Part 19 (1/2)

The Na.s.sau Agreement made for additional difficulties. To appease French sensibilities, which would also have been offended by a follow-through on Skybolt, Kennedy offered de Gaulle the same deal he had made with London. But de Gaulle wanted no part of it. Unlike the British, the French still lacked the ability to make nuclear warheads, though successful nuclear detonations convinced de Gaulle that it was only a matter of time. De Gaulle still did not trust Was.h.i.+ngton to defend Europe with nuclear weapons, believing that the administration would rather let Western Europe fall under communist control than risk a Soviet nuclear attack on American cities. De Gaulle intended to build an independent nuclear arm that would be immune from any American coordination or restriction. He also wanted to keep the British, whom he saw as ciphers of the Americans, at a distance. To drive this point home, on January 14, 1963, in a well-prepared performance at a semi-annual press conference, de Gaulle announced a French veto of British members.h.i.+p in the European Economic Community (EEC). Less than two decades after World War II, he now saw Germany as a more reliable French ally.

Not surprisingly, the Germans were receptive to his overtures. Adenauer, like de Gaulle, distrusted U.S. determination to stand up to the Soviets in a European crisis and correctly understood that Was.h.i.+ngton might ultimately recognize East Germany and resist German reunification. In February 1963, Bonn signed a mutual defense pact with Paris that implied diminished Franco-German reliance on NATO and American power. De Gaulle was receptive to having Germany follow him into the family of nuclear nations, and Adenauer was interested, having long resented a Kennedy public declaration to the Russians in November 1961 that ”if Germany developed an atomic capability of its own, if it developed many missiles, or a strong national army that threatened war, then I would understand your concern, and I would share it.”

Kennedy feared that Adenauer and de Gaulle were putting NATO at risk and making Europe less, rather then more, secure. ”What is your judgment about the course of events?” Kennedy asked Macmillan in a January telephone conversation. ”I think this man's gone crazy,” Macmillan replied. ”Absolutely crazy.” Macmillan added that de Gaulle wanted to be ”the c.o.c.k on a small dung hill instead of having two c.o.c.ks on a larger one.” Crazy or not, de Gaulle had to be dealt with. Franco-German independence defied Kennedy's plans for continuing American leaders.h.i.+p of Europe's defense, which he considered essential to deter Soviet aggression on the continent. ”There is always the argument in Europe that the United States might leave Europe, which is, of course, in my opinion, fallacious, because the United States can never leave Europe,” he said at an off-the-record press conference on December 31. ”We are too much bound together. If we left Europe, Europe would be more exposed to the Communists.”

In January 1963, Kennedy decided that he would make a midyear visit to rally the allies. He told amba.s.sador to France James M. Gavin, ”Well, I am going to see the General in the next few months, and I think that we will be able to get something done together.” Kennedy shared Acheson's conviction that it was ”not possible to persuade, bribe, or coerce General de Gaulle from following a course upon which he is set. But he can and does in time recognize the inevitable and adjust his conduct to it, as in Algeria. Years ago I asked Justice Brandeis whether a certain man was intelligent,” Acheson related. ”'Yes,' he said. 'He has the sort of intelligence which leads a man not to stand in front of a locomotive.'” Acheson believed that de Gaulle would come to his senses when he understood that France simply could not afford the cost of developing its own nuclear deterrent.

Sufficiently strong ties between Paris, Berlin, and Was.h.i.+ngton encouraged hopes that better relations were not out of reach. In early January, when Andre Malraux, French minister of cultural affairs, brought the Mona Lisa Mona Lisa to Was.h.i.+ngton for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, he graciously marked the occasion by recalling the contribution of American fighting men to French victory and liberation in the two world wars. ”[This] is a painting,” Malraux said, ”which he [the American soldier] has saved.” Despite Kennedy's unhappiness with de Gaulle, who, he said privately, ”relies on our power to protect him while he launches his policies based solely on the self-interest of France,” he responded with good humor. ”I want to make it clear that grateful as we are for this painting,” he told Malraux, ”we will continue to press ahead with the effort to develop an independent artistic force and power of our own.” to Was.h.i.+ngton for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, he graciously marked the occasion by recalling the contribution of American fighting men to French victory and liberation in the two world wars. ”[This] is a painting,” Malraux said, ”which he [the American soldier] has saved.” Despite Kennedy's unhappiness with de Gaulle, who, he said privately, ”relies on our power to protect him while he launches his policies based solely on the self-interest of France,” he responded with good humor. ”I want to make it clear that grateful as we are for this painting,” he told Malraux, ”we will continue to press ahead with the effort to develop an independent artistic force and power of our own.”

