When Kennedy Met Khrushchev— Marking 60 Years Since the Vienna Summit
By Will Barber Taylor
Today marks sixty years since leaders of two of the greatest superpowers of their day sat down to discuss the future of the world. They were polls apart — one with a vibrant, youthful and energetic politician recently elected President of his country by a thin but significant margin. The other was an overweight, over the hill political fixer who had risen to the top not through charisma or imaginative policies but through being able to crack skulls together — sometimes more literally than others. Their meeting would help define East — West relations for decades to come.
They were of course John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States and Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, the 1st First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Kennedy had only been elected the previous November by a thin margin against then incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. The campaign had been dominated by foreign affairs, Kennedy’s forte. As Senator for Massachusetts, Kennedy had toured Asia with his brother Bobby as part of a Senate fact finding mission and this had contributed to his realisation of the importance of the threat of external nations to America’s dominance of the world. He had utilised internal fears of communism brilliantly during his 1952 Senate Campaign against liberal Republican Henry Calbot Lodge. Lodge, who would go on to serve in Nixon’s cabinet, had worked hard in 52 to ensure Dwight D Eisenhower, the decorate US Supreme Commander of World War Two clinched the Republican nomination and thus could become President.
Partly due to his focus on the Presidential campaign and partly because Kennedy was able to use his anti-communist stances to gain support from both Republicans and Democrats afraid of the “Reds Under The Bed” scare of the 1950s, Kennedy became one of the few Democrats able to cut through in the 1952 election and win a seat from an incumbent Republican. This combined with provocative speech on Algeria had helped him gain a flicker of recognition on the national stage. Throughout the 1960 campaign, Kennedy emphasised that America had to compete with both Russia and China in order to maintain an advantage over them. He warned darkly during the Presidential Debates of the missile gap between the US and USSR and what consequences there could be if America did not improve its military capabilities. This was, however, unnecessary as it turned out the Russian had far fewer missiles than the Americans though to Kennedy’s credit, he didn’t know that at the time.
Khrushchev on the other hand hadn’t come to power through democratic means but rather political thuggery and an ability to read a room. Having served as one of Stalin’s supreme enforces both during the 1930s and the Second World War, Khrushchev had earned himself the trust of Soviet high command. He had managed to wriggle his way to the top in the bloody aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953. Effectively removing his rivals and creating for himself the reworked title of First Secretary of the Central Committee rather than Stalin’s General Secretary of the Central Committee (the addition of “First” certainly put no one in any doubt as to who was the new boss). Khrushchev’s early success in appearing to grow closer to Nasser helped, at least to the Russian people, show that Russia despite Stalin was not going to be stepped on. The following Suez Crisis in 1955 which weakened Britain’s status on the international stage and drove a wedge between the US, France and Britain wasn’t directly due to Khrushchev but helped propagate the idea that the USSR was growing more rather than less powerful. The rolling back of Stalin’s political purges and the entertainment of Soviet officials by African and South American nations helped bolster the image of Khrushchev as a man who could expand Russia’s interests. The maintaining of the Berlin Wall and Soviet control of East Berlin, which would feature heavily in Khrushchev’s discussions with Kennedy, was another important factor in the Russian Premier maintaining his grip on power.
Yet by 1961 Khrushchev had governed Russia for nearly a decade he would find that during Kennedy’s Presidency his hold on the levers of power would come unstuck. It is certainly fair to say in the run up to the meeting Khrushchev underestimated Kennedy — a mistake the young President would also make — a fact which would cost him greatly a year later during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Khrushchev was not alone in underestimating the new President. Eisenhower, his immediate predecessor, had during the campaign taken to calling him “little boy blue”, not just a reference to his youth but to his association with Frank Sinatra. Whilst Eisenhower would revise his opinion of Kennedy upon speaking to him following the latter’s election victory, Democrats were no less dismissive. President Truman, FDR’s VP and the last Democratic President was similarly contemptuous of Kennedy as were the wealthy liberal elite of the Democratic Party. Eleanor Roosevelt bemoaned the fact that Kennedy had become the nominee as opposed to “intellectual” former Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson; never mind Stevenson had lost twice to Eisenhower he was one of the “u” and Kennedy, despite his wealth and Harvard education, was certainly one of the “non u”.
Kennedy was certainly determined to prove himself on the world stage and the Vienna Summit would be an ample opportunity to do just that. Preparing for the summit, Kennedy was keen not only to try and convince Khrushchev of the importance of a nuclear test treaty ban but also to make it clear he would not let West Berlin or West Germany fall to Russian influence. Khrushchev understood that the city would prove to be a flash point between the two nations as well, declaring it the very source of tension in Europe.
