Agency, was a good beginning toward a goal he did not expect to achieve in his political lifetime.

Seeing no reason why the Russians should be permitted to monopolize the label of “general and complete disarmament,” the President adopted that unrealistic title for his own, despite the fears of those who thought even the phrase was a Communist plot. The American plan differed sharply from the Soviet plan—particularly in its call for inspecting whatever arms each nation might have retained, not merely those it destroyed. It was also more realistic and specific than the Soviet plan in calling for an advance to complete disarmament by stages and for a parallel build-up of new peace-keeping institutions to police it. At Vienna the Kennedy-Khrushchev talks on this topic were their least illuminating. This was partly due to the fact that the U.S. did not yet have a plan of its own and neither man seemed too familiar with the Soviet plan. But it was largely due to the fact that Khrushchev talked grandly of general and complete disarmament—as a millennium when inspection would be unimportant, and compared to which a nuclear test ban was already unimportant—without ever saying how that millennium could be reached.

To the leaders of a closed society as obsessed with secrecy as the Soviet Union, the whole notion of outside inspection of their country was unexplainable. “A totalitarian system cannot accept the kind of inspection which really is desirable…because [it] must exist only in secrecy,” said the President in his candid three-man TV interview; and then he added significantly: “The camera, I think, is actually going to be our best inspector.” He may have been referring to the U-2 aerial surveys of Cuba. But it was also increasingly public knowledge that, even though U.S. planes no longer violated Soviet air rights, high-orbiting space satellites were covering all parts of the globe. Observation from outer space was as legitimate as observation from the high seas. But it was vastly more effective and placed all arguments about inspection and secrecy in a somewhat different light.

To the President’s surprise, Soviet negotiators in the fall of 1961 accepted—with one very major exception on the inspection of retained arms—a new U.S. “statement of principles” on disarmament as a joint declaration. In doing so, they conceded several points they had long opposed. But “all issues of principle are not settled,” said the President, and

principles alone are not enough. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race: to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has actually been achieved….

Today…every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness…. Unless man can match his strides in weaponry and technology with equal strides in social and political development, our great strength, like that of the dinosaur, will become incapable of proper control, and man, like the dinosaur, will vanish from the earth.

2. The United Nations

These remarks were contained in John Kennedy’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, 1961. It was a critical moment in the life of that body, the most critical in its sixteen-year history. The Soviet Union, angered in particular by the UN peace-keeping operation in the Congo, was slowly strangling the organization financially, disrupting its progress and insisting upon three Secretary Generals instead of one, each representing a different bloc (East, West and neutral), and each empowered to block the others.

The application of this principle, known as the Troika (a Russian wagon drawn by three horses abreast), would have permanently crippled the United Nations. It stemmed from Khrushchev’s anger at Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, “who poses as a neutral person….” There are neutral nations but no neutral men, he told the President at Vienna, and the events in the Congo taught the Soviet Union a lesson—that the UN could act against the interests of individual states. The Soviet Union did not seek control over the organization, he said, but it did not wish the United States to have such control either. The United States had a majority in the UN, but times may change, he went on. The UN is not a parliament and the rule of majority has no place there. With a three-man Secretariat no one would be able to pursue a policy prejudicial to any other side.

At the time there seemed little reason to believe that the Chairman could succeed in displacing Hammarskjöld and amending the UN Charter. On the contrary, Hammarskjöld daily was making the UN a more meaningful, powerful instrument. But on the morning of Monday, September 18, 1961, as Kennedy boarded “Air Force One” at Cape Cod to return to Washington, he was handed a grim message. Dag Hammarskjöld had been killed in a plane crash in the Congo. The President had not known the Secretary General well, but he admired his courage and skill. “I hope that all of us recognize,” he said, “the heavy burdens that his passing places upon us.”

Only three days earlier he had tentatively decided to address the opening of the General Assembly on September 25. Now it was suggested in some quarters that he wait until the dust settled. The atmosphere at the UN was dispirited and disorganized. The Soviets were insisting that they would veto even an Acting Secretary General until a Troika was installed. The Congo operation was at a standstill. The last session had been at times turned into a circus by the antics of Khrushchev and Castro. And now rising tensions in much of the world—over Berlin, nuclear testing, Southeast Asia, Bizerte and elsewhere—cast doubt upon the UN’s future.

But the President believed the UN had to have a future. He hoped he could help to rekindle its hope. Brushing aside suggested gimmicks for the contents of his speech—e.g., “The Agenda of Man” or “A World Bill of Rights”—he decided to speak forcefully (although not for an hour, which he was told was customary) on the real issues confronting the Assembly and the world: a stronger UN with no Troika—disarmament and a nuclear test ban—cooperation on outer space and economic development—an end to colonialism in the Communist empire as well as in the West—and a recognition of the Communist threats to peace over Berlin and Southeast Asia. He wanted the United States to initiate concrete proposals for UN efforts and to include them in his remarks.

