Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [147]
De Gaulle, like Kennedy, was able to put himself in the other man’s shoes. Yet even as he could see beyond the immediate conflict to three decades down the road, de Gaulle recognized that such foresight little helped the predicament now. His practical advice, when it came to dealing with Khrushchev over the fate of Berlin, was to avoid even the appearance of negotiating. To do so would mean playing the Soviets’ game.
Yet, as Eisenhower had been, de Gaulle was somewhat out of step with the times when it came to assessing the Russian mood. It had been one matter to not take the Soviets seriously when Russia, despite its immense size, seemed to lag behind the West. Now, just sixteen years after the war had ended, leaving devastation and demoralization in its wake, the Soviets were gunning their engines, trying to race ahead of the European powers and the United States. Their numerous gains—from their first-in-space status to their successful backing of “wars of liberation” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—had left them confident, ready to flaunt their new standing vis-à-vis the West.
Moreover, if the size and power of the Soviet military forces weren’t sufficiently frightening, the fact that the Soviet defense system had come to include a sizable nuclear arsenal surely was. What was bringing President John Kennedy to Vienna with such uncertainty—and foreboding—was Khrushchev’s announced intention to sign a separate treaty between the Soviet Union and East Germany that would have the effect of stranding the city of Berlin 110 miles within the Russian-allied German Democratic Republic. Berlin, split by the Allies into sectors at the end of the war, had become the main escape route for millions fleeing west to escape Communist dictatorship. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson told the president that the Soviet leader was so personally committed to a solution to the Berlin problem that the chances for either war or an “ignominious” retreat by the West were “close to fifty-fifty.”
Kennedy’s arrival in Vienna resembled a campaign stop of the year before. As they had in Paris, adoring crowds greeted the American First Couple at the airport. Khrushchev—who’d become first secretary of the Russian Communist Party in 1953 after the death of Josef Stalin and consolidated his power, ascending to premier five years later—had taken the train west from Moscow. He arrived to no fanfare. The glamour of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, and their excited reception, undoubtedly stirred resentment.
The meetings were scheduled for alternating sessions in the Soviet and American embassies. On the first day Khrushchev took the role of teacher, lecturing Kennedy on the case for socialist inevitability. Kennedy was no match for his ideological fervor. Both Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers would write in their joint memoir how the bull-necked Soviet leader paced circles around his slender, youthful listener, “snapping at him like a terrier and shaking his finger.”
That vivid description also paints a picture of Jack Kennedy having to endure the far outer limits of his comfort zone. When Evelyn Lincoln asked the president how the meeting had gone, “Not too well” was his reply.
Khrushchev’s performance was a far cry from an American politician’s usual encounters—except, perhaps, his use of the filibuster. But it seemed to have the effect the Soviet premier desired. Kennedy believed he meant business. Nixon and all the others back home could sound off about the need to call the Soviets’ bluff. Nikita Khrushchev looked and sounded nothing like a bluffer.
The second day turned out to be worse. Khrushchev, having had his ideological warm-up, was now ready for the main event. JFK had come to Vienna hoping to build on what he saw as a recent major diplomatic breakthrough. In April, the United States and the USSR had reached an agreement that each would stop supplying military aid to Laos, a little landlocked kingdom north of Thailand and Cambodia and west