Our Attitude Toward the Cold War
Kennedy was not yet done batting down the preconceptions, stereotypes, and myths that held the world at the brink of the abyss. He enjoined us to learn the lessons of the Cold War and the harrowing Cuban Missile Crisis. As he had remarked soon after the crisis, we can’t go on living this way. Once again, he returned to a note of hard realism:
Third, let us reexamine our attitude towards the cold war, remembering we’re not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.
The Cold War can too easily become a hot war. We must comport ourselves, on both sides, to avoid disaster. Once again channeling the lessons of Liddell Hart, and of the recent crisis, he warned us of the dangers of pushing foes to the point of a humiliating retreat:
And above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.
Kennedy was teaching us about the dangerous dynamics of crises. These are not just about power, military might, and strategic calculations. They are about pride and humiliation. Any leader must put himself in the position of his counterpart, to understand the implications of his or her own actions for the other side—in human, psychological, and social terms.
Kennedy spoke about America’s weapons, emphasizing their defensive posture, calling them “nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use.” These ideas followed the prevailing doctrine of deterrence, emphasizing an equilibrium in which neither side instills the fear of a first strike. Yet they are probably the least persuasive part of the speech. However the United States may have viewed its military might, the Soviet Union continued to harbor the belief that the United States was preparing a first strike. And this was not mere propaganda; it was a real and palpable fear.
To defuse the tensions of the Cold War, Kennedy had taken steps toward an “increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves,” building on “increased contact and communication.” He endorsed a hotline for direct contact between the two sides, having experienced the laborious difficulties of communication during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when every lost minute risked a devastating mistake.
Much more important, he called for a resumption of disarmament talks, implicitly returning to the timetable he had proposed at the UN General Assembly in September 1961:
Our primary long range interest … is general and complete disarmament, designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.
Kennedy’s primary focus in these disarmament talks would be a nuclear test ban treaty:
The only major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security; it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.
Kennedy prioritized a ban on nuclear testing for several reasons: widespread public concern over nuclear fallout from the tests, which had steadily grown since several Japanese fishermen died from fallout poisoning after a U.S. nuclear test in 1954; a hope that a test ban would slow proliferation, notably to China; a belief among scientists that weapons design could proceed even without the tests; and an overarching hope that an agreement on tests would create the momentum for further agreements.
Kennedy concluded the Peace Speech with two important announcements. The first was that Khrushchev, Kennedy, and U.K. prime minister Harold Macmillan, the leaders of the three nuclear powers, had just agreed to talks in Moscow to try to complete a test ban treaty. The second was a matter of goodwill, that the United States would not conduct nuclear tests as long as other states did not do so. The United States, said Kennedy, will not be the first to resume testing. This was a signal that the United States would renew a cooperative strategy, and would stay cooperative as long as its counterparts did as well. Both announcements were interrupted by the vigorous applause of those gathered: the listeners that morning recognized that something new and important was getting under way.
Freedom at Home
The great domestic struggle of 1963 was the heating up of the civil rights movement. The day after the Peace Speech was the first day of racial integration at the University of Alabama.§ Kennedy had flown to Hawaii just before the Peace Speech in order to address the nation’s mayors on the subject of the civil rights crisis. And he would address it again in a televised talk to the nation the day after the American University speech.‖ Presidents don’t have the luxury of confronting one great issue at a time; for Kennedy, they came simultaneously.
Moreover, Kennedy understood that the crises at home and abroad were not separate but intertwined. Indeed, the Soviet Union had effectively used American racial tensions to embarrass the United States and accuse it of hypocrisy in regards to human rights. In Kennedy’s view, each crisis was a test of the nation’s valor in its quest for peace and freedom. “The quality of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad.” He termed it an age-old faith that “peace and freedom walk together.” At American University, Kennedy spoke obliquely about the civil rights movement, including the spring Birmingham campaign of civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr. and the unrest around the desegregation of the University of Alabama. Not mentioning the drama itself, Kennedy noted, “In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete.” In addition to the responsibilities of government, he declared it the responsibility of every citizen “in all sections of this country to respect the rights of others and respect the law of the land.” This line elicited the third rousing applause of the day; clearly the drama in Alabama was very much on the public’s mind.
Peace as a Human Right
Kennedy had first defined peace in strategic terms: as the necessary rational end of rational men. He had then defined peace in political terms: as a way of solving problems. He concluded by defining peace in human terms: as a birthright, a human right alongside life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Once more, Kennedy articulated this notion in the most eloquent way:
And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights: the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence?
In honoring this right, Kennedy went on, humanity honors a higher cause. “When a man’s way[s] please the Lord,” Kennedy said, quoting scripture, “He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” This recalled the closing words of his inaugural address, where he asked for God’s blessing and help, “but knowing that here on Earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
Kennedy closed the speech with one final message of peace for the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders had long feared that the U.S. intended to launch a first nuclear strike, and they viewed the network of U.S. military bases in Europe and Asia as the staging grounds for that attack. Kennedy therefore reassured them that the United States “will never start a war”:
We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war a
nd hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on—not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace.
As Clear as the Scriptures
The fast-moving events in Alabama gave Kennedy no moment to savor his new peace initiative, no moment to rest. One day later he was back at the lectern, this time at the White House, addressing the American people on the bitterly contested issue of civil rights.7
Just as in the Peace Speech, Kennedy appealed to conscience and reflection. Just as he had bade Americans to consider their attitude toward peace, the next day he bade them to consider their attitude toward race. In recounting that the Alabama National Guard had been required that day to integrate the University of Alabama, Kennedy asked every citizen to “stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents.”
Kennedy returned to basic human rights, again in the context of the worldwide struggle for freedom:
This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.