Several days later, the speech was written and rewritten over an intensive weekend at Hyannis Port. I worked with the President at his cottage, on the phone and, finally, on his plane as it flew in heavy fog from Cape Cod to New York. Because both the Presidential and passenger cabins were crowded and noisy, we squatted on-the floor in the bare passageway between the two, comparing and sorting pages. He suggested that we each write a peroration and then take the best of both. In New York he read the latest draft aloud to Rusk and his UN team—an unusual practice for him—and then made his final revisions that night.

The next morning, as he strode to the rostrum in that great hall, the Secretary General’s chair was empty and the air seemed heavy with gloom. The President began softly:

We meet in an hour of grief and challenge. Dag Hammarskjöld is dead. But the United Nations lives on. His tragedy is deep in our hearts, but the task for which he died is at the top of our agenda….

The problem is not the death of one man; the problem is the life of this organization…. For in [its] development…rests the only true alternative to war, and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative….

So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjöld did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror….

The UN, said the President, was “both the measure and the vehicle of man’s most generous impulses.” It needed to be strengthened, not defied.

However difficult it may be to fill Mr. Hammarskjöld’s place, it can better be filled by one man rather than by three. Even the three horses of the troika did not have three drivers, all going in different directions….

To permit each great power to decide…its own case would entrench the Cold War in the headquarters of peace…. As one of the great powers, we reject it. For we far prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war, in the age of mass extermination.

He reviewed the pending issues and proposals, and then closed with unusual feeling in his voice:

However close we sometimes seem to that dark and final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand alone….

Together we shall save our planet or together we shall perish in its flames. Save it we can, and save it we must, and then shall we earn the eternal thanks of mankind and, as peacemakers, the eternal blessing of God.

The subsequent success of the sixteenth session of the United Nations General Assembly could hardly be attributed to the President’s address. Skillful negotiations, conducted chiefly by Ambassador Stevenson, played a major role. But the President had provided a fresh impetus when it was badly needed. The Troika was rejected, U Thant was installed as Acting Secretary General and the integrity of his office was reinforced. Despite a double standard on India’s seizure of Goa, and the growing dangers of an irresponsible Assembly majority, composed of new members who had not participated in drafting the Charter, the UN remained active, and so did U.S. influence within it. No Soviet initiative succeeded over our opposition, yet the reverse was frequently true. In fact, by obtaining a decision that Red China’s admission came under the “important question” category requiring a two-thirds vote, that admission—in the absence of a change of manner in Peking—was made all the more difficult.

But a new UN crisis loomed almost immediately—a financial crisis. To ease the deficit caused by the Soviets, French and others defaulting on their special assessments for the Congo and other peace-keeping operations, a stopgap emergency bond issue was decided upon. The President pledged that his government would purchase up to $100 million. It was, he recognized, in this country’s interest. The loan would be paid back out of the regular UN membership assessments, to which the Communists were contributing proportionately; and any vacuum caused by the bankruptcy and disintegration of the UN in such areas as the Congo would surely lead in time either to a big-power confrontation or a far more costly U.S. operation.

Nevertheless the Congress was hard to convince. Some members complained about various UN actions. (“No policeman is universally popular,” said the President to the Congress, “particularly when he uses his stick to restore law and order on his beat.”) Others complained about the “one country-one vote” principle diminishing our influence. (“Have they ever stopped to consider,” mused the President, calling me from his plane about an anti-UN speech by Senator Jackson that he wanted me to check before he returned from a trip, “what our influence would be compared with India, China and Russia if votes were weighted according to population?”) Some complained about the cost. (This bill represents, said the President, an investment of one-tenth of one percent of our budget, compared to the 50 percent going for defense.) Others complained about even belonging to so weak and dissonant an organization. (They “would abandon this imperfect world instrument,” said the President, “because they dislike our imperfect world.”) With considerable White House help the bill passed; and though its financial crisis was only postponed, the United Nations survived.

The President did not regard the UN as a substitute for American action on matters where he bore primary responsibility for our security. The small and neutralist nations—always desperate to avoid war and often gullible to oversimplified Soviet propaganda (such as a “free city” in West Berlin without Western protection, or equating the Cuban missile bases with American overseas installations)—could not be relied upon, in his opinion, to settle major disputes, even if the UN had the power to assume jurisdiction. The great powers had to settle their own confrontations. Nor could the UN do much about Communist subversion and infiltration, or impose effective disarmament, or provide its own military deterrent to major aggression.

But it was, said the President, “primarily the protector of the small and the weak, and a safety valve for the strong.” A small nation’s blowing off steam in the General Assembly was obviously preferable to its blowing up cities elsewhere. The executive actions of the UN Secretary General—far more than the noisy clashes in the Assembly—could help settle, confine or cool off brush-fire wars among the smaller nations and prevent them from turning into major conflagrations. No single outside government could intervene in such cases as safely, impartially or effectively. In the UN’s exercise of this capacity—in West New Guinea, in Yemen, in the Congo—Kennedy was willing to give it every support, including military transports. And over the very long run it could be developed, he hoped (without too much expectation), into “a genuine world security system.”