Though he owed his position to Khrushchev, Presidium member Frol Kozlov personified the sort of thug that had begun to plot against Khrushchev after the Paris Summit failure. He was ill-educated, short, boorish, Stalinist, and hostile to the West. American diplomat Richard Davies described him as a nasty drunk who ate like a pig and drank like a fish. Yet Khrushchev also faced a smoother and more ruthless kind of potential enemy in Mikhail Suslov, the partyas leading ideologist and intellectual.
Khrushchev had strengthened his hold on power during 1961 through favors, factional purges, and visits throughout the country with local party leaders. The Gagarin s.p.a.ce shot, the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna Summit, and the Berlin border closure had also neutralized would-be opponents. It seemed to party colleague Pyotr Demichev that Khrushchev was enjoying a rare atime in the sun.a Time magazine put it this way: aIn 44 years and 15 Party Congresses since the October 1917 Revolution, Communismas inner hierarchy has never seemed more stable or more successful.a Nevertheless, Khrushchev knew better than anyone how vulnerable his position could be. For all his work to advance communism in Africa and Asia, only Cuba had joined the Soviet camp under Khrushchevas leadership, and by luck more than design. Some party leaders would never forgive Khrushchev for having denounced Stalin, which they saw not only as an attack on an individual but also on communist history and legitimacy. China remained poised against Khrushchev, and the head of Beijingas delegation, Chou En-lai, would leave the Congress in a huff after laying a wreath at Stalinas tomb.
Still, Khrushchev looked leaner and fitter than he had been for months, as if he had been training for the event. aI propose we begin to work,a he told the gathering, interpreted into twenty-nine languages. aThe Twenty-second Congress is now in session.a Even Stalin would have envied Khrushchevas ch.o.r.eography. The Soviet leader monopolized the first two days with his two speeches, each some six hours in length. He navigated from one topic to another with inexhaustible energy, describing richly how the Soviet economy would surpa.s.s that of the United States by 1980a"increasing its gross national product five times, expanding its industrial production six times, and providing every family a rent-free apartment. By 1965, he said, the Soviet Union would produce three pairs of shoes per person per year!
He renewed his attacks on the dead Stalin, and by the end of the Congress would remove the dictator from the Red Square mausoleum, where he rested beside Lenin, and rebury him in less prominent ground beside a lower rank of communist heroes near the Kremlin wall.
What most caught the attention of delegates and the world, however, were two bombsh.e.l.ls related to Berlin. One was figurative and the other very real.
Disappointing East Germanyas Ulbricht, Khrushchev said he would drop his insistence on signing a peace treaty by yearas end. His explanation was that Gromykoas recent talks with Kennedy showed that the Western powers awere disposed to seek a settlementa on Berlin.
Having offered Kennedy that carrot, Khrushchev then swung the nuclear stick. He departed from his prepared text to talk about Soviet military prowess, particularly when it came to missile development. He laughed that the Soviets had come so far that American spy ships were tracking and confirming the remarkable accuracy of their rockets.
Still in a jocular tone and speaking impromptu, Khrushchev then jolted his listeners with a revelation: aSince I have already wandered from my written text, I want to say that our tests of new nuclear weapons are also coming along very well. We shall shortly complete these testsa"presumably at the end of October. We shall probably wind them up by detonating a hydrogen bomb with a yield of fifty million tons of TNT.a The delegates stood and broke into stormy applause. No one to that date had ever tested such a powerful weapon. Reporters scribbled furiously.
aWe have said that we have a hundred-megaton bomb,a he added, encouraged by the crowd reaction. aThis is true. But we are not going to explode it, because even if we did so at the most remote site, we might knock out all of the windows.a Delegates roared and applauded wildly.
The atheist leader then turned his words to the Almighty. aBut may G.o.d grant, as they used to say, that we are never called upon to explode these bombs over anybodyas territory. This is the greatest wish of our lives.a It was cla.s.sic Khrushchev. He had taken some pressure off Kennedy by lifting the deadline on negotiating a Berlin treaty even as he smacked him over the head with news of a coming nuclear test. On the final day of the Congress, the Soviet Union would detonate the most powerful nuclear weapon ever to be constructed. The aTsar Bomba,a as it would later be nicknamed in the West, had the equivalent of a thousand times the explosives used in the World War II bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Again caught flat-footed, Kennedy knew that he had to respond.