KENNEDY'S RESPONSE to European crosscurrents demonstrated his growing mastery of foreign affairs. He realized that America's European allies could not be taken for granted and that by traveling to Europe in 1963 he could sustain ties essential to future Western security. But more specifically, he saw the road to peace not through hectoring France and Germany into agreements they were resisting, but through broader arrangements on nuclear weapons and better relations with Moscow, which could make NATO less important. While the French and Germans busied themselves pointing fingers, he would leapfrog them and take care of the real business at hand. to European crosscurrents demonstrated his growing mastery of foreign affairs. He realized that America's European allies could not be taken for granted and that by traveling to Europe in 1963 he could sustain ties essential to future Western security. But more specifically, he saw the road to peace not through hectoring France and Germany into agreements they were resisting, but through broader arrangements on nuclear weapons and better relations with Moscow, which could make NATO less important. While the French and Germans busied themselves pointing fingers, he would leapfrog them and take care of the real business at hand.

That said, the United States had no intention of reducing its defense spending or determination to develop more effective weapons systems, Kennedy said in his State of the Union Message. But, he stated, ”our commitment to national safety is not a commitment to expand our military establishment indefinitely.” The fact that the British, French, and Germans devoted about 28 or 29 percent of their respective annual budgets to defense, which was about half the percentage spent by the United States, including s.p.a.ce costs, frustrated him. Public and congressional resistance to providing foreign aid also troubled him. Like Eisenhower, who had won appropriations for language and regional studies programs in universities by including them in a bill t.i.tled the National Defense Education Act, Kennedy urged his budget director to rename foreign aid ”international security.” Appropriations to ”strengthen the security of the free world” or to combat communism would find greater receptivity than anything that seemed like a giveaway to dependent developing nations asking for American help.

In hopes of reducing America's heavy defense burdens and the unfavorable balance of payments roiling the dollar, Kennedy saw disarmament as something more than ”an idle dream.” He firmly believed that a test ban could significantly slow, if not halt, proliferation of nuclear weapons. His advisers had told him that continued U.S. and Soviet testing would make it cheaper and easier to produce bombs. ”It might go down by a factor as large as ten or a hundred,” Kennedy was told, ”so that it will cost very little to produce nuclear weapons... . And furthermore, the diffusion of nuclear technology is to be antic.i.p.ated if both of us test this knowledge... . This does seep out.” In twenty-five years, ”in the absence of a test ban, the risk of diffusion would be very great indeed.”

Khrushchev shared Kennedy's concern to find some way out of the escalating arms race. Because the Soviets were so far behind the United States in the development and building of intercontinental ballistic missiles, they intended to work toward parity as soon as possible, especially after the failure to reduce the missile gap by placing IRBMs and MRBMs in Cuba. But they hoped to slow the U.S. pace of building and possibly prevent Chinese advances by reaching a ban of some kind on nuclear tests. In a message to Kennedy on November 12, 1962, Khrushchev stated his belief that ”conditions are emerging now for reaching an agreement on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, [and the] cessation of all types of nuclear weapons tests.” Khrushchev also believed that such agreements could rein in Chinese development of nuclear arms, the prospect of which alarmed him as much as Russia's military inferiority to the United States. On December 19, he expressed a sense of urgency about ending nuclear tests ”once and for all.” The end of the Cuban crisis had ”untied our hands to engage closely in other urgent international matters and, in particular, in such a problem which has been ripe for so long as cessation of nuclear tests.”

Kennedy was eager for negotiations. A test ban could possibly inhibit France, Germany, China, and Israel from building bombs that seemed likely to increase the risks of a nuclear war. In addition, Kennedy was uncertain that the latest round of U.S. tests had contributed much, if anything, to America's strategic advantage over the Soviets. While the tests, Glenn Seaborg told the president, ”achieved much in improving our weapons capability,” their impact on the Soviet-American military balance was less certain. In November 1962, Kennedy instructed national security officials and science advisers to report to him on this matter. And when an a.s.sessment of the tests became available in December, it confirmed Kennedy's suspicions that they were of little value to America's national defense.

