Kennedy: The Classic Biography (101 page)

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.

CONTINUED CONTACTS

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.

I will tell you now that it was a very sober two days. There was no discourtesy, no loss of tempers, no threats or ultimatums by either side; no advantage or concession was either gained or given; no major decision was either planned or taken; no spectacular progress was either achieved or pretended….

…neither of us tried merely to please the other, to agree merely to be agreeable, to say what the other wanted to hear….

Our views contrasted sharply but at least we knew better at the end where we both stood….

At least the channels of communication were opened more fully…and the men on whose decision the peace in part depends have agreed to remain in contact.

But contact never again included a personal meeting. In September of that same year, as tensions mounted, and as the conference of neutral nations at Belgrade called for a summit, Khrushchev—who enjoyed the personal and national prestige of the summit spotlight—said publicly he was willing to have a new meeting. Similar suggestions were from time to time made by the Soviet Chairman both privately and publicly during the following two years, especially in 1963 after the signing of the Test Ban Treaty and in 1962 before the U.S. resumed nuclear tests. Prime Minister Macmillan of Great Britain also kept hoping for a summit of the three nuclear powers, and pressed Kennedy particularly hard early in 1962.

But the President stood fast. He told Macmillan that they should wait for some definite progress. He told Khrushchev—who often seemed to agree that a fruitless get-together would be a mistake—that they should wait until some specific breakthrough could be agreed upon. He proposed privately in early 1962 that such a meeting be held to conclude a test-ban treaty, but no agreement on a treaty was possible at that time. He told his negotiators at the Moscow meeting in July, 1963, that they could commit him if necessary—but he avoided it when it was not necessary. He told the press that he would go to a summit “to ratify an agreement…[or] if we were on the brink of war…[or] if I thought it was in our national interest.” But he had no need for another personal size-up, retained all his earlier objections to formal summit diplomacy, and achieved solid agreements in 1963 “through skilled negotiators, and that is really the best way unless there is an overwhelming crisis…or some new factor.” Asked at a spring 1962 press conference about written reports that he would eat his words, he replied: “I’m going to have a dinner for all the people who have written it, and we will see who eats what.”

Similarly he resisted all Khrushchev’s hints about a visit to the Soviet Union, despite talk of an exceedingly warm welcome from the Russian people and bear-hunting with the Chairman. After the nuclear test ban and other agreements had been reached in 1963, such a trip became possible; but in 1961-1962 he would not go while the two powers were in dangerous conflict over Berlin and Cuba. When events permitted it, he wrote the Chairman, he would take great pleasure in such a visit, for he had visited the Soviet Union in 1939 very briefly and would look forward to seeing the changes that had occurred since then.

The two men remained in active, personal contact without another meeting. The means was a unique, private correspondence initiated by Khrushchev by a letter sent September 29, 1961, from his Black Sea resort. Although the publication of this correspondence could no longer affect the power or plans of either man, it is important that future Soviet leaders feel free to make private proposals via this channel without fear of their future use. Consequently I shall confine myself to a discussion of the nature and purpose of these messages and quote no passages from Khrushchev’s letters which involve any substantive proposals.

Khrushchev had planned to write, his first letter said, earlier in the summer after Kennedy’s meeting in Washington with his son-in-law and a Soviet press officer. But Kennedy’s July speech to the nation on Berlin had been so belligerent in its nature that it led to an exchange of militant actions taken, he said, under pressures in both countries which must be restrained. He emphasized almost pridefully the special burdens resting on their shoulders as the leaders of the two most influential and mighty states. It might be useful to have a purely informal, personal correspondence, he wrote, which would by-pass the foreign office bureaucracies in both countries, omit the usual propaganda for public consumption and state positions without a backward glance at the press. If Kennedy did not agree, he could consider that this first letter did not exist. The Chairman in any event would not refer to the correspondence publicly. The letter, which had opened “Dear Mr. President,” was signed: “Accept my respects, N. Khrushchev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R.”

The letter was not delivered through the usual diplomatic channels, and its arrival caused both sensation and speculation among the handful of advisers whom the President informed of its existence. The proposed correspondence fitted Kennedy’s idea of open channels of communication. Possibly it could lessen the danger of a showdown on Berlin while hopeful letters were being exchanged. But he knew that it had its dangers. A strongly negative U.S. reply on Berlin might precipitate Soviet action. A strongly positive reply might be privately shown to the Germans and French as proof that we were conspiring behind their backs. If Kennedy revealed the correspondence to the leaky Alliance, it would be shut off. If he did not, Khrushchev might use it to split the West. “The answer to this letter,” said Ambassador Bohlen, “may be the most important letter the President will ever write.”

Some two weeks later the President completed his reply at Cape Cod. Like Khrushchev, he opened with a chatty note about his retreat, the children and their cousins, and the opportunity to get a clearer and quieter perspective away from the din of Washington. He welcomed the idea of a private correspondence, though making clear that the Secretary of State and a few others would be privy to it. A personal, informal but meaningful exchange of views in frank, realistic and fundamental terms, he wrote, could usefully supplement the more formal and official channels. Inasmuch as the letters would be private, and could never convert the other, they could also, he added, be free from the polemics of the “Cold War” debate. That debate would, of course, proceed, but their messages would be directed only to each other.