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1961.
During an otherwise genial White House luncheon for Texas news executives the next day, the conservative publisher of the Dallas Morning News, E. M. aTeda Dealey, challenged the president. aWe can annihilate Russia,a he said, aand should make that clear to the Soviet government.a Reading from a five-hundred-word statement that he had extracted from his pocket, Dealey declared, aThe general opinion of the gra.s.sroots thinking of this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters.a He said that what was needed was aa man on horseback,a but that amany people in Texas and the Southwest think you are riding Carolineas tricycle.a On edge from Khrushchevas announcement and weeks of unrelenting pressure over Berlin, Kennedy responded with irritation. aThe difference between you and me, Mr. Dealey, is that I was elected president of this country and you were not. I have the responsibility for the lives of a hundred eighty million Americans, which you have nota. Wars are easier to talk about than they are to fight. Iam just as tough as you area"and I didnat get elected President by arriving at soft judgments.a Kennedy was facing the hardest judgment call of his life over how he would conduct a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and Khrushchev was making the exercise more than academic. The plan he was reviewing after weeks of intensive, highly cla.s.sified meetings had as its goal the preemptive destruction of the Soviet nuclear a.r.s.enal so as not to leave a single weapon for reprisal. In rich detail, it spelled out U.S. bombersa flight paths, alt.i.tudes they must maintain to avoid detection, and which targets they would hit with what kind of nuclear weapons.
By the time the plan had percolated through the bureaucracy, dozens of drafts had been debated and the Berlin Wall had already been up for three weeks. Blandly t.i.tled aStrategic Air Planning and Berlin,a the thirty-three-page memo reached General Maxwell Taylor, the presidentas military representative, on September 5. Author Carl Kaysen, one of the administrationas young geniuses, concluded, aWe have a fair probability of achieving a substantial measure of successa at a cost of aonlya half a million to a million Soviet casualties. It included charts, however, showing that if surviving Soviet missiles. .h.i.t the U.S., the fatalities could range between five and ten million, because of the population concentration in places like New York and Chicago. aIn thermonuclear warfare,a Kaysen dryly observed, apeople are easy to kill.a For the previous month, Kaysen had been working as deputy special a.s.sistant to National Security Advisor Bundy after gaining influence inside the administration on a number of widely differing projects, ranging from international trade to the cost factors of airborne alert systems. The forty-one-year-old Harvard economics professor had served in London during World War II, picking out European bomb targets for the Office of Strategic Services, the then-new U.S. spy service.
Kaysen began his paper by noting the flaws in the so-called Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP-62, the existing blueprint determining how Kennedy would use strategic striking power in the case of war. SIOP-62 called for sending 2,258 missiles and bombers, carrying a total of 3,423 nuclear weapons, against 1,077 amilitary and urban-industrial targetsa through the aSino-Soviet bloc.a It estimated that the attack would kill 54 percent of the Soviet population (including 71 percent of the urban population) and destroy 82 percent of its buildings aas measured by floor s.p.a.ce.a Kaysen thought SIOP-62 actually underestimated casualties, as it was making estimates only for the first seventy-two hours of war.
Kaysen maintained that two circ.u.mstances required that SIOP-62 be replaced or significantly altered. First, he worried about a false alarm, which could arise from a adeliberate feinta from Khrushchev or a amisinterpretation of eventsa by either side. He argued that aif the present state of tension over Berlin persists over a period of months, it is likely that, at some point, a Soviet action will appear to threaten an attack on the United States with sufficient likelihood and imminencea to trigger nuclear response.
Kaysen a.s.serted that the problem would come if Kennedy, following a nuclear decision, decided he wanted to recall the force because he had either been mistaken or misled. Kaysen said the current plan left him little capability to do that. A recall would also require a stand-down of about eight hours for the part of the force that was launched, providing Moscow a aperiod of degradationa that it could exploit.