After announcing the Polaris agreement with Macmillan, Kennedy promptly a.s.sured Khrushchev that this was not a step on the road to proliferation; to the contrary, it was a way to inhibit it. He sent Khrushchev a message through Dobrynin that the British Polaris missiles ”a.s.signed to NATO” would not become operational until 1969 or 1970. His objective ”in making these missiles available was to prevent, or at least delay, the development of national nuclear capabilities.” Without this commitment, the British would try ”to create their own missile, not tied into NATO controls,” and they might then cooperate with the French and the Germans in helping them build nuclear a.r.s.enals. The commitment to London, he said, was ”[keeping] open the possibility of agreement on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and has gained time for our further efforts in the field of disarmament.” Kennedy a.s.sured Khrushchev that any disarmament pact ”would take priority over any such arrangements which were made in the absence of a disarmament agreement.”

Despite these expressions of goodwill, differences between the two sides on banning nuclear tests seemed too great to bridge. Khrushchev complained that while Kennedy might see the Polaris arrangement with Britain as a bar to greater proliferation, he could only view it as an expansion of nuclear armaments that would intensify rather than diminish the arms race. At the same time, they could not agree on the number and location of on-site inspections, which Was.h.i.+ngton still insisted be part of any test ban treaty. Khrushchev was under the impression that Kennedy would settle for three or four inspections a year as opposed to the twelve to twenty he had been asking for. In fact, Kennedy explained, he was ready to accept between eight and ten inspections, but three were too few.

Although Khrushchev agreed to talks in New York between Soviet and U.S. representatives to take place in the first four months of 1963, the discussions produced little progress. In late March, when a reporter asked Kennedy if he still had any hope of achieving a test ban agreement, he answered, ”Well, my hopes are somewhat dimmed, but nevertheless, I still hope... . Now, the reason why we keep moving and working on this question ... is because personally I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be 10 nuclear powers instead of 4, and by 1975, 15 or 20... . I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.”

Khrushchev shared Kennedy's concern, but his own political pressures kept him from reaching any agreement. During a meeting in Moscow with Sat.u.r.day Review Sat.u.r.day Review editor Norman Cousins in April, he claimed that false American promises to reduce the number of on-site inspections had embarra.s.sed him and stalled the talks. He said that he had convinced his council of ministers to accept three on-site inspections as the price of a treaty and that Kennedy had then upped the ante to eight. ”And so once again I was made to look foolish,” Khrushchev said. ”But I can tell you this: it won't happen again.” editor Norman Cousins in April, he claimed that false American promises to reduce the number of on-site inspections had embarra.s.sed him and stalled the talks. He said that he had convinced his council of ministers to accept three on-site inspections as the price of a treaty and that Kennedy had then upped the ante to eight. ”And so once again I was made to look foolish,” Khrushchev said. ”But I can tell you this: it won't happen again.”

In addition to this ”misunderstanding” over on-site inspections, two other differences undermined the talks. Kennedy believed that a princ.i.p.al value of a test ban treaty could be its inhibition of Chinese nuclear development. ”Any negotiations that can hold back the Chinese Communists are most important,” he said [at an NSC meeting in January], ”because they loom as our major antagonists of the late 60's and beyond.” But because the Chinese understood that a treaty would be directed partly against them, they pressured Moscow to resist Was.h.i.+ngton's overtures. Though Khrushchev shared American hopes of inhibiting Peking's acquisition of nuclear weapons, he was also reluctant to open himself to Chinese attacks for signing a treaty that ”betrayed” a communist comrade. On the American side, Senate opposition, fueled by warnings from the hawkish U.S. Joint Chiefs, to anything but an airtight agreement with Moscow on verification made it impossible for Kennedy to accept Soviet proposals that could be seen as giving them even the smallest leeway to cheat.

On April 1, Dobrynin handed Bobby a twenty-five-page message from his government that seemed to signal a collapse of hopes for a test ban agreement or accommodation on anything else. Bobby looked it over and returned it without pa.s.sing it on to Kennedy. As he summed it up for his brother, the U.S. insistence on more than two or three inspections showed U.S. contempt for Moscow: ”Who did we think we were in the United States trying to dictate to the Soviet Union?” the message said. ”The United States had better learn that the Soviet Union was as strong as the United States and did not enjoy being treated as a second-cla.s.s power.” As he returned the doc.u.ment to Dobrynin, Bobby told him that Dobrynin ”had never talked like this before.” He considered the paper ”so insulting and rude to the President of the United States that I would never accept it nor transmit its message.”

