Khrushchev and Kennedy

Abstract

What are the risks to global security when a disrupter rises to lead a nuclear-armed superpower? Imagine a leader who publicly vows “to smash [adversaries] in the teeth”; or who issues an off-hand nuclear threat to a foreign adversary while talking to a group of school teachers, saying “we have rockets which can land precisely at a preset target 13,000 kilometers away. This, if you want, is a warning ….”1 Two generations ago the world’s most volatile saber rattler was in the Kremlin. Nikita S. Khrushchev had threatened the use of nuclear weapons against France and the United Kingdom in the Suez Crisis of 1956; he demanded a re-drawing of the postwar settlement over Berlin in 1958; and he had loosely but energetically mentioned the possibility of protecting the Castro revolution with a nuclear attack from the USSR in 1960. John F. Kennedy came to office knowing Khrushchev had a record of nuclear bluster, but he was uncertain of what lay behind it all. How much of these statements were bluff, and how much a product of an aggressive, unyielding position? The conventional wisdom among most seasoned Kremlin watchers was that behind the scenes Khrushchev was actually a moderating force in Soviet foreign behavior. His fiery performances reflected not merely a personality quirk but an effort to appease a hardline faction in the Kremlin and the military. Building upon this analysis, President Kennedy believed that if Nikita Khrushchev received the respect and attention denied him by the hyper anti-Soviet Eisenhower administration, the Soviet leader would not only dial down the volume, but could beat back the hawks around him, permitting international relations to achieve some sort of calmer equipoise.