Kennedy: The Classic Biography (110 page)

Rusk, with a professional preference for four-power ministerial meetings, had initially been undecided about meeting the Soviets alone on this issue. But once he started he tirelessly and skillfully demonstrated the value of using prolonged discussions to avert deadlines and disaster. In three autumn, 1961, talks with Gromyko in New York, he stressed that the West would not sign an agreement giving concessions in exchange for nothing more than its present ill-defined rights. “That,” he said, “would be buying the same horse twice.” Kennedy, in his subsequent talk with Gromyko, added his own metaphor: “You have offered to trade us an apple for an orchard. We don’t do that in this country.” Khrushchev, no slouch at figures of speech himself, complained later in a letter that West Berlin for him was not an orchard but a weed of burr and nettle.

Berlin was the principal topic of the Kennedy-Khrushchev letters. The initiation of the correspondence in September, 1961, helped cool off the crisis; and while Khrushchev’s subsequent letters on the subject fluctuated in tone, the President always managed to find some passage with which he could associate himself to keep the Chairman’s hopes alive. He wrote Khrushchev that an East German peace treaty, by convincing the West German people that peaceful reunification was impossible, might well give rise to the very kind of nationalism and tension that Khrushchev most feared. He pointed out the discrepancy between Khrushchev’s stated wish not to exacerbate the situation and Ulbricht’s savage bluster. He asked the Soviet Chairman to be as realistic in recognizing the West’s continued presence in West Berlin as Khrushchev wanted him to be in recognizing that no all-Berlin or all-German solution was immediately possible.

During 1961-1962 the President interested himself in a variety of negotiating proposals: an updated version of the 1959 “Western Peace Plan,” adjudication by the World Court, an all-Berlin free city, parallel Western and Communist peace conferences, a five-to-ten-year
modus vivendi
, the use of Berlin as a UN headquarters, a Central European security plan, an International Access Authority, a ten-point mutual declaration and others. Most failed to survive copious Allied study and deliberate French and German leaks. The result, as Prime Minister Macmillan commented to him, was that he had little that was specific to offer the Russians, “hardly the soup course and none of the fish.” The Germans, prodded by De Gaulle, became angry all over again in the spring of 1962, wrongfully charging that the Americans were not reporting all their proposals and complaining about those that were reported. Our error, JFK later acknowledged, was in trying to push the Germans to accept ideas in which he could not interest Khrushchev anyway.

Nevertheless the contacts and exchanges continued. Kennedy often likened the problem to that of Austria, where several years of fruitless bargaining had suddenly produced a Soviet-Western agreement after Khrushchev took over. But even in 1963, after the Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear Test Ban Treaty had helped change the bargaining atmosphere, no agreement was reached or in sight. Khrushchev did, however, remove his pressure and halt his threats; and the President believed that our demonstrated willingness to talk—by holding out the possibility of a reasonable settlement, by treating the Soviet Union as a great power and by making clear to the world that the intransigence was not on our side—had contributed in its own way to the peaceful defense of West Berlin. “Jaw, jaw” for its own sake had been helpful and effective, and Kennedy was not pushing for any new solutions now that the pressure was off.

In 1963 the Wall was still there, but the East Germans had initiated proposals for openings in exchange for trade. West Berlin was still a city in danger, an island of freedom and prosperity deep within imprisoned East Germany. And incidents still occurred—including an unseemly squabble in the fall of 1963 over whether Western troops at the
Autobahn
checkpoints needed to dismount or lower their truck tailgates to be counted. But access to West Berlin remained free—West Berlin remained free—and neither a devastating nuclear war, nor a collapse of the Western Alliance, nor a one-sided treaty of peace had taken place as once feared. “I think [the Communists] realize,” said President Kennedy, “that West Berlin is a vital interest to us…and that we are going to stay there.”

The West Berliners also realized it. They gave John Kennedy the most overwhelming reception of his career on the twenty-sixth of June, 1963. The size of the crowd, their shouts and the look of hope and gratitude in their eyes moved some in our party to tears—even before we surveyed the Wall. The President—who would later remark that his trip had given him a far deeper understanding of the necessity of ultimate reunification—was moved to extemporaneous eloquence. “When I leave tonight,” he told a trade union conference, “the United States stays.” “You are now their hostages,” he said to the American troops stationed in the city, “you are…the arrowhead.” And at a luncheon given by Mayor Brandt at Berlin City Hall, he offered a toast “to the German people on both sides of the Wall [and] to the cause of freedom on both sides of the Wall.”

It was on the platform outside that City Hall—from where I could see only a sea of human faces chanting “Kenne-dy,” “Kenne-dy” as far as my vision could reach—that he delivered one of his most inspired and inspiring talks:

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “Civis Ro-manus sum.” Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’ t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin…. And there are even a few who say that it is true that Communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. “Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen.”

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in….

We…look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one—and this country, and this great continent of Europe—in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

As we departed that evening to fly over East Germany to Ireland, the President was glowing from his reception. It would make all Americans recognize that their efforts and risks had been appreciated, he said. He would leave a note to his successor, “to be opened at a time of some discouragement,” and in it he would write three words: “Go to Germany.”

