To Move the World (8 page)

Kennedy’s third precept was that peace is a process, a series of step-by-step confidence-building measures. He recognized that moves by one side lead to moves by the other. A situation of high distrust necessitated a series of confidence-building steps. He and Khrushchev had seen the hard way that distrust on each side could quickly spiral out of control—even out of the leaders’ control. Kennedy would repeatedly emphasize that success would occur one step at a time, and it was the responsibility of leaders, here and now, to take that first step.

Here is how he put this issue in April 1963 in his letter to Khrushchev, co-signed with British prime minister Harold Macmillan, proposing three-party talks on a test ban treaty:

Kennedy’s fourth precept was that peace must be pursued in a manner that defends the fundamental interests of each side. In the U.S. case, this meant resisting any rollback of democracy or, say, the loss of West Berlin. Peace would be achieved through cooperation, not through appeasement. The West would hold its ground against communism. Negotiation through strength, à la Churchill, and security through containment, as famously outlined by diplomat George Kennan in 1947, remained Kennedy’s cornerstones. Arms control and the reduction of tensions would be pursued while defending the core interests of the United States.

But how to cooperate, not appease? Striking this balance was the critical step of Kennedy’s maturation. At the start of his presidency, Kennedy had been too ready to accede to the generals, too fearful of rebuke from the right, to accommodate legitimate Soviet concerns and interests. Yet he learned to listen more clearly to Khrushchev, and to see both sides of the security issues. He found a point of equilibrium. Later he would describe this point as a spot to place a lever that could move the world toward peace.

One of Kennedy’s great strengths in finding this balance was his recognition that the enmities of nations should not be viewed as permanent. Cooperation toward shared strategic interests could overcome deep historical and ideological differences even in the most unlikely cases. The United States and the Soviet Union could find points of agreement to unwind the Cold War. Kennedy would repeat this theme many times in 1963, when he urged Americans to imagine a world beyond the Cold War.

These four precepts were already reflected in Kennedy’s inaugural address. They were deepened by experience and remained at the core of Kennedy’s approach to peacemaking. But Kennedy added two crucial new precepts as the result of his first two years as president.

Kennedy’s fifth precept was that it is crucially important to listen carefully to the other side, given the inherent difficulties of accurate communication. His long correspondence with Khrushchev was critical in solving the Cuban Missile Crisis. It helped each side discern what was really important in their mutual dealings. Noise, propaganda, and public confusion were inevitably part of U.S.-Soviet relations. Kennedy and Khrushchev both recognized the value of their private communications, outside the glare and distortions of the media.

Kennedy deepened his communication with Khrushchev by using an informal go-between,
Saturday Review
editor and peace activist Norman Cousins. Cousins visited Khrushchev twice, in December 1962 and April 1963, carrying messages between Kennedy and Khrushchev, as well as serving as an informal emissary of Pope John XXIII to both leaders. Meeting Cousins in the White House in spring 1963, Kennedy described the great practical difficulties of clear communication, referencing the growing rift with intransigent ally France:

What had Kennedy learned from his long communication with Khrushchev? He had learned, first, that Khrushchev and he faced the same problem in pursuing peace: the hardliners on their own teams. As he said to Cousins:

Second, he had come to understand and to appreciate the nature of Soviet concerns. Khrushchev’s actions and threats on Berlin were a symptom of a deeper anxiety: the resurgence of German power after the devastating experiences of German aggression in the world wars. They were not a mere bluff, and still less a crude Soviet attempt at global conquest. They were, in a sense, cries of fear. This was not easy to recognize, since fear was manifested as threat and bluster.

Khrushchev raised the issue in his meetings with Cousins. Yes, Khrushchev acknowledged, the Soviet Union “could crush Germany in a few minutes. But what we fear is the ability of an armed Germany to commit the United States by its own actions. We fear the ability of Germany to start a world atomic war.”
⁸

Kennedy not only came to understand more clearly the nature of Soviet concerns, he acted upon them. He, too, was wary of German fingers on the nuclear trigger. Since Adenauer was pressing hard for this, Kennedy would have to confront the West German chancellor, his own ally, on this point. He did more than that. By making clear his displeasure with Adenauer’s aggressive push for nuclear weapons, he helped other leading German politicians to ease the eighty-seven-year-old Adenauer out of power in October 1963, to be replaced by a far less truculent successor, Ludwig Erhard.