Kaysen believed the larger problema"reinforced by Kennedyas August inaction over Berlina"was that the president would never accept the level of ma.s.sive nuclear retaliation that would be demanded of him to repulse any Soviet conventional attack on West Germany or West Berlin. He asked bluntly: aWill the president be ready to take it? Soviet retaliation is inevitable; and most probably, it will be directed against our cities and those of our European allies.a The clear message was that Kennedy, some ten months into his administration, was facing a Berlin crisis that threatened to worsen and a strategic plan to address it that he was unlikely to use. Kaysen was a.s.serting that the ongoing Berlin crisis made it necessary not only to theorize but to get specific about a first-strike plan if matters turned against the U.S. on the ground.
aWhat is required in these circ.u.mstances is something quite different,a he said. aWe should be prepared to initiate general war by our own first strike, but one planned for this occasion, rather than planned to implement a strategy of ma.s.sive retaliation. We should seek the smallest possible list of targets, focusing on the long-range striking capacity of the Soviets, and avoiding, as much as possible, casualties and damage in Soviet civil society.a The idea as well was to amaintain in reserve a considerable fraction of our own strategic striking power.a The authoras logic was that such a force would deter Khrushchev from unleashing his surviving forces against American population centers. Kaysen was wagering as well that U.S. efforts to minimize Soviet civilian casualties might also reduce the enemyas l.u.s.t for revenge that could broaden the war. Kaysen then provided in vivid detail a amore effective and less frightfula plan than SIOP-62 if the current crisis over Berlin resulted in a amajor reverse on the ground in Western Europe.a It gave the president what he had been asking for throughout most of the year: a more rational nuclear war. It would allow him to destroy the Soviet Unionas long-range nuclear capability while limiting damage to the United States and its allies.
Kaysen then laid out the details of a plan that Kennedy would read and reread before responding. U.S. strategic air forcesa"in small numbers, using wide dispersal and low-alt.i.tude penetration to avoid interceptiona"would strike an estimated forty-six home bases for Soviet nuclear bombers, the bombersa twenty-six staging bases, and up to eight intercontinental ballistic missile sites with two aiming points for each site. The total targets for the first strike would be eighty-eight.
Kaysen reckoned that the first strike could be executed by fifty-five bombers, particularly B-47s and B-52s, a.s.suming a 25 percent attrition rate that would leave the required forty-one planes. One could succeed with so few aircraft, he said, as they would afan out and penetrate undetected at low alt.i.tude at a number of different points on the Soviet early-warning perimeter, then bomb and withdraw at low alt.i.tude.a Kaysen conceded the need for more studies and exercises to test his a.s.sumptions. aTwo questions immediately arise about this concept,a he said. aHow valid are the a.s.sumptions, and do we possess the capability and skill to execute such a raid?a He answered that the a.s.sumptions were reasonable, that the U.S. had the military means, and that awhile a wide range of outcomes is possible, we have a fair probability of achieving a substantial measure of success.a If one could avoid bombing mistakes, Kaysen figured, Soviet deaths from the initial raid could be limited to no more than a million and perhaps as few as 500,000a"still horrendous, but a considerable margin less than SIOP-62as a.s.sumption that 54 percent, or more than a hundred million, of the Soviet population would perish.
In a White House that was unaccustomed to such cavalier discussion of carnage, Kaysenas report came as a shock. Chief Counsel Ted Sorensen shouted at Kaysen, aYouare crazy! We shouldnat let guys like you around here.a Marcus Raskin, a friend of Kaysenas on the NSC, never spoke to him again after he got wind of the report. aHow does this make us any better than those who measured the gas ovens or the engineers who built the tracks for the death trains in n.a.z.i Germany?a he frothed at Kaysen.
Kennedy didnat have the same misgivings, as he had been seeking precisely the a.n.a.lysis that he had been given. aBerlin developments may confront us with a situation where we may desire to take the initiative in the escalation of conflict from the local to the general war level,a the president wrote in the list of questions he wanted to discuss at a meeting on September 19 with General Taylor, General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Thomas S. aTommya Power, the commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command. The level of detail in his questions underscored the presidentas increasing scrutiny and understanding of nuclear strike issues. Kennedy was preparing himself to wage war.
Question #1: aIs it possible to get some alternatives into the plan soon, such as having alternative options for use in different situations?a Kennedy asked. He in particular wanted to know whether he could move away from the aoptimum mixa of civilian and military targets and in certain contingencies exclude urban areas, or extract China or European satellites from the target list. aIf so, at what risk?a Question #2: If Berlin developments confronted Kennedy with a situation where he wanted to escalate from a local conflict to a general war level, the president wanted to know whether a successful surprise first strike was feasible against the Soviet long-range capability.
