Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/kennedy/kennedy.010

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                                                                                August 2, 1963

A New Temperature



     The outcome had seemed certain for days, but the suspense
kept mounting. The tenth, and supposedly final negotiating
session between the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union over a
nuclear test ban treaty was due to begin at 3 p.m. in Moscow's
Spiridonovka Palace, but actually started at 4:30. Outside the
yellow fake-Gothic home of a czarist merchant prince, a crowd of
60 reporters and photographers stood watch. A bevy of iron
gargoyles glared down at them from atop the gates. At 6:25 p.m.
the appearance of a familiar face in the doorway was not
reassuring. It was Semyon ("Scratchy") Tsarapkin, nicknamed
because of his long, high-pitched harangues during the endless
test ban talks in Geneva; when Scratchy summoned his automobile,
there was speculation that he was on his way to consult with
Nikita Khrushchev over some hitch.

     Finally, after a four-hour wait, the session was really
over. Newsmen scrambled through the opened gates, up a short
flight of stairs, and began a stampede into the conference room.
A member of the U.S. delegation looked in horror at the horde of
correspondents and hastily slammed the door, but there was no
stopping them now.

     Around a green baize table sat U.S. Secretary for Political
Affairs W. Averell Harriman, British Science Minister Lord
Hailsham and Russia's Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. At each
man's elbow was a copy of the agreement, bound in red leather,
initialed a few minutes earlier -- WAH, H and AG.

     Further Steps. The atmosphere was jovial. "Let us pretend we
are discussing something," said AG for the benefit of
photographers. Volunteered H: "I'll make my famous speech in
Russian." He grinned but said nothing, since he speaks no
Russian. Suddenly finding a microphone in front of his face, WAH
declared: "The treaty is a very important step forward in many
respects. It provides the possibility of further steps."

     Everyone seemed to be talking about steps. In his report to
the people, President Kennedy used the same image. The big,
unanswered and for the present unanswerable question is where the
further steps may lead. It may or may not be a major turning
point in the cold war. Given all the bitter memories of Communist
deceit and broken pledges, all the past "peace offensives" that
only served to aggravate the battle, no one can discount the
possibility that the test ban agreement will only serve to give
the Russians a breather in their struggle with the West, to be
resumed later with even more ferocity. Still, this event seems
different, and the evidence points to a more hopeful
interpretation.

     The Document. The Moscow agreement itself is simple -- some
feel too simple. In 800 refreshingly brief words, the U.S.,
Britain and the Soviet Union agree to "prohibit, to prevent and
not to carry out any nuclear weapons test explosion or any other
nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, outer space or under water,
the treaty to be of "indefinite duration." This wording raised
the question of whether prohibition of "any other nuclear
explosion" might be interpreted as a prohibition of the use of
nuclear weapons even in wartime; clearing up any doubts, the
President in his speech took pains to preclude that
interpretation.

     Apart from this relatively minor ambiguity, the treaty is
direct enough. Underground testing is specifically excluded
because of Russian insistence that adequate on-site inspection
would be a guise for espionage. A clause obviously aimed at
France and Red China pledges the parties to "refrain from
causing, encouraging or in any way participating in the carrying
out of any nuclear weapons test whatever." An escape clause
permits the signers to renounce the agreement unilaterally upon
three months' advance notice any time "extraordinary events . . .
have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country." The
treaty invites any and all nations to become signatories. While
amendments can be proposed by any new subscriber, the three
original signers have a veto power over future changes.

     The treaty preamble, equally brief, states the goal beyond
the limited agreement: "The speediest possible achievement of an
agreement on general and complete disarmament under strict
international control."

     Along with the agreement, the U.S., Britain and Russia
issued a brief communique that continued a Kremlin concession of
sorts. The Russians had sought a nonaggression pact between NATO
and the Warsaw Pact powers that would, in effect, concede
legality to the regime of East German Puppet Walter Ulbricht.
Moscow had hinted that without simultaneous agreement on a
nonaggression pact, it would not sign a test ban. But the Soviets
settled for a promise by the U.S. and Britain to take up the
issue with their NATO allies in an effort to find an acceptable
formula. The communique also reported "a brief exchange of views"
about "other measures directed at a relaxation of tension."

