Berlin 1961 (35 page)

A stunned Kennedy sat back and absorbed the storm.

Kennedy tried to explain what he had meant by using the word. Referring to World War II, he said, “Western Europe had suffered because of its failure to foresee with precision what other countries would do.” The U.S. had failed to foresee Chinese actions recently in Korea. What he wanted from their meeting was “to introduce precision in judgments of the two sides and to obtain a clearer understanding of where we are going.”

Before their lunch break, Khrushchev would have the last word.

He believed the purpose of their conversation was to improve and not worsen relations. If he and Kennedy should succeed in that effort, “the expenses incurred in connection with the meeting would be well justified.” If not, the money would have been wasted and the hope of the people frustrated.

As participants looked at their watches, they were surprised that it was already two p.m.

K
hrushchev remained in full voice over a lunch of beef Wellington in the U.S. ambassador residence’s dining room, lubricated by his mostly vodka dry martini. He regaled the long table, at which each man had nine aides and senior officials, about matters ranging from farm technology to space travel.

Khrushchev boasted about Gagarin’s flight as the first man in space, but he conceded that Gagarin’s masters at first did not want to trust him with the spacecraft’s controls. It had seemed too much power for one individual.

Kennedy suggested that the U.S. and USSR should consider a joint moon expedition.

After an initial rejection, Khrushchev reconsidered, saying, “All right, why not?” It seemed to be the first progress of the day.

At the end of the lunch, Kennedy lit a cigar and threw the match behind Khrushchev’s chair.

The Soviet leader feigned alarm. “Are you trying to set me on fire?” he asked.

Kennedy assured him he wasn’t.

“Ah,” said Khrushchev with a smile, “a capitalist, not an incendiary.”

Khrushchev’s raw energy was overpowering Kennedy’s more subtle charms.

The two men’s after-meal toasts reflected the unbalanced nature of their earlier conversations. Kennedy was brief and complimentary of Khrushchev’s “vigor and energy,” hoping for fruitful meetings.

The Soviet leader responded at greater length. He talked about how the two countries had the combined power to stop by joint effort any war any other country might start. He spoke of his initially good relationship with Eisenhower. Although Eisenhower had taken responsibility for the U-2 spy flight incident that undermined their relationship, Khrushchev said he was “almost sure that Eisenhower had not known about the flight” but had accepted blame “in the spirit of chivalry.” Khrushchev declared the flight to have been orchestrated by those who wished to worsen U.S.–Soviet relations—and they had succeeded.

He spoke of his desire to receive Kennedy in the Soviet Union “when the time was ripe.” But he then condemned the visit of his previous guest, former Vice President Nixon, who thought “by showing the Soviet people a dream kitchen, a kitchen that did not exist nor would ever exist in the U.S., he would convert the Soviet people to capitalism.” Only Nixon, he said, “could have thought of such nonsense.”

Khrushchev told Kennedy that he took full credit for Nixon’s electoral defeat, which had been gained because he had refused to release the imprisoned American airmen whom his troops had shot down. If he had released them, Khrushchev said, Kennedy would have lost the presidency by at least 200,000 votes.

“Don’t spread that story around,” Kennedy said, laughing. “If you tell everybody that you like me better than Nixon, I’ll be ruined at home.”

Khrushchev raised his glass to the president’s health and said how he envied his youth. Yet Kennedy bore the backache of a much older man under his corset. The benefit of his morning shot from “Dr. Feelgood” was wearing thin. The procaine, vitamins, amphetamines, and enzymes could not counteract the weight of Khrushchev’s onslaught.

A
fter lunch, Kennedy invited Khrushchev for a stroll in the garden with interpreters only. Thompson and others had advised Kennedy that Khrushchev would be more pliable when he wasn’t around other Soviet officials before whom he felt he had to perform.

Kennedy’s friends O’Donnell and Powers watched the superpower stroll from a second-floor window at the residence. Khrushchev circled around Kennedy, snapping at him like a terrier and shaking his finger, while Kennedy strolled casually on the lawn beside him, stopping now and then to say a few words, withholding any upset or anger.