Question #3: Kennedy worried that a surprise attack on Soviet long-range striking power would leave aa sizable numbera of medium-range missiles still poised to attack Europe. In short, he wanted to know the costs of protecting Europe as well as the U.S. He asked whether including these medium-range strike targets in the initial attack would aso enlarge the target list as to preclude tactical surprise.a Question #4: aI am concerned,a Kennedy said, aover my ability to control our military effort once a war begins. I a.s.sume I can stop the strategic attack at any time, should I receive word the enemy has capitulated. Is that correct?a He posed four more questions along similar lines, wondering whether he could avoid aredundant destructiona and recall subsequent weapons if the first nuke aimed at a target achieved its adesired results.a If his decision to attack turned out to have been prompted by a false alarm, he wanted to know his options for recall.
The following dayas National Security Council meeting failed to provide clear answers to many of the presidentas questions. It also showed how divided Kennedyas advisers remained over the notion of a limited nuclear war. The Strategic Air Commandas General Tommy Power said, aThe time of our greatest danger of a Soviet surprise attack is now and during the coming year. If a general atomic war is inevitable, the U.S. should strike firsta after identifying the essential Soviet nuclear targets.
Power had directed the firebombing raids on Tokyo in March 1945 and was deputy chief of operations for U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific during the atomic bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had a.s.sisted General Curtis E. LeMay in building up the Strategic Air Command after he joined it in 1948, and under them it had become its own fiefdom. Brutal and easily angered, Power pa.s.sionately believed the only way to keep nuclear-armed communists in check was if they believed they would be annihilated if they misbehaved.
When briefed on the long-term genetic harm done by nuclear fallout, Power once responded with perverse humor, aYou know, itas not yet been proved to me that two heads arenat better than one.a National Security Advisor Bundy was thinking of Power when he warned Kennedy that a subordinate commander had authority ato start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiativea if he couldnat reach the president after a Soviet attack.
Power argued to Kennedy that the Soviets were concealing amany times morea missiles than CIA spy photos revealed. He complained that he lacked intelligence on Soviet ICBM sites, and added that he believed the U.S. had only 10 percent photographic coverage of the Soviet Union. He told the president that twenty ICBM pads had been located, but that many times more might be in unmonitored areas. Lacking crucial data on the extent of the Soviet missile force, Power strongly recommended to Kennedy that he resume the U-2 flights he had promised Khrushchev he would prohibit.
Kennedy brushed aside Poweras advice. Instead, he was fixated on getting the answer to his question of whether he really could launch a surprise strike on the Soviet Union without devastating retaliation. He also tasked the generals ato come up with an answer to this question: How much information does the Soviet Union need, and how long do they need to launch their missiles?a Martin Hillenbrand, director of the Office of German Affairs at the State Department, noticed that with each additional day Kennedy lived through the Berlin Crisis, ahe became more and more impressed with its complexity and its difficulties.a For previous presidents, war was a cruel but desirable alternative to matters like n.a.z.i viciousness or j.a.panese aggression. But for Kennedy, in Hillenbrandas view, war had become aalmost identical with the problem of human survival.a With that sense of moment, on October 10 Kennedy called together top administration officials and military commanders in the Cabinet Room to finalize nuclear contingency plans for Berlin. a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze brought with him a doc.u.ment ent.i.tled Preferred Sequence of Military Actions in a Berlin Conflict.
Cool and rational, at age fifty-four Nitze had already become perhaps the most crucial U.S. player behind the scenes influencing policies that guided the development of nuclear weapons and governed their control. Reflecting on the failure of well-meaning actors to avoid conflict, he never forgot his experience as a young boy when he witnessed the beginning of World War I while traveling through his ancestral home of Germany, where he saw Munich crowds cheer the coming disaster.
a.s.signed by presidents Roosevelt and Truman to survey the impact of World War II strategic bombing, Nitze saw German big cities in ruins and scrutinized the impact of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, nothing shaped his views about the importance of U.S. nuclear capability more than a preoccupation with strategic vulnerability that had grown out of his study of Pearl Harbor.
