Kennedy: The Classic Biography (135 page)

Once it appeared that a reasonable treaty was possible, the President was determined that no quibbling over language or sniping from his subordinates would prevent it. The force of his leadership in the daily sessions overrode all the nit-picking the skeptics could devise. He gave his final approval, clearing up one minor point at issue, in response to a telephone call from his negotiators in Moscow on the very day the treaty was concluded and initialed. It was July 25, 1963, six weeks after the American University address.

A formidable hurdle still remained—Senate approval. Congressional Republicans had consistently bombarded the President with attacks on “his fuzzy-thinking disarmament advisers” and their thinking on the test ban. Leading members of the influential Joint Atomic Energy Committee had predicted that anything other than “a reasonably foolproof test-ban agreement…[could be] a greater risk to the national security than an arms race,” because of our need to test new weapons. Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, even before the treaty was initialed, said that he and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were “cautiously skeptical.” Republican Senate leader Dirksen—who with Charles Halleck had earlier expressed the fear that the negotiations “may end in virtual surrender by our negotiators”—forecast that “a good many reservations would be presented.” Halleck added that the absence of inspection and the possibilities of cheating made the treaty “far more tragic than no agreement at all.”

The President’s chief concern was that enough Southern Democrats might combine with Republicans to prevent the necessary two-thirds vote. Angered by his civil rights bill, they would be hoping to use the treaty as a bargaining counter and follow the lead of Armed Services Committee Chairman Russell, who was opposed. A popular line among other conservative Congressmen and newspapers was the charge that “a secret deal with Khrushchev” had been made during the Moscow meetings at the price of this nation’s security. A Harris Poll found general public approval, but fewer than 50 percent giving “unqualified approval.” Many observers predicted “the biggest Senate foreign policy battle since the struggle over…the League of Nations treaty after World War I.”

Far more pessimistic than most of his advisers, and determined not to repeat Wilson’s mistakes with the League of Nations, Kennedy had started early. He sent Rusk to brief the key committees and Foster to talk individually with every Senator while the Moscow talks were still in session. He included a bipartisan group of Senators on the delegation traveling to Moscow with Rusk for the official treaty-signing ceremony.
²

The day after the treaty was initialed, the President took his case to the American people in one of his most effective televised addresses:

I speak to you tonight in a spirit of hope…. [Since] the advent of nuclear weapons, all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth…. Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness….

This treaty is not the millennium…. But it is an important first step—a step toward peace, a step toward reason, a step away from war…. This treaty is for all of us. It is particularly for our children and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington….

According to the ancient Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”… Let us take that first step.

Less than two weeks later he sent a strongly worded message to the Senate officially requesting consent to ratification. He urged approval at every press conference. He endorsed it again in the opening minutes of his TV address on the tax cut. He sent a letter of assurances to Mansfield and Dirksen. He spoke individually to key Senators on the fence. In each of these presentations he anticipated and answered with precision each argument raised in opposition.

Some argued that the treaty accomplished very little. Kennedy agreed. He repeated the words “limited” and “first step” until he was weary of saying them. He emphasized what it would not do as well as what it would. But he also warned of the perils of a continuing arms race, continuing atmospheric pollution and continuing nuclear proliferation.

Other opponents argued that the Soviets might engage in secret violations or in secret preparations for a sudden termination of the treaty. Kennedy agreed. He intended for that reason to keep our development steady, our ability to resume ready and our vigilance high—by maintaining underground testing, nuclear laboratories and a satellite detection system. Any test so small and so far away in space that it could not be detected, he pointed out, could be more easily and cheaply conducted underground without risking the consequences of violation. There are, he said, “risks inherent in any treaty, [but] the far greater risks to our security are the risks of unrestricted testing.”

Still others argued that we needed atmospheric tests to develop new nuclear weapons. But we have no need for a hundred-megaton bomb, said the President; neither side needed nuclear tests to achieve an antimissile missile; and no amount of Soviet underground or undetected testing could overtake us.

He assured the Senators that there were no secret conditions or side agreements, that the treaty could not be amended without the Senate’s consent and that it would not affect our freedom to choose any weapons in any future war.
³
He took pains also to coordinate the testimony of administration witnesses on Capitol Hill. McNamara, as always, was the most impressive, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as always, were the most difficult. General Taylor understood the net advantages to our security in a test ban, and the President had been careful to obtain in advance the agreement in principle of Taylor’s colleagues. But their agreement had assumed that a test ban, like all other disarmament proposals, was only a diplomatic pose unlikely to achieve reality. Confronted with an actual treaty limiting the development of weapons, the Chiefs began to hedge.

Repeatedly, and ultimately successfully, Kennedy and McNamara reassured them that underground testing would continue our nuclear progress, and that all the safeguards they desired would be provided. The President blocked a maneuver by the less friendly Senate Armed Services Subcommittee to cross-examine the Chiefs before Taylor could present their views to the Foreign Relations Committee. Taylor testified under cross-examination that “arm twisting by superiors” was not responsible for the Chiefs’ position. Air Force Chief LeMay acknowledged that he would have opposed the treaty had it not already been initialed; and his Strategic Air Command General Thomas Power flatly denounced it. But the support of the other Chiefs was helpful, and the President held similar sessions with the nuclear laboratory directors to ensure their backing.