Kennedy had felt prepared and somewhat buoyant for his meeting in Vienna on the 4th of June 1961. He had spoken to several experts on the USSR including French President Charles de Gaulle as Kennedy had visited Paris prior to his meeting with Khrushchev. His warm reception in Paris to which he and the First Lady received acclaim would have been a welcome confidence boost after the disaster of the Bay of Pigs — for Kennedy Vienna would be an opportunity to demonstrate that though he had made a misstep in Cuba he wouldn’t in Europe. He must have further felt confidence when his arrival in Germany was met with universal acclaim — placards on his journey to the US embassy from the airport had slogans on them such as “Give ’em Hell Jack”, “Lift the Iron Curtain” and “Innocents Abroad Say Howdy.” This contrasted starkly with Khrushchev’s reception — barely anyone appeared to see the far less telegenic Russian arrive.
The initial meetings demonstrated that, despite Kennedy seeming to have made the more recent international blunder, Khrushchev was on the defence, hectoring Kennedy about the American political and economic system rather than offering any substantive suggestions of how the two nations could work together, the supposed agenda for the meeting. Yet the wily Soviet was well aware that he could sift the public’s perception of the meeting if he appeared to show Kennedy weak to defend capitalism. Throughout their lunch and a stroll around the grounds of the embassy, Khrushchev continued to “snap like a terrier” at the President as Kennedy’s aides recalled later. Whilst it has been suggested that Khrushchev’s aim was to cultivate an image of himself as “unpredictable” a “quality” ascribed to current dictator of North Korea Kim Jon-Ung and former US President Donald Trump, it may equally have been a simple desire to pounce on any opportunity to embarrass or belittle the US President, given that Khrushchev’s aim was to demonstrate was to prove the superiority of the Russian system. As Khrushchev himself described Kennedy to his aides “He’s very young… not strong enough. Too intelligent and too weak.”
Indeed, Khrushchev may have had something in suggesting Kennedy was almost too intelligent — whilst Kennedy wanted to approach the situation from a logical, almost policy wonk point of view of finding common ground, Khrushchev saw the situation naturally as a competition. He pounced on Kennedy’s admission that he had made a mistake with the Bay of Pigs to demonstrate that the Soviet’s were morally superior to the Americans as they wouldn’t have dared to interfere with another country’s affair — neglecting of course the catalogue of times that they had.
Yet whilst historians such as Robert Dallek have suggested that Khrushchev had the upper hand by badgering Kennedy, there is clearly a different interpretation — that Khrushchev was worried by Kennedy and so had to attack the young President whenever he could. Khrushchev was naturally in a weaken position because, despite boasts of the greatest of the Soviet economy, it could not match a recovering United States. Similarly, Khrushchev was over the hill and unsuited to the television age to which Kennedy was made for. His badgering and hectoring of the President demonstrate less strength but more an inherent weakness that rather than being able to parlay he could merely snipe and attempt to use every trick he could to somehow get the upper hand.
The second day of the summit proved no better with Khrushchev continuing to focus on berating Kennedy rather than finding any common ground. He undermined the suggestion of a nuclear arms test ban because he stated that it wouldn’t prevent the US from producing arms. Kennedy agreed that it wouldn’t stop the US or the USSR from producing weapons, but it would prevent the detonation of them to test, limiting the amount of potential harm radiation from nuclear weapons could do to the Earth and deescalating tensions between rival powers. Moving on to Berlin, Khrushchev bizarrely suggested that a united Germany could cause a third world war and implied that were East and West Germany to sign treaties with the USSR all would be well. Kennedy reaffirmed the commitment of the US to Berlin and didn’t wish to be drawn into further belligerent arguments.
The ultimate impact of the Vienna Summit was to demonstrate to President Kennedy that he would, in future dealings with the USSR, have to show strength rather than skill. It also perhaps marked Khrushchev’s last hurrah as a political force to be reckoned with. His dealing of the Cuban Missile Crisis was bungling at best and would eventually lead to him being forced from power. The summit was a turning point in world history as it showed, at least to the United States, that they could not work with the USSR or potentially other communist countries. This would of course have disastrous results in Vietnam, but it was not a mistake that would have been made if Kennedy had lived longer. Even despite the failure to gain a treaty out of Khrushchev, he would for the rest of his Presidency be aware that flexibility was as important as strength — a quality that has sadly been too often forgotten by later and lesser politicians.