As Trumanas chief of policy planning after the war, replacing the fired George Kennan, Nitze was the princ.i.p.al author in 1950 of the pivotal paper United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, or NSC 68. In a world where the U.S. had lost its nuclear monopoly, NSC 68 provided the rationale for significantly increased defense spending and formed the core of U.S. security policy for the next four decades, with its warning of the aKremlinas design for world domination.a Nitze believed that if Truman had not approved the development of the hydrogen bomb in that year, against considerable opposition, athe Soviets would have achieved unchallengeable nuclear superiority by the late 1950s.a As two Democratic hawks, Acheson and Nitze were chairman and vice chairman of the partyas Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which laid the foundation for Kennedyas defense stance and notions of aflexible responsea after his nomination.
Like Acheson, Nitze considered Berlin a proving ground for broader communist objectives to psychologically defeat the West by showing its impotence in the face of increased Soviet capabilities. Thus, he agreed with Acheson that the notion new talks could defuse the crisis was nonsense.
On August 13, Nitze had been at first furious that the U.S. had failed to respond in any way to the Berlin border closure. However, as the Pentagon further considered its response, he saw intelligence indicating that three Soviet divisions and two East German divisions had encircled Berlin. This suggested that Moscow was setting a trap in which the U.S. might knock down the barrier only to see the Soviets occupy all of Berlin. The Pentagon opted not to recommend a move against the Wall for fear it would bring a general war for which the U.S. was unready.
Now it was Nitzeas task to sketch out how the U.S. should get ready in preparation for another Berlin confrontation. After August 13, he was asked to bring together military representatives from Britain, France, and West Germany to agree on how to respond to the next Soviet provocation in Berlin.
To safeguard Berlin access, the doc.u.ment they produced laid out four detailed scenarios that would gradually escalate from small-scale conventional action to nuclear war. In drafting it, Nitze had seen apermutations expanded like possible successive moves in a game of chess,a until someone suggested ait would take a piece of paper the size of a horse blanket to write them all down.a It was then that the group came up with an abbreviated military response plan for Berlin that they called the aPony Blanket.a Nitze was satisfied that he had transformed a program of mounting pressures into an organized and coherent framework that gave America and its allies greater confidence.
Kennedy arrived late at the NSC meeting to discuss the paper. Rusk had reported to the group that Moscow would withdraw its deadline on the East German peace treaty if talks with the U.S. proved promising. However, Rusk still believed a military buildup was necessary in Europe. Secretary McNamara then sketched out his recommendations.
Kennedy quickly approved them all. They included the deployment to Europe, starting on November 1, of eleven Air National Guard squadrons; the return to Europe from the U.S. of seven Air Force squadrons from the Tactical Air Command; and the pre-positioning of sufficient equipment in Europe for one armored division and one infantry division. Through rotation, Kennedy would ensure he had at least two combat-ready battle groups plus their support elements. At the same time he would deploy to Europe the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and its intelligence detachment from Fort Meade, Maryland.
The president remained most concerned with how he would manage a limited nuclear conflict. His nightmare was losing control and witnessing the afuneral pyrea head spoken of at the United Nations less than a month earlier. Questioning Nitzeas doc.u.ment, what concerned him most was whether it would really be possible to use nuclear weapons selectively without escalation to all-out war.
On that point, Nitze disagreed with his boss McNamara and believed that an initial limited use of nuclear weapons awould greatly increase the temptationa of the Soviets for a strategic strike. Thus, he argued, ait would be best for us, in moving toward the use of nuclear weapons, to consider most seriously the option of an initial strategic strike of our own.a He thought it was the only way to be victorious in a nuclear exchange, because the U.S. could lose if it allowed the Soviets the first blow.
Characteristically, Kennedy quietly absorbed the details and the gravity of their conversation, interposing occasional questions, while the men around him continued to discuss the most chilling of scenarios.
Rusk was concerned that the military strategists had forgotten the moral context: aThe first side to use nuclear weapons will carry a very grave responsibility and endure heavy consequences before the rest of the world,a he said.
Kennedy did not resolve the division of opinion in the room, but the group agreed to draft new instructions from the president to General Norstad, his Supreme Allied Commander Europe, to provide aclear guidancea on U.S. intentions for military contingencies.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1961.
In the ten days that followed, the president was occupied by little else apart from Berlin and its related nuclear questions, his hopes for negotiations with Moscow, and his growing difficulties with his own allies.
The Washington Post reported on efforts to end racial discrimination in Maryland restaurants. A story on the front page of the New York Times reported that Supreme Court justices were hearing arguments related to antidiscrimination sit-ins in the South. Police were enforcing carefully laid school desegregation plans while white-robed-and-hooded Ku Klux Klansmen protested.
