Kennedy: The Classic Biography (99 page)

These were at times uncomfortable friends for an American President, and the Congress was critical of continuing aid. But Kennedy believed that his policies had enabled him to retain some influence on the actions of these neutrals and caused their leaders to exercise some restraint. Kennedy’s personal prestige helped induce Sukarno to free a CIA pilot downed years earlier in an attack on his government. It helped persuade Nasser to hold back anti-Israel fanatics in the Arab League. Nasser liked Kennedy’s Ambassador, John Badeau, and he liked Kennedy’s practice of personal correspondence (Kennedy put off, however, an invitation for a Nasser visit until improved relations could enable him to answer the political attacks such a visit would bring from voters more sympathetic with Israel). Sukarno liked the Peace Corps, and—despite a bruising verbal exchange with the Attorney General—he hoped for a visit from the President. To dismiss or denounce these men for every foolish thing they said or did, to cut off our aid or food shipments every time they aroused our displeasure, Kennedy said, would only play into the hands of the Communists.

He was also desirous of using our aid and trade policies “to develop whatever differences in attitude or in tempo may take place behind the Iron Curtain,” specifically in Poland and Yugoslavia. The Communist bloc was not a monolith in the sixties, if it ever had been, and he wanted to encourage every nationalist strain present. Relations with the Poles and Yugoslavs fluctuated, but that was better than a posture of complete hostility on their part. He was willing to take the political heat of welcoming Yugoslav President Tito to the White House, even though Tito’s relations with Moscow had improved; he acted swiftly to send medical aid to the victims of an earthquake at Skopje; he greeted a Polish boys’ choir in the flower garden; he sought economic aid for both countries; and he fought with the Congress over his insistence that it grant both countries the same tariff treatment it gave to all others. He fully sympathized with his Ambassador to Yugoslavia, George Kennan, who resigned because of the “contradictory, unproductive and unsatisfactory” mishmash the Congress had made out of Kennedy’s Yugoslav policy.

All in all, this was a sophisticated approach to foreign affairs: helping some Communist nations but not others, befriending neutrals as well as allies, financing socialist projects as well as private, aiding some revolutionaries and some reactionaries, and approving of some one-party governments but not of others. It was too sophisticated an approach for those elements in the country and Congress whose solution to all problems continued to be the withholding of our aid on grounds of misbehavior. “These countries are poor,” the President stressed once again in his final news conference of 1963, “they are nationalist, they are proud, they are in many Cases radical. I don’t think threats from Capitol Hill bring the results which are frequently hoped….I don’t regard the struggle as over and I don’t think it’s probably going to be over for this century.” Then he summed it all up rather simply; “I think it is a very dangerous, untidy world. I think we will have to live with it.”

1
Ignoring Churchill’s advocacy of negotiations to prevent needless conflict and Kennedy’s rejection of appeasement. It might be noted, however, that two other columnists, who regarded each other as “hard” and “soft” respectively, were asked unbeknownst to each other to contribute drafts, which were then blended, for the last speech quoted above.

3
Nevertheless the Portuguese thereafter tried every form of diplomatic blackmail to alter our position on Angola, using as a wedge our country’s expiring lease on a key military base on the Portuguese Azores Islands. The President finally felt that, if necessary, he was prepared to forgo the base entirely rather than permit Portugal to dictate his African policy.

CHAPTER XX
THE WORLD LEADER

T
HE ELECTION
in 1960 of an American President young enough to be their son was greeted by most of the world’s other leaders with mingled misgivings and curiosity. At least two of them—West Germany’s Konrad Adenauer and Free China’s Chiang Kai-shek—had been almost openly pro-Nixon. The Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev had dismissed both candidates as “a pair of boots—which is the better, the right or the left boot?” But friendly, unfriendly and neutral leaders alike sought in 1961 to learn more about John Kennedy. To assert his own position, to allay their suspicions and to “begin anew the quest for peace,” he set out promptly to improve the channels of communication.