Yet Kennedy, who was determined to do all he could to salvage the test ban talks, saw some indications of Soviet receptivity to additional negotiations. At the end of 1962, the American physicist Leo Szilard received encouragement from Khrushchev to hold ”an unofficial Soviet-American meeting at a non-governmental level to exchange views and examine the possibility of coming to an agreement on disarmament.” In addition, Macmillan urged Kennedy not to give up on test ban talks, describing himself in a long letter to the president in March as having a ”very deep personal obligation” to ban nuclear explosions ”before it is too late.” Kennedy also took hope from Khrushchev's statement through Dobrynin that past confidential exchanges with the president ”had been helpful,” and he would be glad to reopen ”this area of contact.” He also obliquely suggested that another summit meeting ”might be helpful.” In addition, Kennedy saw something positive in Soviet acceptance on April 5 of discussions to create a Teletype ”hot line” between Moscow and Was.h.i.+ngton for use during a crisis.

Taking Khrushchev at his word and seizing upon a suggestion from Macmillan that they jointly propose additional negotiations, Kennedy wrote Khrushchev on April 11 apologizing for any misunderstanding on the number of on-site inspections, promising to offer new suggestions on the matter from himself and Macmillan in the near future, and emphasizing how eager he and the prime minister were to head off ”the spread of national nuclear forces.” Kennedy also followed a Macmillan suggestion that he ask whether Khrushchev would be interested in ”a fully frank, informal exchange of views” with a Kennedy personal representative. Following up on April 15 with another letter, Kennedy and Macmillan suggested that there be private tripart.i.te discussions either at Geneva or between their representatives meeting in Moscow. If these negotiations came close to an agreement, the three of them could meet to conclude a treaty.

Kennedy and Macmillan's renewed efforts at negotiations-a tedious, stubborn slog of requests and oblique promises-brought only grudging acknowledgment from Khrushchev of the need for further talks. When the new U.S. amba.s.sador, Foy Kohler, and British amba.s.sador Sir Humphrey Trevelyan gave Khrushchev the JFK-Macmillan letter, Khrushchev's reaction was ”almost entirely negative.” His att.i.tude ”was almost one of disinterest,” and after reading the letter, he dismissed it as containing ”nothing ... positive or constructive.” He saw ”no basis for agreement.” Kohler and Trevelyan could not budge him with oral arguments. Instead, resurrecting differences over Germany, Khrushchev emphasized them as the ”key to everything,” and said that the nuclear test ban ”really had no importance.” It would be of no benefit to either the U.S. or USSR; nor would it ”deter others from testing and developing nuclear capabilities and would not relieve tensions.”

Khrushchev gave formal response to the Kennedy-Macmillan letter in lengthy written replies on April 29 and May 8. With the United States apparently intent on allowing other NATO states to acquire nuclear weapons and still insistent on inspections, which he continued to describe as an espionage cover, Khrushchev saw little reason to hope for a breakthrough in test ban talks. However, he did announce that he was willing nevertheless to receive Kennedy's personal envoy, who would be given a full and respectful hearing. Kennedy replied that he took little encouragement from Khrushchev's messages, which continued to demonstrate ”the gaps which separate us on these problems.” In another follow-up letter from him and Macmillan, they confirmed their eagerness to send personal envoys for discussions during the summer but emphasized that they disagreed with Khrushchev's a.s.sessment of the need for on-site inspections and their purpose, which they categorically and honestly affirmed had no hidden espionage design.

It is indeed difficult to believe that Khrushchev saw espionage as the prime motive behind the U.S. insistence on inspections. Instead, it was a convenient excuse to hold up any sort of agreement. Llewellyn Thompson saw Khrushchev's resistance to a test ban treaty as princ.i.p.ally motivated by an eagerness to buy time for additional nuclear tests that could make Soviet nuclear forces more compet.i.tive with the United States'. Khrushchev's ”quarrel with the ChiComs,” Thompson said, was also apparently ”taking precedence at the present time over other issues... . It is important to him at this juncture not to do anything which exposes him to further Chinese attack, both for internal reasons and in connection with the struggle for control of other communist parties.” Averell Harriman, who spent three days in Moscow at the end of April, underscored Khrushchev's difficulties with Peking. ”This challenge by the ChiComs of Kremlin leaders.h.i.+p of the Communist International is causing the gravest concern.”