However, the president was preoccupied by thoughts of war and how he would conduct it. His concerns were infecting the American public. Time magazine ran on its cover a color portrait of Virgil Couch, head of the Office for Civil Defense. A banner headline announced: [NUCLEAR] SHELTERS: HOW SOONa"HOW BIGa"HOW SAFE? Couch advised Americans that planning for nuclear attack should be as normal as getting smallpox vaccinations.
With Khrushchevas fifty-megaton announcement from three days earlier still reverberating, the president called together his top national security team to put the final touches on military instructions for NATO. It would not be an easy meeting.
His Joint Chiefs were engaged in verbal combat over Kennedyas planned conventional military buildup in Europe and its potential impact on the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
Already, Franceas de Gaulle and Germanyas Adenauer were arguing that Kennedy was too eager to negotiate West Berlinas future with Khrushchev while doing too little to convince Khrushchev that the president would be willing to use nuclear weapons to defend the city.
It seemed that only Macmillan agreed with Kennedyas heightened desire for talks with Moscow. Having been so at odds with Kennedyas hawkish approach toward the Soviets the previous spring, the prime minister saw with satisfaction that Kennedy was now embracing the more conciliatory British position toward Moscow. He was encouraged as he watched Kennedy grow increasingly afed upa with both de Gaulle and Adenauer.
With the Allies deeply at odds over how to handle Berlin strategy, Kennedy made his move to settle differences. At the table for the 10:00 a.m. meeting in the Cabinet Room were the presidentas brother Bobby, Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, and Lemnitzer. Beside him was Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, who had taken the Pentagon lead on Russian nuclear threat issues. The other major players on Berlin policy were also there: Nitze; Berlin Task Force chief Foy Kohler; the State Departmentas leading German hand, Martin Hillenbrand; anda"so often during crucial moments of the Berlin Crisisa"the outside agitator, Dean Acheson.
Lemnitzer opened the meeting by reporting to the president on the asignificant disagreementa within the Joint Chiefs about the necessity for a rapid military buildup. Air Force chief General Curtis LeMay and the Navyas Admiral George Whelan Anderson Jr. shared General Norstadas view that no large-scale conventional buildup was required in athe immediate future.a But Lemnitzer and General George Decker, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, agreed with McNamara that such a buildup was required right away.
Rusk laid out Norstadas logic that a Berlin dispute would escalate so rapidly to nuclear war that a conventional buildup would be irrelevant. Beyond that, said Rusk, Norstad feared that the conventional buildup could adegrade both the credibility and capability of nuclear forces.a In representing this view, Norstad had joined ranks with both the French and Germans against the president.
As so often happened at complex times related to Berlin, Kennedy sought Achesonas opinion. The memo summing up the meeting, drafted by Bundy, said with a tone of derision: aFrom that point on the meeting was dominated by Mr. Achesonas arguments.a Bundy put it more graciously later: aAs usual, Mr. Acheson was the belle of the ball.a Acheson had no patience for Allied sensitivities. He said U.S. officials at a moment of great national urgency were spending too much time getting agreement from the French, British, West Germans, and others, when it was the U.S. that would have to shoulder the burden. Acheson argued that the U.S. needed to move new divisions to Europe by November, irrespective of what the Allies might think or say.
Acheson believed the presidentas demonstration of intent by sending conventional forces to Europe would help adiplomatically and politically.a He disagreed that nuclear logic diminished the need for American conventional action. Serious military movement by the U.S. is aan ominous thing,a he said, that conveyed athe serious purpose of the American government.a Kennedy said he worried about athe gold drain,a meaning the cost of such a move. McNamara and Gilpatric a.s.sured him that further negotiations with Allies could help spread or defray the costs.
A few hours after the meeting, Bundy would send a top-secret presidential letter to Norstad to which he attached the so-called Pony Blanket. t.i.tled aU.S. Policy on Military Actions in a Berlin Conflict,a it would be approved by the president three days later as National Security Action Memorandum No. 109. Organized under four Roman-numeral stages, it laid out the graduated steps to be taken if the Soviets cut off access to Berlin.
Stage I: If the Soviets and East Germans interfered with West Berlin access but didnat block it entirely, the plan prescribed U.S., French, and British probes up the Autobahn of a platoon or less on the ground and a fighter escort in the air. The doc.u.ment noted that such a response was sufficiently limited to avoid any risk of war.
