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  Even though there were enormous gains to be had by both the United States and the Soviet Union if they could agree on the postwar order in Europe, politicians on both sides found it nearly impossible to take any steps that required trust. If they did, they opened themselves up to extraordinarily harsh attacks by hardliners on their own side who denied that the other side would abide by any agreements. A U.S. politician who urged agreement with the Soviet Union risked immediate subjection to the cries of “Munich” and “appeasement,” powerful political charges and ones Kennedy was especially eager to avoid.

  The two sides were trapped by two closely related problems: the prisoner’s dilemma and the security dilemma. The prisoner’s dilemma holds that in the absence of long-term trust or binding agreements, the logic of inter-state rivalry will push both sides to arm. Should the United States arm or disarm? If the Soviet Union arms, the United States has no choice but to arm as well in order to avoid being the weaker side. If the Soviet Union disarms, then the United States gains military and political advantage by arming while the Soviet Union is weak. Therefore, arming is a “dominant” strategy: the best move no matter what the other side does. Since the logic is the same for the other side, both sides end up continually increasing their arms, even though a binding agreement to disarm would be mutually beneficial.7

  The security dilemma, propounded by Robert Jervis, a leading political theorist, is a corollary of the prisoner’s dilemma.8 The security dilemma holds that a defensive action by one side will often be viewed by the other side as an offensive action. Thus, if the United States builds its nuclear arsenal to stave off a Soviet conventional land invasion of Europe, the Soviet Union will view the U.S. nuclear buildup as preparation for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union rather than as a defensive measure. And if the Soviet Union tries to catch up with the U.S. nuclear arsenal, that will be viewed as an offensive action by the United States. U.S. hardliners would argue that the Soviet Union is trying to neutralize the U.S. nuclear deterrent so that the Soviet Union can launch a conventional attack.

  As a result of the absence of trust, and the harsh logic of both the prisoner’s dilemma and the security dilemma, both sides continued to amass nuclear weapons to the point of massive overkill. And as the arsenals continued to expand, each side feared that the other was actually building up for a surprise first-strike attack. The United States indeed contemplated launching a preventive nuclear war, worried that it would be unable to defend itself in the future. Jervis recalled the words of the German statesman Otto von Bismarck, who called a preventive war “committing suicide from fear of death.”9

  The nuclear arms race accelerated as the United States and the Soviet Union expanded their arsenals, and as the United Kingdom and France became nuclear powers (in 1952 and 1960, respectively) with their own independent arsenals. By 1960, the United States had nuclear warheads positioned in several countries around the world.10 The Soviet Union felt itself very much surrounded indeed, and increasingly unsure of whether these U.S. nuclear weapons were really under U.S. control.

  Of course it wasn’t just the international situation that prompted the arms buildup on each side. It was also domestic politics. The military-industrial complex gained power within each government as time went on. In the United States, each branch of the military demanded its own nuclear arsenal, so that competition among the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy also drove up military budgets and the numbers of nuclear warheads and delivery systems. The same was true on the Soviet side, where there was far less constraint than in the United States on the political power of the military-industrial complex.

  To the Brink

  When Kennedy assumed office, he took to heart Churchill’s belief that political leaders must work actively to solve vexing international problems. He was intent on pursuing arms control, but was also a staunch Cold Warrior, partly out of conviction and partly out of political expediency, in order to protect himself from powerful hardline anti-communists. Kennedy believed that he could untangle the dangerous conflicts with the Soviet Union. And, as Churchill urged, Kennedy would aim to solve these problems from a position of U.S. military strength and without relinquishing vital Western interests.

  President Dwight D. Eisenhower greets President-elect John F. Kennedy (December 6, 1960).

  The tough and conciliatory sides of Kennedy’s negotiating strategy were mutually reinforcing. Churchill had long emphasized the essential role of negotiating with one’s adversary: “To jaw-jaw,” he said, “is always better than to war-war.”11 Churchill had called negotiation through strength his “double-barreled strategy,” and famously declared, “I do not hold that we should rearm in order to fight. I hold that we should rearm in order to parley.”12 In 1938, it had not been just a weakness of political will but also one of military preparedness that had led Chamberlain to appease Hitler at Munich.

  Kennedy would refer to Churchill’s double-barreled approach in his campaign address in Seattle in September 1960:

  It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war. Winston Churchill said in 1949, “We arm to parley.” We can convince Mr. Khrushchev to bargain seriously at the conference table if he respects our strength.13

  Kennedy had no doubt either of the enormous potential gains of cooperation with the Soviet Union, or of the grave risks if the United States cooperated (for instance, through arms control) while the Soviet Union reneged on its side of the deal. Cheating by the Soviet Union would threaten not only U.S. security, but also Kennedy’s hold on power domestically. Kennedy would repeatedly urge cooperation but remain alert that any move toward cooperation, however modest, could trigger political charges from the right that he was an appeaser.