Kennedy’s sixth precept followed from all that he had learned in navigating the many crises of his first two years, and this became
the keystone to all the rest. Only strong and vigorous presidential leadership could deliver peace. That leadership was required not only in dealing with the Soviet Union, but also and perhaps especially in terms of the U.S. public, military and political elites, and European allies. Kennedy was not negotiating only with Khrushchev. He was constantly negotiating, maneuvering, and forging alliances at home and in Europe as well. Only active presidential leadership would overcome the doubts, fears, and provocations of the military, the hardliners, and the public. The Soviet leader faced the same constraints, perhaps even tougher ones. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev gave ground to each other to enable his counterpart to face down his own domestic skeptics and critics.

Through hard experience, Kennedy came to appreciate that only the president could set a vision of peace, and that only the president could overcome the deeply entrenched false assumptions held by the military, the foreign policy establishment, and the public, after years of anti-Soviet rhetoric and strategy. As the scholar James Richter noted, “Domestic politics of the great powers will also act as a brake on change … once established, [legitimating] myths become embedded in countries’ domestic politics and are difficult to dislodge.”
⁹
A consensus to cooperate with the Soviet Union would never coalesce on its own in the early 1960s. It would need to be forged by Kennedy himself.

Kennedy entered 1963 determined to lead the way to peace despite all the skepticism and barriers. He was determined to use the significant political capital that he had garnered in the Cuban Missile Crisis to that end. He had come to believe that his relationship with Khrushchev would help make an agreement possible. He also knew something crucial that the public did not. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been solved by negotiation, not by hardline bluster or militarism. It had involved an informal handshake and trust at the top between two adversaries.

The Push for Peace
 

Both Kennedy and Khrushchev personally seized the opportunity opened by the crisis. In late 1962, they began an intensive exchange of letters on reviving the on-again, off-again negotiations on a nuclear test ban, an agreement made all the more urgent given the evident progress of China in acquiring nuclear weapons. On December 19, Khrushchev wrote Kennedy that the time had arrived to “put an end once and for all” to nuclear weapons testing.
¹⁰

Old unsettled issues—about both Germany and arms control—would threaten an agreement once again, causing both sides to question the goodwill, resolve, and ability of the other side to keep hardliners in check. As the past failures of U.S.-Soviet negotiations had vividly shown, there could never be unity on either side about the way forward. Only leadership at the top would suffice. The next nine months would be a drama of the two protagonists, Kennedy and Khrushchev. Kennedy’s theory of peace and Khrushchev’s quest for peaceful coexistence would face their ultimate test.

Chapter 4
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KENNEDY AIMED TO
conjure peace through the spoken word. This is how he understood great leadership. This is how he would turn his own personal courage and skills to the service of humanity. As a senator, Kennedy had risen to national prominence with his Pulitzer Prize–winning book of 1957,
Profiles in Courage
, which highlighted acts of political courage by eight senators.
¹
The book was, at the core, a compendium of bold oratory throughout U.S. Senate history, speeches by politicians of such piercing eloquence and truth that they outlasted their own age and inspired later generations. During the summer of 1963, Kennedy made a series of speeches on peace that would likewise move his contemporaries—including his adversaries—and later generations.

In his efforts to rally public opinion to his side, Kennedy was acutely aware of one of the greatest foreign policy setbacks of the previous half century: President Woodrow Wilson’s failure in 1919 to sway public and senatorial opinion to the cause of the League of Nations. Kennedy thus sought to stir the public not with false
promises but with hard realism, not with balm but with responsible talk about the great stakes of making peace. He would follow Churchill’s dictum of straight talk even if it was painful and politically dangerous. Kennedy would appeal to the people, so that peace would be a triumph of democracy itself.

The Power of Oratory