Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (25 page)

De Gaulle was a model of what Kennedy aspired to. He shared de Gaulle’s view that small men cannot handle great events. Indeed, as the British historian Isaiah Berlin shrewdly concluded from several conversations with Kennedy at White House dinners, the president was “devoted to the idea of great men. There was no doubt that when he talked about Churchill, whom he obviously admired vastly, when he talked about Stalin, he talked about Napoleon . . . about Lenin, and two or three other world leaders, his eyes shone with a particular glitter, and it was quite clear that he thought in terms of great men and what they were able to do, not at all of impersonal forces. [He had] a very, very personalized view of history.”

When Kennedy took responsibility for the Bay of Pigs, it was not simply a courageous move to protect subordinates, but also a statement of his conviction that if he were to establish himself as a historical figure, he needed to be seen as at the center of all his administration did—the achievements and the failures. He was always keen to hear the views of others on the great issues of the day. “One of the things which struck me most forcibly,” Berlin said, “was that I’ve never known a man who listened to every single word that was uttered more attentively. His eye protruded slightly, he leaned forward towards one, and one was made to feel nervous and responsible by the fact that obviously every single word registered. . . . He really listened to what one said and answered
that
.” Anything he heard from advisers, however, was given the most critical scrutiny, especially after the Cuban failure. Final policy judgments had to be his and his alone. Watching how he decided weighty policy questions, Bohlen concluded that for Kennedy, “the issues and the consequences of mistakes of a serious nature . . . are so great that no man of any character or intelligence will really wholeheartedly accept the views of anybody else.”

Kennedy’s meeting with de Gaulle made clear that his failure to decide matters for himself about the Bay of Pigs had hurt him. The experience and then conversations with the extraordinary French leader underscored that experts could not be entirely trusted and only he would be in a position to see the broad contours of an issue. He tried to remind himself of this every time he faced a major foreign policy decision.

He saw his dealings with de Gaulle as an opportunity to put this insight into practice. Before his visit to Paris, he, or Bundy for him, had solicited advice from Nicholas Wahl, a Harvard University political scientist, who had a close relationship with de Gaulle and a rich knowledge of French politics. Although Kennedy valued Wahl’s assessment of de Gaulle, as someone who expected deference to his views, he was determined to make his own judgments on how to deal with so imposing a figure. He read de Gaulle’s war memoirs as a vehicle for understanding someone he wished to use for his own purposes. He memorized quotes as a way to flatter the older man and make sure that their meeting would resonate as a demonstration of Kennedy’s mastery of international relations. It largely worked, since substantive tensions over differences with de Gaulle, especially his determination to build an independent nuclear arsenal against U.S. wishes, did not become an open source of conflict and their exchanges seemed to be those of allies set on defending their nations’ security and assuring the peace.

As he prepared to meet with Khrushchev in Vienna, Kennedy sounded out Soviet experts on what to expect from the Kremlin leader. The CIA, the State Department’s Soviet division, Kennan, Harriman, Thompson, and Bohlen were the principal advisers. The CIA had prepared a psychological profile of Khrushchev drawn up by twenty American psychiatrists and psychologists. It recounted his rise from humble beginnings, which made him confident that “his vigor, initiative and capacity are equal to his station.” It also emphasized his “depression and vulnerability to alcohol” and depicted him as a somewhat erratic character subject to mood swings between elation and depression. His wife described him as “either all the way up or all the way down.”

Kennedy had few illusions about the sixty-six-year-old first secretary of the Communist Party. Although born into a Ukrainian peasant family and largely devoid of formal education, Khrushchev was more than a canny peasant survivor of Stalin’s ruthless Soviet system, which killed off many of its most ambitious and talented military and political leaders. Kennedy wisely assumed that someone who had risen to the top of the Soviet government through the tumultuous years of revolution and war was a formidable personality who should not be underestimated. However ungainly the burly, overweight Khrushchev might appear, Kennedy understood that it would be a mistake to believe that he faced anyone less impressive than the imperious de Gaulle or any of the high-powered American and British figures he had met in the last twenty-five years.