The treaty nevertheless encountered heavy attack—from nuclear scientist Edward Teller, former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss and former Chiefs of Staff Arleigh Burke, Arthur Radford and Nathan Twining. The Air Force Association, composed of military, former military and defense contractors, came out against it (and the Association’s dinner was consequently shunned by the administration). Influential Senators Stennis and Goldwater as well as Russell announced their opposition. Other Senators said their mail was evenly divided; and the Senate Armed Services Preparedness Subcommittee filed a special report on the treaty’s “serious military disadvantages” to the United States. The President did not want “only grudging support,” he told his news conference, but “the widest possible margin in the Senate” as a demonstration of the fact “that we are as determined to achieve…a just peace as we are to defend freedom.”

To help secure that margin, to reduce the large number of uncommitted Senators, he worked through unofficial as well as official channels. A series of telephone calls and off-the-record meetings encouraged the creation of a private “Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban,” a bipartisan group of prominent leaders organized to mobilize support. The President, beginning with an off-the-record meeting in the Cabinet Room, advised them which Senators should hear from their constituents, approved their newspaper and TV advertisements, counseled them on their approach to the unconvinced, and suggested particular business and other leaders for them to contact.

In a remarkable shift of public sentiment between July and September, sentiment for the treaty became overwhelming. Dirksen’s speech in support was a highlight of the debate. Goldwater’s attempt to condition U.S. acceptance upon a Soviet withdrawal from Cuba found few backers.
⁴
When the roll was called, only 11 Democrats (all Southerners except for Lausche) and 8 Republicans (all West of the Missouri except for Mrs. Smith) were opposed, with 55 Democrats and 25 Republicans voting yea. The vote, said the President happily, was “a welcome culmination.” No other single accomplishment in the White House ever gave him greater satisfaction. He decided to sign the official instrument of ratification in the historic and newly restored Treaty Room in the Mansion, partly because it enabled him to have the pleasure of signing it on a desk belonging to him personally.
⁵

THE EMERGING DETENTE

Kennedy regarded the Test Ban Treaty itself, however, as more of a beginning than a culmination. It was an important beginning. After 336 nuclear explosions in the atmosphere by the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, after thirteen years of almost steady accumulation of radioactive poisons in the air, those three powers had formally committed themselves to no more atmospheric tests. Over a hundred other nations signed the same pledge. While testing by France and Red China or the development of other weapons might someday outmode this gain, the genie was at least temporarily back in the bottle.

The political change in the atmosphere was even more important than the physical, in John Kennedy’s view. The treaty was a symbolic “first step,” a forerunner of further agreements. It facilitated a pause in the cold war in which other, more difficult problem areas could be stabilized.

On the very day the Senate approved the Test Ban Treaty, work on a new area of accommodation was under way in the White House. On the preceding day Agriculture Secretary Freeman told a Cabinet meeting that a Minnesota grain trader had just reported a possible Soviet interest in purchasing American wheat. In the only occasion I can recall when a subject spontaneously raised at a Cabinet meeting produced a valuable discussion, the President heard the views of his Secretaries of State, Defense, Commerce, Labor and Treasury, all of whom had an official interest. Other members volunteered comments. One official, for example, warned on the basis of his experience of political opposition from Polish-Americans. The President then held a much smaller session in his office to consider the problem further.

The following day, as soon as the Test Ban Treaty was approved, he departed on an extended conservation tour of the West. At his request, I gathered with Bundy’s help all the pertinent information, legislation, pro-and-con arguments and intelligence estimates. The picture which emerged was encouraging. In their rush to develop heavy industry, space and armaments, the Soviets had short-changed investment in agriculture. The collective farms were riddled with inefficiency—“for a closed society is not open to ideas of progress,” as the President had said, “and a police state finds it cannot command the grain to grow.” The original soil moisture and productivity in the “New Lands” opened by Khrushchev in Siberia and Kazakhstan had been used up, and a severe drought had held per capita food production to its lowest point in history. Large imports of grain from the West were required; and sizable purchases had already been concluded with Canada and Australia. Soviet exports were insufficient to pay for these imports along with necessary industrial supplies; and the Soviet gold reserve was being drawn down faster than their mines could replace it.

While the sale of 65 million bushels of surplus wheat would hardly make a dent in our several hundred million bushels in storage, it would bring added income and employment to American agriculture and business, benefit our balance of payments and reduce Federal storage costs. Other Western nations had sold wheat and flour to the Communist bloc for many years. France and West Germany, two of the leading “anti-Communist” nations, had in fact bought our wheat and then sold wheat flour to Red China.

The President, reviewing these findings, preferred to base his approval publicly on economic grounds. He did not share the view that “a fat Communist was a good Communist,” or that the Soviets were so desperate that they would grant political concessions in return. Nor did he believe that increased economic contacts would in time make capitalists of them all. But he welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate to the Soviet leaders that the improved climate of agreement could serve the interests of both nations.

Once again, however, he did not wish to go out on a controversial limb if no agreement were possible. Llewellyn Thompson was instructed to sound out the Soviet Ambassador, and on October 5 a reply was received. The Soviets were interested—under normal commercial terms and at the world market price. They were also agreeable to the use of American ships. This comment amazed us all, inasmuch as American shipping rates were among the most expensive in the world and no such condition had been attached to our offer. But the President gladly accepted the additional stipulation; and when the Soviets later balked at our shipping rates, and a fifty-fifty compromise was effected, we speculated that Russian bureaucracy could be as confused as our own. Some political commissar, we joked, had decreed American ships to avoid problems with our longshoremen and port security restrictions, and a belatedly informed commercial commissar had then told him about high-cost American shipping.