     How It Happened. There was no doubt that the Russians now
wanted a test ban agreement. The U.S. had first suggested the
limited ban at Geneva last year, and the Russians turned it down
flat. In May, when Secretary of State Dean Rusk returned from a
NATO meeting in Ottawa, he received an urgent call from Russian
Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, asking to see him. The two men
spent the afternoon in a launch floating down the Potomac; it was
then that Dobrynin hinted at Russian readiness for serious test
ban talks. After five weeks of behind-the-scenes operations, the
West was prepared to send its emissaries to Moscow. Even then
there was no optimism about the results. "Nobody thought there
was really a chance," cracks Harriman. "That's why I got the
job."

     In Moscow, Envoy Harriman operated smoothly out of a tiny
improvised office facing the courtyard on the ninth floor of the
U.S. embassy. The only extra furnishings were a portrait of
George Washington and two extra chairs, one of which was shoved
into the open doorway by his secretary. Since the office is
usually a waiting room, many a surprised visitor tried to vault
the chair. During the mornings, Harriman, Hailsham and their
advisers met at the British embassy; after about a three-hour
daily meeting with the Soviets in Spiridonovka Palace, the
Westerners talked over the day's negotiations in the U.S. embassy
"tank," a small room safe (hopefully) from ubiquitous hidden
Soviet listening devices. During one informal evening that he
spent chatting with U.S. correspondents at the Sovietskaya Hotel,
Harriman suddenly looked up at the ceiling and said, "Mr.
Khrushchev, if you hear what I am saying . . ."

     No one knew whether Big Brother's electronic ears were
listening.

     What It Means. When the agreement was finally initialed,
much of the world reaction was highly emotional. Japan, the only
country to have been an atomic target, was most enthusiastic of
all. Sang Tokyo's biggest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun: "Sayonara,
Mushroom clouds." IT'S A TRIUMPH! headlined London's Daily
Express. In the name of Pope Paul, the Vatican's L'Osservatore
Romano called the Moscow accord "in harmony with the profound and
universal wishes of mankind."

     In one sense, practical consequences of the test ban are
relatively minor. It will not end the arms race or reduce nuclear
stockpiles by a single kiloton. It obviously will not tip the
balance of power -- or both sides would not have accepted it. Its
most concrete result is to reduce widespread fears -- exaggerated
but real -- of radioactive fallout. The agreement may also help
to check nuclear proliferation. Red China will scarcely give up
its project to build an A-bomb, nor is Charles de Gaulle likely
to abandon his cherished force de frappe. But beyond these, the
U.S. estimates, ten countries have the capacity to develop their
own atomic weapons within ten years, and five more within 15
years. These others, the U.S. feels, may well be curbed by the
moral and political force of the test agreement.

     But the biggest significance of the treaty is probably
symbolic. History will note, after all, that year 21 of the
Atomic Age (Dating Year 1 from Dec. 2, 1942, when the first
controlled atomic chain reaction was achieved by Enrico Fermi and
his associates in the celebrated squash court beneath the
grandstand of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. The first
atomic bomb was exploded in 1945 from a steel tower at
Alamagordo, N. Mex.) had brought a reaching-out, however guarded,
across the chasm, the first concrete move, however small, by
both East and West to control the thought-defying force that had
been unbound.

     Between them, the three major nuclear powers had set off 425
announced test blasts with 545 megatons of destruction -- more
than enough to destroy civilization. For 15 years of nerve-
racking cold war and five years of futile, frustrating
negotiations, fear and reason had not been enough to halt the
weapons race. The test ban, though it may accomplish little else,
at least suggests that fear and reason, those eminently
constructive forces, can still operate with some success in human
affairs. The agreement does not spring from concern for humanity,
although it is surely tinged with that, or from a change of heart
on either side. It simply shows that both East and West are
sufficiently independent of dogma to act from self-interest, and
that their interests can occasionally coincide.

     The Risks. Even though the U.S. itself has been pressing for
a test ban all along, the agreement holds risks for the U.S. The
most concrete ones are military-scientific, and by and large
expert opinion holds those risks worth taking, provided that U.S.
vigilance is not relaxed. The political and diplomatic dangers
are less dramatic, less clear, but no less important.