  The burdens on Kennedy were greater as a Democrat, since Republicans regularly assailed the Democratic Party for being “soft on communism.” Kennedy therefore aimed to assure all sides—the U.S. public, America’s allies, and of course the Soviet Union—that he would vigorously resist Soviet aggression and defend Western interests while he sought greater cooperation with the Soviet Union. He would aim, at the core, to pursue a tit-for-tat strategy (a way to break out of the prisoner’s dilemma by reciprocating cooperation from the other side), promising to join the Soviet Union in arms control, but also declaring repeatedly his readiness to revert to an arms race if the Soviet Union did not keep its promises. The tit-for-tat strategy of incremental cooperation was mapped out a year after Kennedy came to office by one of America’s leading sociologists, Amitai Etzioni, whose remarkable book The Hard Way to Peace spelled out a psychological approach to forging peace.14 Etzioni believed that confidence building was crucial, since in his view psychological rather than political or military factors were the decisive drivers of the Cold War. He propounded a notion of “psychological gradualism” to reduce fear, build trust, and initiate a phased process of reciprocated concessions. Eventually suspicion and fear would be “reduced to a level where fruitful negotiations are possible.”15 In many ways, Kennedy’s peace initiative in 1963 would pursue this approach.

  Kennedy first signaled both aspects of his approach in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961.16 First came his robust, full-throated commitment to the defense of liberty:

  Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

  But equally stirring was his commitment to pursue the mutual gains of cooperation:

  So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate …

  Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

  Let both sides seek to inv
oke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

  Kennedy’s emphasis on “precise proposals” was not incidental. Following Churchill once again, Kennedy believed that miscalculation with the Soviet Union would best be avoided through clear, detailed, and principled negotiating positions. Yet here too the ideal and the practical would collide. Negotiations are filled with feints, bluffs, and intermediate positions, and these inevitably raise the risk of miscalculation.

  Kennedy was sincere in his inaugural address when he said, “So let us begin anew.” As a senator and as a presidential candidate he himself had helped to spur the arms race by opportunistically hammering away at Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration for allowing a “missile gap” to emerge, claiming in 1958 that there was every indication “that by 1960 the United States will have lost … its superiority in nuclear striking power.”17 In fact, the true missile gap, contrary to Kennedy’s claim, stood greatly in America’s favor. While the definitive knowledge of the Soviet Union’s very limited ballistic missile capacity was a closely held secret of the Eisenhower administration, based on secret U-2 spy plane flights, Senator Kennedy probably knew that he was exaggerating Soviet capabilities. As the presidential candidate running against hardline vice president Richard Nixon, Kennedy was especially keen to project a tough-minded foreign policy stance and avoid the charge of being soft on communism typically levied against Democrats. No matter what Kennedy may have believed as a candidate, he learned early in his presidency that there was no missile gap in the Soviets’ advantage.

  Khrushchev would probably have understood the political reasons for Kennedy’s missile-gap rhetoric, and might even have benefited in a way from Kennedy’s exaggerated portrayal of Soviet power. Indeed, when Kennedy chose in October 1961 to reveal to the public the relative weakness of the Soviet nuclear force, Khrushchev was deeply aggrieved. Still, in the early days of the new administration, Khrushchev was intent on determining whether Kennedy was in fact a diehard Cold Warrior, like Eisenhower’s influential Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, or a potentially cooperative counterpart in peaceful coexistence. Early steps by Kennedy could therefore help to chart the course toward better relations.

  In addition to their public speeches and the interaction of their diplomats, the two leaders would soon learn much more about each other in another way. Beginning with Khrushchev’s letter of congratulations to the newly elected Kennedy on November 9, 1960, the two men engaged until Kennedy’s death in a backchannel personal correspondence of more than a hundred letters. Both pledged that the letters would be held confidentially and never leaked for propaganda purposes. “For my part,” Kennedy wrote, “the contents and even the existence of our letters will be known only to the Secretary of State and a few other of my closest associates in the government.”18 Both leaders seem to have honored their pledges of confidentiality. The result is a most extraordinary exchange that together with other events offers critical insights into the thinking of both men, the issues that worried them, and their strategies for peace.

  Kennedy’s Opening Provocations

  Unfortunately for the prospects of U.S.-Soviet cooperation, and contrary to the approach of incremental cooperation, Kennedy came out swinging. He did this in three provocative ways. First, despite the fact that the United States was far ahead in nuclear weapons, Kennedy ordered a major military buildup of both nuclear and conventional arms. The total number of U.S. nuclear warheads would soar from 20,000 in 1960 to 29,000 in 1963, at a time when the Soviet Union had a small fraction of that number (1,600 in 1960 and 4,200 in 1963).19 Conventional forces were also greatly augmented, as Kennedy adopted a new model of “flexible response.” He was highly critical of Eisenhower’s nuclear policy of “massive retaliation” to meet Soviet threats, which purportedly relied on U.S. nuclear weapons to deter Soviet provocations. Kennedy wanted more non-nuclear options.20