Khrushchev made plain to U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson in Moscow his interest in meeting with Kennedy as soon as possible and sent him a cordial message upon his inauguration as he had upon his election. Promptly thereafter, in a gesture designed to renew Soviet-American communications, clogged since the Paris Summit failure, he released two downed U.S. airmen imprisoned virtually incommunicado since the previous summer. “This action,” said Kennedy, announcing the heartening news in a low-key, matter-of-fact manner at his first news conference, “removes a serious obstacle to improvement of Soviet-American relations.” Without calling it a
quid pro quo
, he made clear that U-2 and other aircraft flights over the Soviet Union would not be resumed.
¹

On February 11 the President assessed our relations with the Soviets in a lengthy White House meeting with Rusk, Bundy and four experts who had served as Ambassadors to Moscow: Thompson, whom he continued in that position; Charles “Chip” Bohlen, whom he continued as the State Department’s Russian expert; George Kennan, whom he made Ambassador in the sensitive listening post of Yugoslavia; and Averell Harriman, whose first post under Kennedy was Ambassador at Large. None of these men, least of all the President, wanted a formal “summit” conference between the two heads of government. While such a conference, in Kennedy’s long-held view, might be necessary when war threatened, or useful as “a place where agreements…achieved at a lower level could be finally, officially approved…a summit is not a place to carry on negotiations which involve details.” Those had to be conducted through quieter channels and by full-time experts. Summitry raised undue hopes and public attention, thus producing unjustified relaxations, disappointments or tensions. It injected considerations of personal prestige, face-saving and politics into grave international conflicts.

But the February 11 discussion distinguished between a personal, informal meeting with the Soviet leader and a summit with serious negotiations. It would be useful, all agreed, for the President to size up Khrushchev, to find out face to face his views on a test ban and other issues, to gain a firsthand impression against which he could then judge Khrushchev’s words and deeds, and to make more clear and precise than his letters could do or his predecessor had done the vital interests for which this nation would fight. It was Kennedy’s “basic premise,” as he later described it at a news conference, “that the channels of communication should be kept very widely open,” to “lessen the chance of danger,” to prevent the kind of miscalculation which had led to three wars in his lifetime, and to achieve the kind of understanding which could prevent a nuclear war and in time abate the cold war.

Consequently, when Thompson returned to Moscow he carried with him a letter expressing hope for such a meeting. It was not inspired, as some believed, by Kennedy’s later setback at the Bay of Pigs; nor did the President entirely agree with those who thought that incident cast a shadow over the conference. He thought on balance that it provided all the more reason for the Soviet Chairman to be disabused of any misapprehension that Kennedy was either reckless or weak of will. “I had read his speeches and his published policies,” the President said.

I had been advised on his views. I had been told by other leaders of the West…what manner of man he was. But…it is my duty to make decisions that no adviser and no ally can make for me…to see that these decisions are as informed as possible, that they are based on as much direct, firsthand knowledge, as possible…. At the same time, I wanted to make certain Mr. Khrushchev knew this country and its policies…to present our views to him directly, precisely, realistically, and with an opportunity for discussion and clarification.

VIENNA

The Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna on June 3 and 4, 1961, was neither a victory nor a defeat for either side. It was, as the American President hoped, useful. It was, as the Soviet Chairman later reported, necessary. It was not, both would have agreed, a turning point of any kind.

In preparation for the meeting, Kennedy devoted both office and spare time to a review of all previous conversations held with Khrushchev, interviewed those who had met him, studied his personal ways as well as his policies and conducted intensive surveys of all the nuances and background of every issue likely to come up. In Paris the night before and on the plane en route to Vienna he continued to study right up to the last minute.

