The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [416]
Kennedy gave to Khrushchev his own rational mind, finding in the Soviet actions a brilliantly multilayered strategic logic that may not have been there. The president and his advisers discussed almost everything but the one overwhelming reality of the entire crisis. The United States so threatened Castro that Khrushchev was not lying when he called this murderous arsenal “defensive.” Whatever grand strategic role they played, these weapons were in Cuba militarily to defend the island country against an American invasion. And as everyone in the room knew, if many of these men had their way, that possibility was not Communist propaganda but a reasonable prospect. The best way to get the missiles out of Cuba would be to convince Khrushchev that the United States would not violate the territorial integrity of Cuba.
“We would be regarded as the trigger-happy Americans who lost Berlin,” the president went on, spinning his tale far beyond the borders of the Caribbean. “We would have no support among our allies…. They don’t give a damn about Cuba.” There was the president’s dark realism on full display. Nations, like people, watched out for themselves; if you wanted them to help you, you had better be prepared to pay in one currency or another.
As the president talked, there were no tremors in his voice, no irritability at the endless imponderables, no hint of ill temper. He was in an emotional zone all his own, holding the others in the room steady by the sheer magnitude of his dispassion. The situation was a conundrum, and it was a measure of Kennedy’s leadership that he did not pretend otherwise.
Kennedy set forth all the impalpable, difficult alternatives. He could go in and take out the missiles, but that would surely set off the Russians somewhere else. “Which leaves me only one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons—which is a hell of an alternative—and begin a nuclear exchange, with all this happening.” He could start a blockade, but then the Russians would probably blockade Berlin and the European allies would blame the Americans. “On the other hand, we’ve got to do something,” Kennedy concluded. “We’re going to have this knife stuck right in our guts in about two months [Kennedy probably meant two weeks when the midrange missiles would be operational], so we better do something.”
“I’d emphasize, a little strongly perhaps, that we don’t have any choice except direct military action,” said General Curtis LeMay, as if only the weak-kneed would refuse to act. The air force chief had proven his courage and resolve repeatedly in World War II. After the war the general had revitalized the Strategic Air Command into a prime weapon against the Soviet Union. LeMay saw betrayal in compromise; he had his pistol cocked and his finger on the trigger, ready for the battle he was sure would come. He was unable or unwilling to grasp the complexities of decision making in the nuclear age. His narrowly focused patriotism bordered on paranoia. He was the cold war’s perfect creation, fed on the rhetoric of anticommunism. LeMay had his own natural constituency out there across America.
“What do you think their reply would be?” Kennedy asked.
“I don’t think they’re gonna make any reply,” LeMay said. “This blockade and political action, I see leading into war…. This is almost as bad as appeasement at Munich.”
By mentioning Munich, LeMay had come close to insulting the president. “Munich” was not a word one mentioned casually around Kennedy. To LeMay, “Munich” was only a slogan. To Kennedy, it stood at the bedrock of his intellectual life. Kennedy had an awareness of Munich unlike that of any other politician of his generation. He had done his first serious intellectual work on the issue of appeasement, and he knew that the crowds that had welcomed Chamberlain with flowers and cheers as the bearer of peace in our time had soon come to see him as a carrier of an infection of moral cowardice and compromise. The word “appeasement” had been