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| Khrushchev and Kennedy. Vienna Summit, 1961 |
IN MID-DECEMBER of 1962, the American journalist Norman Cousins went to
Moscow as an unofficial intermediary between the American president, John
Kennedy, and the USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev. His mission was to gauge the Soviet Chairman’s
willingness to begin a dialogue which could lead to a thaw in the Cold War
that was driving the two nations into an arms race where the specter of nuclear war
was an all too real possibility. Recall that in October of that year the world held
its breath for thirteen days as the two nuclear rivals were at loggerheads over the emplacement
of nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba, a scant 90 miles from the coast of Florida. Save for intense
diplomatic efforts, “backdoor” communications, and more than a bit of luck,*
the
nuclear genie stayed in the bottle, and the missiles were removed from Cuba.IN A FRANK discussion with Cousins that December in Moscow, Khrushchev admitted he had been
afraid during the 13-day missile crisis about how nuclear war was just a push-button
or miscommunication away. Khrushchev said he was glad he was frightened during that time.
“If being frightened meant that I helped avert such insanity then I’m glad
I was frightened. One of the problems in the world today is that not enough
people are sufficiently frightened by the danger of nuclear war.” (Unspeakable,
341.)
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August 6, 1945. Hiroshima Bomb Blast (15 kilotons)
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Additionally, both he and Kennedy were pressed by their militaries to
ratchet up the escalatory ladder, with each side struggling to expand
their nuclear arsenal in fear the other may sense weakness and attack. Today, there seems to be a similar lack of understanding from our political elites, as well as the general public, about what a
nuclear war means and how we are, remarkably, seventy-nine years later, again inclined
to dismiss the possibility that a mistake or deliberate action, or a series of unavoidable consequences, could lead the
world into nuclear Armageddon and the death of hundreds of millions if not billions, given what we now know about "nuclear winter". Others believe, as did many during the Kennedy and Khrushchev administrations, that in a "first use" scenario, the attacking power stood a chance of knocking out their opponent's capability to strike back. However, war game scenarios have time and again shown that enough missiles and bombers (and nuclear submarines) would remain intact to return a withering response, leaving the first use attacker with a decidedly Pyrrhic victory. It became known as the "M.A.D." (Mutual Assured Destruction) doctrine which had as its core principle the certainty that both sides would lose in a nuclear war, regardless of who attacks first. In October of 1962 this principle was nearly put to the test during those thirteen harrowing days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After which both Kennedy and Khrushchev were chastened and horrified at how close the world had come to a war where no one emerged victorious.
For Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis would prove a turning point in his presidency. After it, he was galvanized as never before to pursue a path of peace and to end the the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. He was determined to put the nuclear genie back in its bottle. Fortunately for him, he had an ally in the Soviet Chairman, Nikita Khrushchev who, like the American president, saw no good would come from a never-ending arms race, with nuclear stockpiles reaching dangerous and destabilizing levels. Before his death in November, Kennedy was able to get Congress to ratify a modified Test Ban Treaty that eliminated atmospheric testing, including underwater tests and in space. It didn't ban nuclear testing entirely; as a treaty it wasn't perfect. But the Soviet Union signed on after requirements to have inspections of nuclear sites was put aside. It was the first treaty of its kind, signalling Kennedy's and Khrushchev's desire to put a brake on the arms race.
For the two leaders, the treaty was a first step towards eliminating the nuclear 'sword of Damocles' hanging over their heads and all our heads. But how did these two cold warriors reach this accord, given the Bay of Pigs fiasco; the rocky "Berlin Crisis" talks in Vienna; 1962's Cuban Missile crisis; attacks from Cuban exiles based in Florida on Russian shipping entering Cuban waters; even plots to assassinate Castro, a "socialist, Marxist-Leninist", who was an ally of the USSR.1
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American University Washington D.C. June 10, 1963
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One of the reasons Kennedy and Khrushchev were able to come together for the common purpose of nuclear disarmament was the growing level of trust established between the two men. This rapport was enabled by Kennedy's public speeches2, by diplomatic engagements with Moscow, and via his personal and private correspondence with the Soviet leader. [As a point of interest: the famous "Hotline" between the White House and Kremlin was installed in 1963 so the two leaders could communicate quickly with each other, something that became of critical importance during 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis. It was actually a "teletype" connection, not the way-cooler "Red Phone" which was only in the movies. Ed.] IIRC, it was Khrushchev who initiated a more reflective and peace-oriented tone in his communications with Kennedy. The American president promptly responded in kind with a similar 'reaching out' to his Russian counterpart. There are around 120 letters exchanged between the two leaders during Kennedy's last two years. Many of the letters were private, some even carried secretly by emissaries. Both leaders realized it would be a struggle to bring their elites and their peoples 'on board' with their plans to end the arms race insanity and bring a thaw to the Cold War, but they had to move cautiously and strategically to bring their plans to fruition. Both leaders had entrenched bureaucracies and militaries that, for a variety of reasons, could throw up roadblocks to any rapprochement between their two countries. In Khrushchev's memoirs, he writes that he had hoped to work with Kennedy for six more years on their project of nuclear deescalation and towards a more peaceful coexistence between the two superpowers. 👉BUT the American deep state was all too aware of the changes that would be wrought if Kennedy were to remain in office and then gain a second term in 1964, with the very real possibility of a another Kennedy in the White House by 1968, namely then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who would bring a world view and policy aims that followed in the footsteps of his older brother.