Some skeptics had been fearful that Khrushchev had sought the meeting in order to create another international incident. Such was not the case. Both men were unyielding but courteous. Both argued vigorously but civilly. Generally, Kennedy carried the conversational initiative, introducing topics, keeping them specific, bringing straying discussions back to the question and pressing Khrushchev for answers. Khrushchev usually talked at much greater length. Kennedy usually talked with much greater precision. Both often cited history and quotations, although Khrushchev’s language was far more colorful and lively. Between the two men, despite the divergence of their views, a curious kind of rapport was established which was to help continue their dialogue in the months and years that followed.

Three meals presented the only real opportunity for idle personal conversation; Kennedy was the host for lunch on the first day at the American Embassy. Khrushchev hosted the second in the Soviet Embassy. A splendiferous dinner and after-dinner ballet at Vienna’s glittering Schönbrunn Palace were arranged by the Austrian Government for the evening in between. (The President almost sat in Mrs. Khrushchev’s lap through a mix-up in seating directions, and the Chairman kept Jacqueline amused with almost nonstop humor and a promise to send an offspring of the dogs flown in space.)

During these meals the conversation was light. When Kennedy, lighting up a cigar, dropped the match behind Khrushchev’s chair, the latter asked, “Are you trying to set me on fire?” Reassured that this was not the case, he smiled: “Ah, a capitalist, not an incendiary.” Kennedy noted that not one of the top capitalists of industry and finance whom Khrushchev had met in 1959 had voted Democratic in 1960. “They are very clever,” responded Khrushchev, certain it was all a trick. When Khrushchev said that the medal he was wearing was for the Lenin Peace Prize, Kennedy retorted with a smile: “I hope you keep it.”

Khrushchev chatted about his country’s need for fertilizer and corn, its new emphasis on submarines instead of surface craft and the President’s special message to Congress the previous month. It was clear that he had read—or had been briefed on—all Kennedy’s major speeches and messages, and a good many obscure Congressional debates as well. Kennedy’s defense requests, he said, put pressure on him to increase his forces, just as both of them were under pressure from their scientists and military to resume nuclear tests. “But we will wait for you to resume testing and, if you do, we will.”

The Soviet leader also made clear his belief in summitry. If the heads of state cannot resolve problems, how can officials at a lower level? He liked as much personal contact as possible, he said, no matter how able one’s ambassadors might be—just as natural love is better than love through interpreters. While it was difficult for both of them to speak on behalf of their “jealous” allies, the President would surely not be concerned by objections from an ally such as tiny Luxembourg—and Russia, too, had allies “whom I do not wish to name” but who, “if they were to raise a belligerent voice, would not frighten anyone.”

Describing the historic space orbit of Soviet Cosmonaut Gagarin, Khrushchev said they had feared the psychological effects of such a flight on Gagarin’s ability to take over the controls. Consequently they gave him sealed instructions coded in such a way that only a normal person could decode them. He was even more doubtful, he said, about going to the moon. Perhaps the two nations should go together, the President suggested. Khrushchev first replied in the negative, but then added half-jokingly: “All right—why not?”

The Chairman said he had respected Kennedy’s predecessor. He was almost sure that Eisenhower had not known about the U-2 flight deliberately designed to sour Soviet-American relations but had taken the responsibility in a spirit of chivalry. Eisenhower’s trip to the U.S.S.R. had necessarily been canceled, but he hoped Kennedy would come “when the time is ripe…. The road is open.” Then he could see whomever and whatever he liked. For the Soviets were unafraid for their system. But Mr. Nixon, Khrushchev said, had thought he could convert the Soviet people to capitalism by showing them a kitchen that never existed, even in the U.S. “I apologize for referring to a citizen of the United States,” he said, “but only Nixon could think of such nonsense.”
²

The Soviet people admire the American people and their technological success, Khrushchev went on, and had decorated American engineers who helped them build their country after the Revolution. One of them, he said, had later visited the Soviet Union and mentioned that he was building houses in Turkey. Of course, the Soviets knew “that in fact he was building bases there—but this is a matter for his own conscience.” Toasting the President’s health, he envied his youth. “If I were your age, I would devote even more energy to our cause. Nevertheless, even at sixty-seven, I am not renouncing the competition.”