In yet another phrase that permanently entered the American political lexicon, Kennedy proclaimed, “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” The heart of the question, said Kennedy, was this:
If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?
Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
Kennedy announced that he would submit a Civil Rights Act to the Congress—legislation that would ultimately be passed in the year after his death thanks to the extraordinary and courageous efforts of his Texan vice president and successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
In the course of these two days, with these two speeches, Kennedy crossed the threshold from charming, skilled politician to moral leader. In just two days, Kennedy had charted a political course, set a strategy, grasped the nettle of peace, and backed the civil rights movement with the force of the executive branch of the federal government. Soon he was off to Europe to continue the campaign for peace, this time among the allies.
* Carl Kaysen recalled that tracking all the men down to show them the speech “turned out to be a little bit of an operation,” as Thompson was in San Francisco and McNamara was at the Williams College commencement in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He remembered them all reacting to the speech positively. Carl Kaysen, recorded interview by Joseph E. O’Connor, July 15, 1966, 111–112, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
† Taylor specifically suggested that the draft not be circulated further among the other chiefs. Carl Kaysen recalled, “[P]ersonally he thought it was a good decision but he felt that officially he shouldn’t have any comment on it because it was a political decision, it was the President’s decision to make; that he thought unnecessary and perhaps unwise, although I’m not sure those were his exact words; to show the draft to his colleagues or the chiefs, that their comments were predictable and he felt no purpose could be served.” Kaysen, recorded interview by O’Connor, 113.
‡ Averell Harriman, former ambassador to the Soviet Union, was also on the plane, and Sorensen recalled that “he liked it very much, which encouraged the President not to change it further.” Theodore C. Sorensen, recorded interview by Carl Kaysen, April 15, 1964, 72, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
§ Under the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, public educational facilities could not be segregated. When two African-American students were accepted to the University of Alabama, Governor George Wallace, who had campaigned on the promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” physically blocked the doorway to prevent the students from registering. This crisis of both civil rights and federal-state government relations prompted President Kennedy to federalize the Alabama National Guard to protect the students and ensure they could register at the university.
‖ In a sad irony, the day after Kennedy’s civil rights address and two days after the Peace Speech, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in his own driveway.
Chapter 6.
THE CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SPEECH launched Kennedy’s campaign for peace, which would continue intensively for 100 days, through negotiations in Moscow, ratification of the test ban treaty by the U.S. Senate, and presentation to the world community at the United Nations on September 20. Kennedy’s efforts were relentless and carefully targeted. He traveled to Europe to bolster the Western alliance; spoke to the American people; worked the Congress; and continually consulted world leaders. Cajoling, convincing, and always charming, his words were powerful instruments of persuasion.
Public Reaction to the Speech
The U.S. reaction to the Peace Speech was positive, though muted. Too many hopes in the past had been thwarted. Too many negotiations had come to naught, and most Americans blamed the Soviet Union for this. Yet pundits and the public knew that Kennedy had done something new, presenting the difficulties of the Cold War in a novel light. A few recognized the speech as a historic shift, though only the success of the forthcoming negotiations could confirm the speech’s significance. The final verdict would have to wait.
The Washington Post editorialized that the speech “was much more than an appeal for a ban on nuclear testing. It was, indeed, another bid for an end to the cold war.”1 But the paper cautioned: “Many similar gestures on the part of former President Eisenhower as well as President Kennedy have brought only meager responses from the Communist bloc.” The announcement of new test ban negotiations “must be read in the light of many failures of similar attempts in the past.”
The New York Times noted that the “most important plea in President Kennedy’s eloquent address” was his call to “re-examine our attitude toward the Soviet Union.”2 The editorial concluded with a strong endorsement of Kennedy’s attempt at peace. “The search must be to find a truce so the world can live in peace while the arms race is halted. If the meeting in Moscow makes a start in that direction it will be a great moment for mankind.”
Walter Lippmann, the most redoubtable political commentator of the era, gave his support as well:
We on our part and the Russians on their part have raised higher than the iron curtain an impenetrable fog of suspicion … The President’s address is more than a talk. It is a wise and shrewd action intended primarily to improve the climate of East-West relations.3
Lippmann rightly pointed out that for Kennedy and Khrushchev, the idea that one side can “bury the other” (as Khrushchev had famously proclaimed) had become “nonsensical.” “In the age of nuclear parity,” he wrote, echoing both Kennedy and Khrushchev, “there is no alternative to coexistence.”
There was also plenty of critical U.S. press. Columnist Roscoe Drummond of The Christian Science Monitor, for example, dismissed Kennedy’s hope of making the world safe for diversity. “This is not the Soviet objective,” he wrote. “Undoubtedly the Kremlin wants to avoid nuclear war, but short of nuclear w
ar to make the world unsafe for diversity.” There was little to do to ease tensions because “the Soviet determination to impose its political will and economy system on others” was “basic Communist doctrine.”4
The international press reaction was almost universally positive, with two notable and predictable exceptions: China and France. Both planned to build their own nuclear arsenals, as they viewed nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor of national power and independence, and did not trust their nuclear-armed allies to defend them. Indeed, by 1963, the Soviet Union and China were essentially antagonists rather than allies. China, in addition to its own nuclear aspirations, had long harangued the Soviet Union for any hints of rapprochement or détente with the United States. The French press expressed skepticism that any effective agreement would emerge from the coming negotiations. The U.S. Information Agency report on international reactions to the speech (coincidentally written by USIA deputy director Thomas Sorensen, Ted’s brother) noted that “[s]ome [French] papers suggested that both Macmillan and the President need a foreign success for domestic reasons, and thus may be prepared to make some concessions—especially at France’s expense. They also emphasized that a test ban treaty would not bind France or Communist China.”5 For the rest of the world, though, the speech raised hopes, albeit hopes tempered by the long history of diplomatic dead ends.
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