However, the CIA report boosted Kennedy’s confidence that he could handle a difficult character like Khrushchev. The man he saw in those pages reminded him of the powerful American politicians, including his vice president, whom he had managed to deal with successfully during his fifteen years in politics. He worried nonetheless that after the Bay of Pigs Khrushchev would see him as too inexperienced and too indecisive to stand up to someone as assertive as the Soviet leader. “He’s not dumb,” Kennedy said after reading the briefing books on Khrushchev. “He’s smart. He’s tough.” Yet Kennedy had good reason for concern: When Kennedy failed to bomb or land Marines in Castro’s Cuba, Khrushchev said to his son, “I don’t understand Kennedy. What’s wrong with him? Can he really be that indecisive?”

The State Department was optimistic about the results of a conference. They advised Kennedy that Khrushchev would emphasize peaceful coexistence. He would seek specific agreements and would aim to end the talks on a note of accord. He would also stress the need for a Berlin settlement, a slowing of the arms race, and expanded U.S.-Soviet trade. “Khrushchev might, for effect, strike a note of anger and bluster. . . . But it seems likely that he will generally assume an attitude of reasonable firmness, coupled with a pitch for improved US-Soviet relations. . . . Finally, with the eyes of the world on Vienna, Khrushchev might regard the meeting as an appropriate occasion for some dramatic step intended to demonstrate Soviet progress or peaceful intent.” The department’s experts predicted the possibility of a new Soviet space shot or a disarmament initiative. In retrospect, the department’s analysis became another reason for Kennedy to dismiss his diplomatic experts as less than helpful in assessing international developments and another reason to be skeptical of their advice.

As for Kennedy’s “line of approach to Khrushchev,” the department, in a draft written by Bohlen, recommended that the president emphasize their shared concern in avoiding nuclear war. Moreover, he would do well to tell Khrushchev that wars of national liberation, which Moscow was sponsoring, constituted a serious threat to world peace. The general impression Kennedy should leave on Khrushchev was of a United States determined to avoid war with the Soviet Union yet also hopeful that Moscow would engage in realistic and responsible actions to preserve the peace.

The department’s take on the Vienna meeting struck Kennedy as sterile and predictable. The fundamental issue between the two sides was distrust or the conviction that each intended to subvert and, if possible, destroy the other’s political-social system. Professions of peaceful intentions would be of no help in disarming the other’s suspicions. Only concrete steps demonstrating a commitment to coexistence could improve relations, and the State Department had nothing to suggest that promised to advance this goal.

Kennedy was more interested in what George Kennan had to say. As the architect of containment, with a long history of astute commentary on Soviet behavior, the fifty-seven-year-old Kennan, who had spent much of his professional life living near or inside the Soviet Union, impressed Kennedy as a detached observer with no political ax to grind and a fearless commentator on Soviet and American policies. Suggestions from Kennan on what to expect from Khrushchev at a summit meeting seemed essential. But Kennan, whom Kennedy had made ambassador to Yugoslavia, where Tito had established himself as a unique independent voice in the communist camp, was loath to offer much advice.

“Fear there is little I can say that would be helpful,” Kennan cabled on the eve of the conference. Complaining that he had not been apprised of the reasons for the summit, he doubted the wisdom of holding a conference without clear prospects for useful agreements. Kennedy’s interest in scoring political points for himself at home and abroad by meeting with de Gaulle and Khrushchev did not enter into Kennan’s calculations. He questioned the need to remind Khrushchev, as Acheson and others had urged, of our determination to resist any overt encroachment challenging U.S. commitments to the U.N. or allies. Kennan thought it self-evident that Khrushchev would not see Kennedy’s presidency as representing a significant shift in U.S. determination to defend its interests. He did, however, expect Moscow to exert political pressure by “ruthless exploitation of colonial issue and all-out propaganda attack.” Khrushchev should be put on notice that such an assault would undermine any prospects for improved Soviet-American relations and would threaten a nuclear conflict. Such a pronouncement could be helpful to Khrushchev in resisting Chinese pressure to spread communism by all possible means short of war.