     Most observers, Averell Harriman included, believe that
Khrushchev signed the test ban treaty -- and is seeking a detente
with the West in other matters -- primarily because of the split
with Peking, which Harriman considers as important as the split
between Constantinople and Rome. It forces the Kremlin to
campaign for outside support among other Communist parties; in
order not to wage a two-front cold war, Khrushchev is seeking
some sort of understanding with the West. Other motives may be
equally compelling. The Soviet budget is badly strained by
military spending that is proportionately twice as high as in the
U.S. If Khrushchev is ever going to make good on his promise to
the Russian people to provide a few more amenities, finance a
highly expensive space program and also scrounge for rubles to
sink into a chaotic farm system, he must start saving money
somewhere. A limited test ban seems like one possible economy.

     A more serious problem is to what extent even a limited era
of good feeling between the cold war enemies will erode Western
Europe's firmness against the Reds. Much of Western Europe's
postwar order is based on anti-Communism as an article of faith:
the conviction that the Communists are a treacherous, armed and
somehow non-European enemy. That conviction began to falter with
the changeover from Stalin, the "oriental despot," to Khrushchev,
the table-thumping but jolly politician -- and with the
accompanying softening of Communist tyranny in Russia and the
satellites. The test ban and what may follow will continue this
process of persuading European voters that Communists -- Moscow,
if not Peking variety -- can be lived with. Even Charles de
Gaulle seems ready to think so. As he reportedly told the Czech
Ambassador to Paris last week: "I will happily place my
confidence in white Communists, but I distrust yellow
Communists."

     New Strains? De Gaulle waited till this week to spell out
his attitude toward the test ban at a press conference, but his
Foreign Minister, Couve de Murville, had already declared that
France would not consider itself bound by a treaty to which it
was not a signatory, and that a test ban did not make much sense
anyway, short of general and complete disarmament.

     Obviously De Gaulle must go on testing if he is to develop
his force de frappe. Some believe that the Moscow agreement puts
the U.S. and Russia in league against De Gaulle and his
ambitions, thereby further straining the NATO alliance. But
Washington argues that De Gaulle cannot grow much more anti-NATO
than he is already, and hopes, further, that le grand Charles,
after swallowing his initial annoyance, may soften his stand for
fear of being isolated.

     On the left, the new "reasonable" image of Moscow fits into
an already developing situation. In a memorable phrase, French
Socialist Leader Guy Mollet once said: "Communism is not left,
but east." Nowadays, Mollet, Jules Moch and other previously
staunch anti-Communists are openly urging a political alliance
with the Reds in hopes of toppling Charles de Gaulle.

     This trend is even stronger in Italy. In Rome, President
Antonio Segni told a visitor that though the Moscow meetings "may
settle some international problems, it could leave things wide
open here in Italy." The Italian Communist Party, largest in the
West (membership: 1,750,000), has prospered at the polls by
pretending to be the government's loyal opposition in Parliament.
By successfully peddling the Italian version of Khrushchev's
"moderation," Italian Communists have challenged the badly
demoralized ruling Christian Democrats.

     Old Fears. Khrushchev told visiting Reds in Moscow: "If
anybody thinks we shall forget about Marx, Engels and Lenin, he
is mistaken. This will happen when a shrimp learns to whistle."
In Britain, some pretty big fish believe that shrimps make
beautiful music. The Labor Party, which may well rule the country
within a year, is still badly split between unilateral disarmers
and a conservative wing that has not yet recovered from the death
of Hugh Gaitskell. Somewhere between the feuding factions is
Harold Wilson, prospective Prime Minister, an advocate of nuclear
free zones in mid-Europe and other accommodations with Russia.
Not that such sentiments are confined to Labor. A group of 20
leading British industrialists recently asked for a review of the
licensing system that restricts shipment of strategic goods to
the Soviet Union and its satellites. The test ban treaty elated
the scandal-ridden Tories. Eager to capitalize politically on the
agreement, they did nothing to restrain public euphoria. Harold
Macmillan himself last week described the present as "a period
when Russia is moving away from Communism."