In this letter as in others that followed, the President picked out points in Khrushchev’s letter with which he could agree, sometimes restating them or interpreting them more to his own liking. By Kennedy’s standards, his was a long letter—nearly ten pages single-spaced—but not nearly so long as Khrushchev’ s. He kept his letter cordial and hopeful, with a highly personal tone and repeated first-person references (which were rare in his speeches). He agreed with the Chairman’s emphasis on their special obligation to the world to prevent another war. They were not personally responsible for the events at the conclusion of World War II which led to the present situation in Berlin, he added, but they would be held responsible if they were unable to deal peacefully with that situation.

Having opened with “Dear Mr. Chairman,” he closed with best wishes from his family to Khrushchev’s and the expression of his deep hope that, through this exchange of letters and otherwise, relations between the two nations might be improved, making concrete progress toward the realization of a just and enduring peace. That, he said, was their greatest joint responsibility and their greatest opportunity.

In the two years that followed, this correspondence flourished, even when its existence became known after the Cuban missile crisis. At times separate letters arrived from Khrushchev almost simultaneously on different topics. Substantively the correspondence accomplished very little that was concrete, if the special letters exchanged over the Cuban missile crisis are excluded. The arguments exchanged—on Laos, nuclear testing, Cuba, Vietnam and Berlin—did not differ in essence, though they did sometimes in tone, from the arguments their envoys or even speeches exchanged. On more than one occasion Kennedy had to remind the Chairman that this private and informal channel of communication should not be used to repeat the usual arguments and assertions normally reserved for public debates and propaganda. While this was not, he made clear, a substitute for a genuine negotiating forum, it should be used to identify more clearly the areas of agreement and disagreement, not to cast blame, repeat slogans or argue history, personalities and press reports.

Khrushchev’s letters varied. At times they were even tougher than his public statements. Some seemed to have been drafted by an aide and contained the usual bargaining positions. Others were more candid, colorful, anecdotal and lengthy, placing more emphasis on his personal responsibilities and activities. Those, we were certain, he dictated himself. His references to American press reports and Congressional debates often showed surprising knowledge of detail. His illustrations were often amusing. The U.S.-U.S.S.R. deadlock on Berlin, for example, he compared to two stupid and stubborn goats head to head on a narrow bridge across an abyss, neither giving way and both falling to their doom. De Gaulle’s influence over Adenauer was compared to the Russian peasant who caught a bear barehanded but could neither bring it back nor make the bear let loose of him. When Khrushchev’s language was sharp, it was nevertheless courteous, usually placing blame not on Kennedy but on “certain circles” and “hotheads” in the United States and the West.

Kennedy’s letters were also cordial, but shorter, more direct and—despite the lack of concrete results—among the most persuasive he had ever written. He kept Khrushchev peppered with appealing arguments to answer, with reasons for delaying a German peace treaty and with hope for an ultimate agreement. The correspondence avoided the harsh atmosphere of Vienna, where both men had felt that all appeals had been exhausted and that a showdown was next.

Inasmuch as Khrushchev was told that our Secretary of State and Ambassador to Moscow were informed of the correspondence, we speculated about whether he continued to use this private channel—for a time with a cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of delivery—to keep it from someone in
his
government, possibly someone in the Presidium or military. On the one occasion when I served as contact, Khrushchev’s courier—a lesser Soviet functionary in Washington, Georgi Bolshakov, who handed me a folded newspaper containing the letter, already translated, as we met and walked in downtown Washington—emphasized to me that the letter’s proposal (a minor but hopeful Berlin concession) was personally that of the Chairman. Khrushchev believed, he said, that his best efforts came from his own pen, not from Foreign Office experts “who specialized in why something had not worked forty years ago”—and he assumed Kennedy operated on the same basis.

There were, of course, the usual formal letters and diplomatic notes as well. The State Department experts expressed their traditional doubts about any avoidance of their normal channels. Eisenhower had also corresponded with Zhukov, Bulganin and Khrushchev; but those letters were recognized as a formal, governmental correspondence and were usually public. Kennedy rejected all advice that he terminate the correspondence; and the familiarity of this private channel facilitated, in my opinion, the exchange of letters that ended the Cuban missile crisis.

The letters also enabled both men to judge the other more accurately. Khrushchev told Salinger and others that he had acquired a healthy respect as well as a personal liking for Kennedy, despite their differences. He told Castro, according to one source, that “Kennedy is a man you can talk with.” He appreciated Kennedy’s undemagogic approach and—certainly after October, 1962—believed in his determination.

Kennedy in turn wholly rejected the popular images of Khrushchev as a coarse buffoon or lovable figure. The Chairman, in his view, was a clever, tough, shrewd adversary. “A national inferiority complex,” said JFK, “makes him act extra tough at times.” But Khrushchev was aware, Kennedy believed—certainly after October, 1962—of the caution with which they must both move in an age of mutual nuclear capability. He found the Chairman admirably uninterested in arguing over matters too small to concern him or too large to be changed. Khrushchev, he noted, shared some of his own complaints of internal pressures from the military, from other politicians and from associated countries. He was interested in Harriman’s report, after a visit to Moscow in 1963, that the Soviet Chairman—unlike Stalin, whom Harriman had also known—was willing to walk openly among the people, appeared to share a mutual affection with them, and maintained a stern dictatorial discipline without the Stalinist atmosphere of terror. Asked his evaluation of Khrushchev’s political status, the President replied simply: “I don’t think we know precisely, but I would suppose he has his good months and bad months—like we all do.”