O’Donnell downed an Austrian beer and condemned himself again for not having brought a camera. He was close enough to see how hard the stroll was on Kennedy’s back. The president winced as he leaned over to better hear the far shorter Khrushchev.

W
hen the two men returned inside, Kennedy suggested that he and Khrushchev continue talking privately for a time with interpreters before their aides rejoined them. Happy with how matters were unfolding, Khrushchev agreed.

Kennedy wanted to further explain his fear of “miscalculation.” In another awkward effort to bond with the Soviet, Kennedy conceded he had made a misjudgment “with regard to the Cuba situation.”

Kennedy said he had to make judgments that would drive U.S. policy based on what the USSR would do next around the world, just as Khrushchev had to “make judgments as to the moves of the U.S.” So, Kennedy said, he wanted to use their meeting to gain “greater precision in these judgments so that our two countries could survive this period of competition without endangering their national security.”

Khrushchev countered that dangers only arose when the U.S. misunderstood the sources of revolution, which he insisted were homegrown and not invented by the Soviets. He seized upon the example of Iran, a U.S. ally, where the Soviet Union “does not want a revolution there and does not do anything in that country to promote such a development.”

Khrushchev said, however, that “the people of the country are so poor that the country has become a volcano and changes are bound to occur sooner or later. The Shah will certainly be overthrown. By supporting the Shah, the United States generates adverse feelings toward the United States among the people of Iran and, conversely, favorable feelings toward the USSR.”

He then turned to Cuba. “A mere handful of people, headed by Fidel Castro, overthrew the Batista regime because of its oppressive nature,” he said. “During Castro’s fight against Batista, U.S. capitalist circles…supported Batista, and this is why the anger of the Cuban people turned against the United States. The President’s decision to launch a landing in Cuba only strengthened the revolutionary forces and Castro’s own position.” Said Khrushchev, “Castro is not a communist, but U.S. policy can make him one.”

Referring to his own life, Khrushchev said he had not been born a communist. “It was the capitalists who made me a communist.” Khrushchev scoffed at President Kennedy’s notion that Cuba could endanger American security. Could six million people really be a threat to the mighty U.S., the Soviet leader wondered.

Khrushchev challenged Kennedy to explain to him what sort of global precedent he might be setting by arguing that the U.S. should be free to act as it wished regarding Cuba. Did that mean the USSR would be free to meddle in the internal affairs of Turkey and Iran, who were allies of the U.S. and had American bases and rockets? Through the Bay of Pigs invasion, Khrushchev argued, “the U.S. has set a precedent for intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. The USSR is stronger than Turkey and Iran, just as the U.S. is stronger than Cuba. This situation may cause ‘miscalculation,’ to use the President’s term.”

Khrushchev’s voice hung on that dreaded word for emphasis.

Turning Kennedy’s words on himself, Khrushchev agreed both sides should agree “to rule out miscalculation.” This is why he was “happy that the President had said that Cuba was a mistake.”

Kennedy attempted again to appease the growling bear. He conceded Khrushchev’s point that if Iran’s current prime minister didn’t improve his people’s lot, “there would be important changes in that country as well.” Having been challenged on Cuba, Turkey, and Iran, Kennedy felt compelled to respond. He protested that he had not been a fan of Batista, but his concern now was that Castro would transform Cuba into a base for regional trouble. Although it was true that the U.S. had military installations in Turkey and Iran, Kennedy said, “these two countries are so weak that they could be no threat to the USSR, no more than Cuba to the U.S.”

When U.S. officials read the transcripts of the two leaders’ exchanges a few days later, they were again shocked by what followed. In reference to Cuba, Kennedy wondered how Khrushchev would respond if a government friendly to the West established itself in Poland. “It was critical to have the changes occurring in the world and affecting the balance of power take place in a way that would not involve the prestige of the treaty commitments of our two countries,” he said. What Kennedy was suggesting was that because of Poland’s Warsaw Pact treaty obligations, it was off-limits for American interference.

It was once again the furthest any U.S. president ever had gone with a Soviet counterpart in recognizing the division of Europe as acceptable and permanent. To balance this apparent concession, Kennedy added that the days would be numbered for Soviet bloc leaders who failed to produce better living standards and education for their people. At the same time, Kennedy was saying that the U.S. would not meddle where the Kremlin’s prestige was in question—and Moscow ought to play by the same rules.