KENNEDY SAW LITTLE HOPE for a breakthrough unless there were some new departure or fresh impetus to get the genie back in the bottle, as he put it at two May press conferences. He still believed that a failure to ban nuclear testing ”would be a great disaster for the interests of all concerned,” and promised to push ”very hard in May and June and July in every forum to see if we can get an agreement.” for a breakthrough unless there were some new departure or fresh impetus to get the genie back in the bottle, as he put it at two May press conferences. He still believed that a failure to ban nuclear testing ”would be a great disaster for the interests of all concerned,” and promised to push ”very hard in May and June and July in every forum to see if we can get an agreement.”

Kennedy now decided to embrace a suggestion Norman Cousins had made to him on April 22 after returning from his meeting with Khrushchev in Moscow. When Cousins told the president that Khrushchev was under pressure from others in his government to take a hard line, Kennedy responded that he and Khrushchev ”occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd.” Kennedy said he had ”similar problems... . The hard-liners in the Soviet Union and the United States feed on one another, each using the actions of the other to justify his own position.” Cousins urged the president to overcome both groups of militants by a ”breathtaking new approach toward the Russian people, calling for an end to the cold war and a fresh start in American-Russian relations.” In a follow-up letter on April 30, Cousins pressed Kennedy to make ”the most important speech of your presidency ... [including] breathtaking proposals for genuine peace ... [a] tone of friendliness for the Soviet people and ... [an] understanding of their ordeal during the last war.”

Kennedy saw risks in publicly urging a transformation in Soviet-American relations and pressing Moscow for a test ban agreement. He would almost certainly confront forceful opposition from his military chiefs and national security advisers, who would see him as letting idealism eclipse sensible realism. There was some logic, at least some political logic, to this. When Cousins told Kennedy that Americans wanted the nuclear powers to stop poisoning the atmosphere with nuclear tests, Kennedy pointed out that in fact the public did not seem to care; recent White House mail had shown more interest in daughter Caroline's horse than in negotiating a treaty. And those who wrote about nuclear testing were fifteen to one against a ban.

But Kennedy saw more reasons to try a speech than not. Most important, he believed a plea for better Soviet-American relations and a test ban treaty was right. With his credibility as a foreign policy leader at new highs, he believed that a forceful speech could have an impact on American public opinion and might persuade Khrushchev to take negotiations for a ban more seriously. Kennedy also had an encouraging report from Glenn Seaborg, who had spent two weeks at the end of May in Russia leading a delegation of U.S. scientists in discussing peaceful uses of atomic energy with their Soviet counterparts. Seaborg described a meeting with Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev in which Brezhnev had said that Khrushchev was genuinely interested in peaceful coexistence: ”'This is not propaganda,' Brezhnev had added. 'It is the sincere desire of our government, of our people, and of our party, which leads the country. I can't say more than that.'”

In May, Kennedy decided to turn a June 10 commencement address at American University in Was.h.i.+ngton into a ”peace speech” arguing the case to Americans and Soviets for a test ban treaty. The June date reflected a concern that the speech precede a Sino-Soviet meeting in Moscow in July; Kennedy hoped his remarks could be a counterweight to whatever pressure Peking would put on Khrushchev to avoid any agreement with Was.h.i.+ngton. Because he wanted to avoid counterpressures from Defense and State Department officials and hackneyed ”threats of destruction, boasts of nuclear stockpiles and lectures on Soviet treachery,” Kennedy confined his preparation of the speech to an inner circle of White House advisers-Sorensen, Bundy, Schlesinger, Rostow, Bundy's deputy, Carl Kaysen, and Thomas Sorensen, Ted's brother, who was a deputy director at the United States Information Agency. McNamara, Rusk, and Taylor were not told of the speech until June 8, after the president had already left on a speaking tour that would last until the morning of the tenth.

The speech was one of the great state papers of any twentieth-century American presidency. Kennedy's topic was the ”most important ... on earth: world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” he said, with the Soviets and China particularly in mind. ”Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.” In that one brief sentence, he dismissed both the kind of peace that would follow a cataclysmic nuclear war, which ”hard-liners” in Moscow, Peking, and Was.h.i.+ngton seemed ready to fight, and the sort of peace a generation reared on memories of appeas.e.m.e.nt feared might come out of negotiations limiting American armaments. This was to be ”not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women-not merely peace in our time but peace for all time”-the realization of Woodrow Wilson's ideal, announced in response to the century's first great war. enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” he said, with the Soviets and China particularly in mind. ”Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.” In that one brief sentence, he dismissed both the kind of peace that would follow a cataclysmic nuclear war, which ”hard-liners” in Moscow, Peking, and Was.h.i.+ngton seemed ready to fight, and the sort of peace a generation reared on memories of appeas.e.m.e.nt feared might come out of negotiations limiting American armaments. This was to be ”not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women-not merely peace in our time but peace for all time”-the realization of Woodrow Wilson's ideal, announced in response to the century's first great war.