He came into the cabin of “Air Force One” with a look of pride and pleasure that reflected more, I believe, than that day’s tributes. It reflected satisfaction that he had done what had to be done, despite dangers and detractors, to keep that city free. As he sat down across from me, weary but happy, he said, “Well never have another day like this one as long as we live.”

CHAPTER XXII
THE ARROWS

O
F ALL
the Churchill phrases John Kennedy liked to quote, his favorite was: “We arm to parley.” Kennedy believed in arming the United States to provide bargaining power and backing for disarmament talks and diplomacy. He also believed in 1961 that urgent steps were required to make certain that “our arms are sufficient beyond doubt.”

His task was made more difficult by the fact that his predecessor was a justly renowned general who believed that our arms were sufficient beyond doubt. “I’ve spent my life in this,” President Eisenhower had snapped in answer to a 1960 press conference question on defense, “and I know more about it than almost anybody, I think, in the country…. Defense has been handled well and efficiently.” Later, in 1963, complaining of Kennedy’s large military expenditure increases, he would declare that “the defense budget I left behind provided amply for our security.”

But John Kennedy had a different view. As a student author in 1940 he had written: “We must always keep our armaments equal to our commitments.” As a Senator in the 1950’s he had grave doubts that we had done so, and had strongly opposed the “New Look” weakening of Army manpower and the overreliance on “massive retaliation.” As a candidate in 1960 he had repeatedly called for strengthening our nuclear and conventional forces. As President-elect he fired off a list of questions to his new Secretary of Defense following our late December, 1960, budget and program review:

Should there be a supplemental Defense Budget…additional funds now for Polaris, Minuteman and Atlas missiles… an air alert…continental defense…modernization of conventional forces…airlift capabilities…?

[We] will have to undertake a basic re-evaluation of our defense strategy, targets and capability…the place of manned aircraft…aircraft carriers…present troop strength…bases abroad…the overlapping of services and missions…the coordination of intelligence functions…command and control systems, particularly with regard to the authority to use nuclear weapons…the role of the Reserves and the National Guard…

At the same time he gave McNamara his first basic policy change: “Under no circumstances should we allow a predetermined arbitrary financial limit to establish either strategy or force levels.” Our strategy was to be determined by the objectives of our foreign policy. Our force levels were to be determined by the necessities of our safety and commitments. His Budget Director and White House aides were to work with McNamara on providing whatever had to be provided at the lowest possible cost. “Like any other investment,” Kennedy had said of defense spending in 1960, “it will be a gamble with our money. But the alternative is to gamble with our lives.”

Less than a week after the new administration had come into office, McNamara reported to the Cabinet and then in detail to the President what he had found in the Pentagon:

1. A strategy of massive nuclear retaliation as the answer to all military and political aggression, a strategy believed by few of our friends and none of our enemies and resulting in serious weaknesses in our conventional forces.

2. A financial ceiling on national security, making military strategy the stepchild of a predetermined budget.

3. A strategic nuclear force vulnerable to surprise missile attack, a nonnuclear force weak in combat-ready divisions, in airlift capacity and in tactical air support, a counterinsurgency force for all practical purposes nonexistent, and a weapons inventory completely lacking in certain major elements but far oversupplied in others.

4. Too many automatic decisions made in advance instead of in the light of an actual emergency, and too few Pentagon-wide plans for each kind of contingency. The Army was relying on airlift the Air Force could not supply. The Air Force was stockpiling supplies for a war lasting a few days while the Army stockpiles assumed a war of two years.

As a result, reported the Secretary, he could not answer all the President’s questions until some basic analyses had been worked out.He requested detailed answers to ninety-six questions of his own (which rocked the Pentagon and became known as McNamara’s ninety-six trombones). But for the present neither the overformalized NSC apparatus nor the rivalry-ridden, disorganized Pentagon was geared to provide precise answers. He had seen enough, however, to support the President’s announcement in his first State of the Union Message of plans for an increase in airlift capacity and an acceleration of Polaris; and he was agreeable to that message’s direction that the Secretary of State “reappraise our entire defense strategy—our ability to fulfill our commitments—…and the adequacy, modernization and mobility of our present conventional and nuclear forces.”

No incoming President had ever undertaken a more searching re-examination of the defense establishment; and Kennedy wanted it in a month. “We are trying to telescope a lifetime’s work into twenty days,” remarked McNamara. But he compared it with an architect designing a new house without starting all over with the concept of house-building.

Before the month was out, the report was in. In a succession of meetings with his White House (Bundy, Wiesner, Sorensen), Defense (McNamara, Gilpatric and Comptroller Charles Hitch) and Budget Bureau teams, the President hammered out a series of drastic revisions in nearly every part of the defense budget. He added nearly three billion dollars in appropriations, offsetting this in part by the elimination of obsolete or duplicative programs. The Special Presidential Message to the Congress on March 28 containing these revisions was remarkable for two characteristics. One was the first full statement of a coherent national defense doctrine for the age of mutual nuclear capabilities:

1. The primary purpose of our arms is peace, not war…. The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. Neither our strategy nor our psychology as a nation, and certainly not our economy, must become dependent upon the permanent maintenance of a large military establishment….

2. Our arms will never be used to strike the first blow in any attack. This is not a confession of weakness but a statement of strength…. We must offset whatever advantage this may appear to hand an aggressor by…increasing the capability of…that portion of our forces which would survive the initial attack….