     The country least susceptible to such shrimp music is West
Germany. By itself, the test ban treaty was welcomed in Bonn. The
nation is barred by postwar treaty from producing ABC (atomic,
bacteriological and chemical) weapons, and no prominent West
German is urging a change. Still, Bonn officials are nervous
about the Moscow talks. Reason: the West's promise to discuss a
nonaggression agreement between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

     Such an agreement, West Germany fears, might in effect
recognize Communist East Germany, thus formalizing the country's
division. Critics of Bonn argue that reunification of Germany in
the foreseeable future is a myth anyway, but Bonn finds a
significant difference between knowingly living with a myth and
publicly admitting that it is one. West Germany has already
renounced the use of force to unite the country; and it is
willing to increase trade and other contacts with East Germany.
West Berlin's Socialist Mayor Willy Brandt even speaks about
"fixing the military status quo" and moving "beyond previous
conceptions that are no longer fruitful." But the official Bonn
line -- which may change after Adenauer steps down -- is that a
formal nonaggression declaration might jeopardize West Germany's
long-range legal case for reunification and thus in effect put an
official seal on the European status quo. That, in Bonn's
judgment, is what Khrushchev is really after. But if he wants it
so badly, argue both Bonn and Paris, he should be made to pay a
price for it.

     Twin Ogres. If the cold war lull may mean a relaxation in
free Europe's anti-Communist posture, Washington is sure that it
will also mean a relaxation in Eastern Europe's anti-Western
posture. If Communism is less of an ogre to the West, capitalism
will be less of an ogre to the East. Khrushchev is determined
that "peaceful coexistence" must not apply to the realm of
ideology, but Washington is sure that the centrifugal force
already at work in Moscow's satellite empire will continue if the
constant, artificially whipped-up threats of "imperialist
militarism" abate.

     Averell Harriman, for one, has detected signs of mellowing.
"There is no reason to believe that Khrushchev's aim has changed
or that the outward thrust of Communism is less violent. But
there are certain situations in which our objectives and the
Kremlin's coincide -- one of them is not wanting nuclear war.
Besides, any ideology becomes less vigorous as time goes on. I'm
not a great Kremlinologist; I don't go off in a padded cell and
read the literature. I can't tell you what Lenin or Stalin or
Khrushchev said on a given date. But I think I have a certain
feeling for the place and for what goes on."

     First Taste. Harriman's "certain feeling," which
impressively often has led him to the right answers, goes back an
impressively long way. He first saw Russia at the age of eight.
In 1899 he accompanied his father, Edward Henry Harriman, Wall
Street's "Little Giant" (Union Pacific, Illinois Central), on a
scientific voyage to Alaska; on the way, the ship stopped off in
Siberia, where the group was happily greeted by Eskimos.

     Harriman's next trip to Russia, in 1926, gave him his first
taste of negotiating with the Soviets. One of his firms held the
rights to mine manganese in the Caucasus, granted in the days of
Lenin's New Economic Policy, which encouraged capitalist
investment. But after a four-hour talk with Leon Trotsky,
Harriman was convinced that Stalin would soon force out foreign
concessionaires; astutely, "Ave" sold back the investment to the
Soviets. Moreover, he proudly recalls, he sold out at a profit --
 "not much, but a profit."

     Politically, the visit was also revealing. Harriman had
decided to find out what the new Soviet regime was like, and
whether it was going to last. "The more diplomats I saw," he
said, "the less I learned." But in the end he became convinced
that Bolshevism was there to stay.

     Grim Jest. By the time he returned to Moscow in 1941,
Harriman had become an impressive diplomat himself. (Harriman's
remarkable series of Government posts centered around these major
jobs: 1934-5, a division administrator, then a special assistant
to the administrator, and then chief administrative officer of
NRA; 1940-41, executive in the Office of Production Management;
1941-42, Lend-Lease expediter in London with rank of minister;
1943-46, Ambassador to Russia; 1946, Ambassador to the Court of
St. James's; 1946-48, Secretary of Commerce; 1948-50, roving ECA
ambassador in Europe; 1950-51, Special Assistant to the
President; 1951-53, Director of Mutual Security; 1955-58,
Governor of New York; 1961, Ambassador-at-Large; 1961-63,
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, led the
U.S. delegation to the Laos truce talks in Geneva; 1963-, Under
Secretary of State for Political Affairs.) He was the U.S. member
of an Anglo-American Lend-Lease mission (British member: Lord
Beaverbrook) and troubleshooter for F.D.R. Meeting Stalin for the
first time, Harriman promised that hundreds of U.S. tanks and
planes would soon be on their way to help Russia stem the Nazi
invasion. They were the first installment of $11 billion in
wartime U.S. aid to the Soviet Union. He saw Stalin again the
following year, when he returned with Winston Churchill to
discuss the second Front. Approaching Moscow in a blackout, their
plane was shot at. In retrospect, he is not impressed by Russian
marksmanship. "Fortunately, they were aiming at us and not at
something else -- so they missed us."