To fulfill so bold a vision, it would not be enough for the Soviet Union to adopt a more enlightened att.i.tude. It was also essential that ”[we] reexamine our own att.i.tude-as individuals and as a Nation-for our att.i.tude is as essential as theirs.” There was too much defeatism about peace in the United States, too much inclination to see war as inevitable and mankind as doomed. ”We need not accept that view,” Kennedy a.s.serted. ”Our problems are manmade-therefore, they can be solved by man.” This would not require a change in human nature, only a change in outlook that leads to ”a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned.” The goal was not a world without tensions but a kind of community peace in which ”mutual tolerance” eased quarrels and conflicting interests.

Specifically, Kennedy urged a reexamination of our att.i.tude toward the Soviet Union. ”As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements-in science and s.p.a.ce, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.” Americans needed to remember the terrible suffering of the Russian people in World War II and understand that a Soviet-American conflict would within twenty-four hours destroy ”all we have built [and] all we have worked for.”

To avert such a disaster, it seemed essential to improve communications and understanding between Moscow and Was.h.i.+ngton. One step toward that end was the creation of a ”hot line”; another was mutual commitments to arms control, and a test ban in particular, which could discourage the spread of nuclear weapons. An agreement was in sight, but a fresh start was badly needed, Kennedy said. To this end, he announced the agreement to begin high-level talks in Moscow and a pledge not to resume ”nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so.” With an eye on the U.S. Senate, which would have to ratify any treaty, Kennedy declared that no agreement could ”provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can-if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers-offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.”

Like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Kennedy's peace speech did not have much initial resonance. As historian Lawrence Freedman has pointed out, Kennedy's bold address ”hardly electrified the American people. It received barely a mention in the press, and the White House mailbag failed to bulge.” In the seventeen days after June 10, Kennedy received 1,677 letters about the speech; only 30 of them were negative. But at the same time, almost 52,000 letters flooded in about a freight rate bill. Disgusted, Kennedy said, ”That is why I tell people in Congress that they're crazy if they take their mail seriously.” Predictably, unbending congressional Republicans denounced the speech as ”a soft line that can accomplish nothing ... a shot from the hip ... a dreadful mistake.”

The Soviet reaction was much more encouraging. The Soviet press published uncensored copies of the speech, and the government broke precedent by allowing the Voice of America to broadcast the speech in Russian with only one paragraph deleted, and in its entirety in a rebroadcast. The Soviets then suspended all jamming of the VOA, which the State Department believed showed their desire for ”an atmosphere of detente with the West in order to deal as effectively as possible with pressing intra-bloc problems and Chinese rivalry in the international communist movement.” Khrushchev initially told British Labour Party leader Harold Wilson that Kennedy's willingness to say what he had in public deeply impressed him. Later in the summer, Khrushchev described the speech to Harriman as ”the best statement made by any President since Roosevelt.” Glenn Seaborg said, ”It was as though Khrushchev had been looking for a weapon to use against Chinese criticism of his policies toward the United States and Kennedy had provided it.”

Though the peaceful end of the Cold War makes it difficult to understand now, public cant about communist dangers in the fifties and sixties made it almost impossible for an American politician to make the sort of speech Kennedy gave. It was a tremendously bold address that carried substantial risks. By taking advantage of his recent success in facing down Khrushchev in Cuba, Kennedy gave voice to his own and the country's best hopes for rational exchange between adversaries that could turn the East-West compet.i.tion away from the growing arms race.

On June 20, Moscow gave Kennedy additional reason to believe that something might now come of test ban talks. The Soviets signed an agreement in Geneva establis.h.i.+ng ”a direct communications link between their respective capitals... . Both Governments,” the White House announced, ”have taken a first step to help reduce the risk of war ... by accident or miscalculation... . We hope agreement on other more encompa.s.sing measures will follow. We shall bend every effort to go on from this first step.” An American test message-”The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”-puzzled Kremlin recipients, who must have wondered whether the device would increase or reduce misunderstanding between the two sides.