Llewellyn Thompson also had doubts about the value of a summit meeting. He thought that Khrushchev would favor a pleasant conference, and he might “make some proposal or take position on some problem which would have effect of improving atmosphere and relations. I find it extremely difficult however to imagine what this could be.” He saw slight possibilities that Khrushchev might propose something constructive on China, Vietnam, Laos, Central Europe, arms control, or outer space, but he was hard-pressed to see what these initiatives might be. In brief, he had no high hopes for any sort of breakthrough at the meeting.

Averell Harriman was eager to weigh in as well on how Kennedy should prepare for the summit. Harriman had long experience with Soviet leaders, including Stalin, with whom he had numerous dealings as ambassador to Moscow from 1943 to 1946. He had served Truman as secretary of commerce from 1946 to 1948 and been governor of New York for four years in the fifties. Kennedy was not keen on having him in his administration. He was notoriously egotistical and seemed certain to demand more presidential attention than Kennedy wanted to give. (In 1975, at a twenty-fifth anniversary Korean War conference at the Truman Library, I watched as Harriman turned a hearing aid on and off during discussions. Why does he do that? I asked someone well acquainted with him. “He only turns it on when he’s speaking” was the reply.)

In 1961, Harriman was sixty-nine years old, hard of hearing, and too proud to wear a hearing aid. But he remained someone with unrequited ambitions. He wanted a high post in the Kennedy White House, principally as an adviser on Soviet affairs, which he knew best. As a signal to Kennedy that he deserved appointment as
the
administration’s Russian expert, Harriman persuaded Khrushchev to see him. However, two days of conversation in which Khrushchev hoped to send messages to the new U.S. government about Berlin, coexistence, tensions with China, and Soviet might were not enough to convince Kennedy that Harriman should be his man in, or the best one to consult on, Moscow.

Harriman’s friends, however, were tenacious in promoting his candidacy for a foreign affairs post. “Are you sure that giving Averell a job wouldn’t be just an act of sentiment?” Bobby Kennedy asked Schlesinger. Schlesinger thought not: “Harriman had one or two missions left under his belt,” he said. And so Kennedy, after Harriman agreed to wear a hearing aid, appointed him roving ambassador or ambassador at large. Harriman rationalized his peripheral role by remembering how he had managed to expand his influence under FDR, saying, “Oh, you know, all these presidents are the same. You start at the bottom and work your way up.”

When he learned that Kennedy was going to Vienna to meet Khrushchev, he saw a chance to demonstrate his value to the administration. He rushed to Paris to see Kennedy, arranging to attend a state dinner with de Gaulle and the president, and to corner Kennedy, to whom he had sent word that he needed to speak to him about Khrushchev. “I hear there is something you want to say to me,” Kennedy coolly told him.

Harriman replied, “Go to Vienna. Don’t be too serious, have some fun, get to know him a little, don’t let him rattle you, he’ll try to rattle you and frighten you, but don’t pay any attention to that. Turn him aside, gently. And don’t try for too much. Remember that he’s just as scared as you are, his previous excursion to the Western world in Europe did not go well, he is very aware of his peasant origins, of the contrast between Mrs. Khrushchev and Jackie, and there’ll be tension. His style will be to attack and then see if he can get away with it: Laugh about it, don’t get into a fight. Rise above it. Have some fun.”

Charles Bohlen doubted that meeting Khrushchev would be much fun or very productive of improved relations. But he appreciated that Kennedy needed to find out for himself what Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership were like. Bohlen knew that Kennedy was getting plenty of advice on how to deal with the communists in general and Khrushchev in particular. But he also understood that Kennedy wanted to put what he was being told to a test. So it would be helpful to Kennedy to make Khrushchev’s “acquaintance, to get a feel of the type of man he was dealing with and the type of situation he was confronting.”

Khrushchev came to Vienna with a relatively weak hand. True, he could boast about Sputnik and Gagarin’s spaceflight as well as the shoot-down of America’s U-2 over Russia and Eisenhower’s embarrassment in having to admit to American spying. He could also threaten to oust Western forces from Berlin, where Soviet and East German troops surrounded them. But he knew that the United States had a significant advantage over the Soviet Union in nuclear missiles, especially submarine missiles that could hit Russia without warning. While Moscow could inflict grievous damage on America’s West European allies, it lacked the intercontinental weapons that could strike the United States.