Stage II: If the Soviets persisted in blocking access despite Allied actions, the West would escalate and NATO would begin supportive noncombatant activities such as economic embargoes, maritime hara.s.sment, and UN protests. The Allies would reinforce their troops and mobilize to prepare for further escalation. The doc.u.ment warned that without further buildup, Allied options would be limited and could create delays that could weaken nuclear credibility, threaten West Berlinas viability, and erode Alliance resolve.
Stage III: The West would escalate further against a continued communist blockade of West Berlin. That would include expanding ground operations on East German territory by such measures as sending three armored divisions up the Autobahn to West Berlin and establishing local air superiority through strikes on non-Soviet airfields. aMilitary overpowering of determined Soviet resistance is not feasible,a the report conceded, then added, aThe risks rise, as do the military pressures on the Soviets.a Most controversially, Kennedy was calling at this point for global actions against Soviet interests. That would include exploiting U.S. naval superiority as part of a maritime blockade, which would further delay the moment of nuclear truth while diplomats bargained.
That brought the report to the most ominous Stage IV: Only if the Soviets still did not respond to substantial use of Allied conventional weapons would Kennedy escalate to nuclear war. He would then have the choice of one or all of the following: selective strikes to demonstrate the will to use nuclear weapons; limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve tactical advantage; and, finally, general war.
With considerable understatement, the paper warned, aThe Allies only partially control the timing and scale of nuclear weapons use. Such use might be initiated by the Soviets, at any time after the opening of small-scale hostilities. Allied initiation of limited nuclear action may elicit a reply in kind; it may also prompt unrestrained preemptive attack.a It was a sobering doc.u.ment. Ten months into his presidency, Kennedy had laid out the military sequence that could result in nuclear war over Berlin.
In his accompanying letter to General Norstad, Kennedy wrote, aThis requires vigor in preparation, readiness for action, and caution against going off half-c.o.c.ked.a He said all contingencies required rapid additions to his forces and deployment to the central front. He told Norstad that if the Soviets deployed sufficient forces to defeat the West, then the response, for which he would receive specific directions, would be nuclear.
Kennedy argued to a skeptical Norstada"and by a.s.sociation, the French and Germansa"that building up Allied conventional forces would not contradict the message he wished to send the Soviets that he was ready to go to nuclear war if necessary. aIt seems evident to me,a Kennedy wrote Norstad, athat our nuclear deterrent will not be credible to the Soviets unless they are convinced of NATOas readiness to become engaged on a lesser level of violence and are thereby made to realize the great risks of escalation to nuclear war.a A flurry of diplomatic activitya"memos, phone calls, meetingsa"accompanied Kennedyas preparations for war. As so often at times of high stress, the president asked a wide group of experts to weigh in. Kennedy had asked them to be frank, and his trusted amba.s.sador to the United Kingdom, David Brucea"a former amba.s.sador to Germanya"did not hold back.
Bruce said that through Kennedyas acceptance of the Wall without any military response, the president had made the U.S. presence in Berlin more vulnerable and had eroded West Berlin and West German morale. The Soviets had always accepted the U.S. role in the city only because of the military impossibility of removing it.
Bruce warned the president that the Soviet objective wasnat West Berlin itself but rather possession over time of aWest Germany with its immense resources.a He worried as well about Kennedyas wavering on the American commitment to the long-term goal of German unification. Bruce told Kennedy that it was those promises that had convinced Adenauer in 1953 to refuse athe tricky but tempting Soviet offer of reunification in favor of alliance with the NATO countries.a In other words, Bruce was saying, Kennedyas willingness to depart from this commitment invited a German response that Washington might not like.
Using a captivating turn of phrase, Bruce argued that the reality of Germanyas division was not sufficient reason to give it official recognition as a permanent matter: aFor no government in Western Germany could survive the open acceptance by its allies that what has at least until now been hope deferred is to be dismissed as forever hopelessa (italics added). Bruce was blunt: Kennedy had to face the historic burden of the problems he had helped to create. aWe are close, I suppose, to the moment of decision,a he wrote. aI would consider it essential that we take, and make credible, the decision to engage if necessary in nuclear war rather than lose West Berlin, and consequently, West Germany.a HOT SPRINGS, VIRGINIA.