Khrushchev shot back that American policy was inconsistent, then apologized to the president that he wasn’t criticizing Kennedy personally, as he had only been in the White House a very short time. The Soviet leader again returned to the subject of Iran, and said that for all the U.S. emphasis on democracy, Washington supported the Shah, “who says his power was given to him by God. Everybody knows how this power was seized by the Shah’s father, who had been a sergeant in the Iranian Army and who had usurped the throne by means of murder, plunder and violence…. The United States is spending vast sums of money in Iran but that money does not go to the people; it is plundered by the Shah’s entourage.”

Hammering away further at what he condemned as American hypocrisy, Khrushchev turned to Washington’s support for Spanish dictator Franco. “The U.S. knows how he came to power and yet it supports him,” said Khrushchev. “The United States supports the most reactionary regimes and this is how the people see U.S. policy.” He conceded that Castro might indeed become a communist, though he didn’t start that way. Khrushchev felt that U.S. sanctions had turned him toward Moscow.

Kennedy was in over his head. For all Kennedy’s willingness to debate Khrushchev, he had failed to challenge the Soviet leader where he was most vulnerable. He had not condemned the Soviet use of force in East Germany and Hungary in 1953 and 1956. Worse, he had not posed the most important question of all: Why were hundreds of thousands of East German refugees fleeing to a better life in the West?

At the end of the first day’s talks, Kennedy returned to the subject of Poland and argued that democratic elections there might well replace the current Soviet-friendly government with one that was closer to the West. Khrushchev feigned shock. It was not respectful, he said, for Kennedy “to speak that way about a government the U.S. recognizes and with which it has diplomatic relations.” He argued that Poland’s “election system is more democratic than that in the United States.”

Kennedy’s subsequent effort to differentiate between America’s multi-party system and single-party Poland was lost on Khrushchev. The two men could not agree on the definition of democracy, let alone on whether Poland had one.

Kennedy and Khrushchev circumnavigated the globe geographically and philosophically with Khrushchev thrusts and Kennedy parries on issues ranging from Angola to Laos. Khrushchev’s biggest concession of the day would be agreement to accept a neutral, independent Laos—a deal that their underlings would negotiate on the Viennese sidelines. Uncharacteristically, he demanded little from Kennedy in exchange.

Khrushchev was clearing out the underbrush for what he wanted to be the next day’s all-consuming focus: Berlin.

K
ennedy declared an evening break at 6:45, after six hours of nearly uninterrupted discussion. Weary and drawn, Kennedy noted the lateness of the hour and suggested that the next agenda item, the question of a nuclear test ban, could be discussed that night over dinner with the Austrian president, so that most of the following day could be given over to Berlin. Kennedy also gave Khrushchev the option of discussing both issues the following day.

Kennedy wanted to ensure that Khrushchev didn’t stray from his pre-summit commitment to discuss a test ban, something he knew was of little interest to Moscow, before they took on Berlin.

With Kennedy glancing at his watch, Khrushchev pounced on the mention of Berlin. He said he would agree to discuss nuclear testing only in the context of general disarmament issues. That was an approach Kennedy opposed for the simple reason that a test ban could be agreed upon quickly, while concluding far-reaching arms reduction agreements could consume years of negotiation.

Regarding Berlin, Khrushchev said his demands would have to be satisfied the following day or he would move unilaterally. “The Soviet Union hopes that the U.S. will understand this question so that both countries can sign a peace treaty together,” he said. “This would improve relations. But if the United States refuses to sign a peace treaty, the Soviet Union will do so and nothing will stop it.”

After a Soviet limo drove Khrushchev away, a dazed Kennedy turned to Ambassador Thompson on the U.S. residence steps and asked, “Is it always like this?”

“Par for the course,” said Thompson.

Thompson restrained himself from telling the president how much better matters might have gone had he taken the advice he had been given to avoid ideological debate. Thompson knew the next day’s Berlin discussion was likely to be even more difficult.