Those shadowy figures behind the screen in the permanent bureaucracy and corporate boardrooms had too much to lose if Kennedy lived and much to gain if he did not.
The rest, of course, is history.
Cheers, Jake.______________________________________
* THAT BIT OF LUCK came near the end of the US/USSR standoff (October 28) in the waters off Cuba when Russian submarine B-59, out of contact with its surface fleet in the Caribbean because it was operating too deep to pick up radio broadcasts, came under fire from American warships dropping depth charges on it. The depth charges were small and used to signal the B-59 to surface, but the sub's Captain Savitsky concluded they were under attack and ordered a 10kt nuclear torpedo loaded into the launch tubes. If fired at the American warships, its use would in all likelihood trigger a nuclear war between the USSR and the United States. FORTUNATELY, the use of nuclear weapons aboard the Russian submarine required the unanimous consent of its three top officers, but second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov refused to sign off on the launch. The vessel subsequently surfaced and was ordered to head for home. Arkhipov can rightly claim the title of the "man who saved the world", as would another Russian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense two decades later. In 1987, Petrov was the on-duty officer monitoring the Oko ("eye") early-warning satellite system in the Serpuktov-15 bunker outside Moscow, when an alert was triggered by the satellite identifying incoming ICBMs. Petrov thought that the group of five ICBM missiles detected by the satellite was a false alarm. Luckily for all of us, he reasoned that if the United States were really attacking, they would have launched far more missiles. It was later determined that the 'incoming missiles' data was really sunlight reflecting off clouds. 😰
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| Castro and Khrushchev |
1. Castro and Khrushchev were ideological compatriots but also close on a personal level. The Cuban president spent several weeks in the summer of 1963 visiting Russia where he had numerous talks with Khrushchev, whom Castro thought of as his "mentor". During his visit, Khrushchev counseled the Cuban leader to trust Kennedy who was "someone you can talk to and someone who listens". In the months before JKF's assassination, confidential emissaries from the U.S. spoke with members of Castro's administration to broker talks between the two leaders. And history's irony has one such envoy, Jean Daniel, a French journalist enlisted by the Kennedy administration to work out a summit meeting between Kennedy and Castro. While he was in talks with Castro on November 22, a phone call came through that afternoon with word President Kennedy had been shot. A second call came a couple of hours later to confirm the American president had died. Castro said to Daniel: "Everything has changed. Everything is going to change." He was right. And with Kennedy's death, hopes of ending the Cold War, of developing peaceful relations between the U.S. and its communist neighbours, near and abroad, and most importantly, hopes for a real framework of nuclear disarmament died with him. Who knows whether Kennedy and Khrushchev could have stopped the arms race before it metastasized into the over-arching feature of the Cold War? Of course (and thankfully!) there were several nuclear treaty agreements3 inked in the coming decades between the United States and the USSR, but these were playing 'catch up' when each side, by the 1980s, had tens of thousands of nuclear warheads between them. If nuclear disarmament had begun in earnest during the Kennedy administration, where would we be now?
👉After Kennedy's death, Vice President Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency and began to ratchet up the Viet Nam war, sending American troops in to shore up South Vietnam's forces in their fight against the Viet Cong. (Kennedy had been planning to withdraw all American forces from Viet Nam in his second term. He had already ordered that 1000 troops come home by the end of 1963. It would be another lost initiative.) Under Johnson the Arms Race kicked into high gear. Kennedy's 'partner' in peace Nikita Khrushchev would remain in power less than a year, following the U.S. president's death, to be replaced by Leonid Brezhnev, a hard-line cold warrior. Without the American president's support, the Soviet premier could do little to alter the course of the arms race or the deepening chill of the Cold War. Like Kennedy, the Soviet Chairman was surrounded by elites and bureaucracies, civilian and military, that would work to derail any peace initiatives he might have wanted.
2. Kennedy's most notable and perhaps the most eloquent speech by any American president of the modern era was given at the American University commencement ceremonies in
Washington D.C. on June 6, 1963.
3. Today, only the "New Start Treaty" ("Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms") re-negotiated during the Obama presidency is still in force. It places an over-all cap on the number of warheads and launch platforms that America and Russia can deploy. It is set to expire in 2026.
For a scary viewing of a post-nuclear attack, check out the British flick, Threads. For the PG-rated version of Armageddon check out: Panic in the Year Zero.
Douglass, James, W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he Died and Why it
Matters. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2008.