SAt.u.r.dAY, OCTOBER 21, 1961.
Kennedy sensed that time was short.
Worried that Khrushchev might take military action soon, the president opted to launch a preemptive nuclear strike of a different sort that would reach Khrushchev as a humiliating blow at his October Party Congress.
Kennedy decided to make public previously secret details about the size, power, and superiority of the U.S. nuclear a.r.s.enal. Kennedyas satellite intelligence was making increasingly clear the extent of American nuclear dominance, but he reckoned Khrushchev lacked similar intelligence on U.S. capabilities.
President Eisenhower had never revealed what he knew about Soviet military inferiority because he did not want to accelerate Soviet efforts to arm up. It was lack of that intelligence that led Kennedy to falsely charge that Eisenhower had allowed a amissile gapa to form in Moscowas favor. Ironically, Kennedy now argued that showing Americaas hand was necessary to keep America safe. Not coincidentally, it was also smart politics.
Kennedy feared that he was looking weak to Moscow, the Allies, and Americans, when in truth he was strong enough to defeat Moscow or any other country in any military conflict. The president thought it would be too belligerent for him to send that message personally, so he picked for the job the number-two official at the Defense Department, Roswell Gilpatric, who was already scheduled to speak on October 21 to the Business Council in Hot Springs, Virginia.
It was an unlikely audience for such a significant moment, but the spokesman Kennedy had chosen was ideal. Gilpatric had become a personal friend of Jacqueline Kennedy, who called him athe second most attractive mana at the Pentagon, after McNamara. Kennedy liked and trusted the smooth, Yale-educated Wall Street lawyer. A young Pentagon strategist named Daniel Ellsberg drafted the speech, but the president himself collaborated on it with Bundy, Rusk, and McNamara.
Knowing nothing of the Bolshakov back channel or the exchange of private letters with Khrushchev, Ellsberg asked Kaysen whether it wouldnat be more effective for Kennedy to send a more private message to the Soviet leader about U.S. superiority? Why all the noise? Couldnat Kennedy just send him the precise coordinates of Soviet ICBMs and perhaps enclose copies of satellite photos?
However, that overlooked Kennedyas desire for a highly public response to rea.s.sure his domestic and West European audiences. White House spokesmen invited top national reporters to Hot Springs and briefed them beforehand so that the speechas importance wouldnat be missed. aBerlin is the emergency of the moment because the Soviets have chosen to make it so,a Gilpatric said.
We have responded immediately with our Western Allies by reinforcing our garrisons in that beleaguered city. We have called up some 150,000 reservists, increased our draft calls and extended the service of many who are in uniforma.
But our real strength in Berlina"and at any other point in the perimeter of the free worldas defenses that might tempt the Communist probesa"is much more broadly based. Our confidence in our ability to deter Communist action, or resist Communist blackmail, is based upon a sober appreciation of the relative military power of the two sides. The fact is that this nation has a nuclear retaliatory force of such lethal power that any enemy move which brought it into play would be an act of self-destruction on his part.
Gilpatric then provided previously undisclosed details on hundreds of intercontinental bombers, including some six hundred heavy bombers, which could devastate the Soviet Union with the help of highly developed refueling techniques. He spoke of land-based and carrier-based strike forces that acould deliver additional hundreds of megatons.a Gilpatric said the U.S. had tens of thousands of tactical and strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, with more than one warhead for each of them.
aOur forces are so deployed and protected that a sneak attack could not effectively disarm us,a he said. Even after enduring a surprise attack, Gilpatric said that U.S. destructive power would be far greater than any enemy could muster, and that Americaas retaliatory force would survive better than that of the Soviets because of its concealment, its mobility, and its hardened targets.
aThe Sovietsa bl.u.s.ter and threats of rocket attacks against the free worlda"aimed particularly at the European members of the NATO alliancea"must be evaluated against the hard facts of United States nuclear superiority,a said Gilpatric. aThe United States does not seek to resolve disputes by violence. But if forceful interference with our rights and obligations should lead to violent conflicta"as it well mighta"the United States does not intend to be defeateda (italics added).
Finally, Kennedy had called Khrushchevas bluff.
PALACE OF CONGRESSES, MOSCOW.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1961.
Given the drumbeat in Hot Springs, Virginia, Khrushchev, back in Moscow, began to worry that a Berlin conflict was coming.