  Second, Kennedy approved a CIA plan for an invasion of Cuba, which would become the biggest blunder of his presidency. Third, he went ahead with a confrontational move that had been approved by his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. In 1958, Eisenhower had decided to strengthen the U.S. nuclear arsenal by posting intermediate-range nuclear missiles under U.S. control in Italy and Turkey. The placements of these Jupiter missiles were implemented in June 1960 in Italy and October 1961 (the first year of the Kennedy administration) in Turkey.21 The Soviet Union now faced the threat not only of America’s strategic bombers but also of nearby missiles that could reach the Soviet Union in minutes. This was a new and terrifying prospect that tipped the psychological and strategic balance toward the United States and constituted a major motivation for Khrushchev’s later attempt to put similar missiles into Cuba.

  Kennedy sought to negotiate peace through strength, but these early moves were more than a mere show of strength: they were a ratcheting up of the Cold War. Here the contradictory lessons of World War I and World War II were starkly revealed. Kennedy was profoundly concerned about a war starting through miscalculation, as had World War I, but was equally if not more concerned with being perceived as weak if he failed to project military strength and firmness. Yet by taking steps to build U.S. military strength and increase the number of U.S. military options, he inadvertently exacerbated the risks of terrible miscalculation, very much a case of Jervis’s security dilemma in operation.

  At the time that Kennedy assumed the presidency, the CIA was already in high gear to topple Cuba’s new left-wing government, which had begun to confiscate U.S. assets and sidle up to the Soviet Union. America had long backed Cuba’s corrupt dictator, Fulgencio Batista, who offered privileges and protection to American investors in the nearby island, only ninety miles from Florida. During the 1950s, the young lawyer Fidel Castro led a guerrilla insurgency against Batista, finally succeeding in prompting the dictator to flee on January 1, 1959.22 No sooner had Castro consolidated his control over Cuba than Eisenhower and the CIA director, Allen Dulles (the brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles), began to plot a coup to bring him down. Castro was not yet a hardcore Soviet ally, though a partial U.S. trade embargo, initiated by the Eisenhower administration in 1960, was pushing Cuba in that direction. U.S. actions in 1961 would soon lead Cuba fully into the Soviet camp. The CIA briefed Kennedy early in his term about plans for a CIA-backed invasion of Cuba that would be carried out by Cuban expatriates. The planning was far advanced, as the CIA had prepared it in the final year of the Eisenhower administration.

  From the start, Kennedy was deeply concerned not only about the invasion’s chances of success, but also about its implications for U.S.-Soviet relations. This would be among the first major moves in his new strategic game with Khrushchev, and it would be far from a cooperative one. Kennedy feared specifically that any action against Castro might prompt Soviet retaliation in Berlin, the hotspot of the Cold War. This linkage was probably exaggerated—the Soviets did not yet see Castro as vital—but it played a role in Kennedy’s thinking. The planned invasion was also one of Kennedy’s first foreign policy decisions. He did not yet have the confidence to disregard the CIA and the military.

  Kennedy tried to have it both ways, and ended up in a disastrous muddle. He gave the green light to the CIA-based Cuban invasion in April 1961, but he wanted “deniability” of U.S. involvement and so withheld key military backing, such as air support, that was vital to any chance of military success. The hope of deniability was foolish; the U.S. role was obvious. Kennedy’s prevarication guaranteed a complete failure of the attack (a failure that was most likely in any event), followed by harsh international criticism of the United States. The operation was too small for success, but too large for deniability. The expatriates who landed at the Bay of Pigs were quickly killed or captured, and the entire episode ended ignominiously.23

  In the postmortem, Kennedy met with Eisenhower to discuss the botched operati
on, and Eisenhower asked Kennedy why he had denied air cover for the invasion. The historian Michael Beschloss described the painful interchange:

  Kennedy said, “Well, my advice was that we must try to keep our hands from showing in the affair.” Eisenhower was aghast: “How could you expect the world to believe we had nothing to do with it? Where did these people get the ships to go from Central America to Cuba? Where did they get the weapons? … I believe there is only one thing to do when you go into this kind of thing: it must be a success.”24

  By itself, the CIA operation was foolish, naïve, and incompetently designed and managed. This was par for the course for the CIA, which had bungled one operation after another in many parts of the world. The Bay of Pigs fiasco also confirmed Kennedy’s deep mistrust of the military, which had begun with his experience in World War II. Kennedy told reporter and friend Ben Bradlee, “The first advice I’m going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”25

  It also contributed to a cascading set of errors. Forced to appear tough and decisive after the very public failure, Kennedy quickly called for increased military spending and harsher measures to destabilize the Castro regime.26 These included a series of harebrained attempts to assassinate Castro, part of the larger anti-Castro strategy the CIA dubbed “Operation Mongoose.”27 As a result, both Castro and Khrushchev came to believe that Kennedy’s next gambit would be a full-fledged invasion of Cuba. That expectation contributed to the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year.