     In October 1943, he was named Ambassador to Moscow.
Polished, handsome Harriman was soon Stalin's favorite foreigner,
usually took the seat at Stalin's left at diplomatic dinners.
Once, during a Kremlin affair honoring visiting Charles de
Gaulle, the French leader stubbornly refused to be persuaded by
Stalin to recognize the Communist-controlled provisional
government of Poland. Old Joe shouted in a grim jest: "Bring out
the machine guns! Liquidate the diplomats!" There were forced
smiles all around the table.

     "Even before Germany surrendered," says Harriman, "it became
clear to me that the outwardly friendly relations of our wartime
alliance were not going to survive the peace." Still, in February
1945, at the time of the Yalta Conference, he and other U.S.
leaders believed Stalin's promise that he would hold free
elections in Eastern Europe. Two months later Harriman realized
the truth, cabled the State Department: "We must realize that the
Soviet program is the establishment of totalitarianism, ending
liberty and democracy as we know and respect it."

     Such sentiments were highly unpopular around Washington at
the time, and soon a thoroughly disgusted Ambassador to Moscow
was badgering Harry Truman to accept his resignation. In 1946
Harriman was shifted from the Kremlin to London's Court of St.
James's.

     "See for Yourself." Not until 13 years later did he return
to the Soviet Union, as a private citizen. Harriman quickly made
up for lost time. He took a grueling six-week, 18,000-mile tour
from the Baltic to Siberia; in tribute to his wartime service in
Moscow, Harriman was treated as though he were still ambassador.
Russia's new ruler was the son of a miner, but the son of a
railway magnate got along with him famously and frankly. Talking
politics, Khrushchev asked: "Do you suppose we consider it a free
election when the voters of New York State have a choice only
between a Rockefeller and a Harriman?" Shot back Harriman: "Come
see for yourself. Ask the voters."

     What Harriman really wanted to find out during that trip was
the extent to which Khrushchev's Russia was really different from
Stalin's Russia. More than ever, that remains the question today.
With Harriman, the U.S. had witnessed the great Communist switch
of the Popular Front period, when Russia was severely threatened
by the Nazis, ordered Communist parties everywhere to make common
cause with the hitherto despised Social Democrats, and even with
the bourgeois. Maxim Litvinov, voluble ambassador to the U.S. and
the League of Nations, spoke as eloquently as Khrushchev does
today about "the peaceful coexistence of two systems -- the
socialist and the capitalist." After the cynical nonaggression
treaty with Hitler killed off the Popular Front but could not
prevent the German attack on Russia, Moscow once again became
democracy's ally against a common enemy -- only to revert to the
old ruthless anti-Western line as soon as the German danger to
Russia was over.

     These are familiar facts of 20th century life, and the
suspicion is inevitable that they have a bearing on the present.
Is Moscow simply making a deal with the West to free its hands in
dealing with China? Will the old line reappear if the Chinese
danger is ever brought under control? Optimists can point out
that the Peking challenge to Moscow is not likely to end soon,
because it rests deeply in the economic and even racial
differences between the two countries. At the very heart of the
conflict is the fact that Russia today has more of a stake in the
good life than in world revolution.

     Comparing Khrushchev and Stalin, Harriman recalls that while
Stalin often told him that Communism would triumph because of
capitalism's failures, "15 years later in the same office, with
the same pictures on the wall, Khrushchev says the Reds will win
because of their own successes. The faith is not fluid, but the
expression of it is." Moscow's present "peaceful" line cannot be
considered irreversible. What is irreversible, Harriman thinks,
is "the freedom from Stalin's kind of terror and the Russians'
effort to build a better life for themselves."

     A Look at the Books. On these assumptions, where does the
West move next? Immediately on the agenda are a score of items
that Khrushchev wants to negotiate about. They include a ban on
underground testing, though both sides still disagree on the
number of international monitors and the freedom they would
require to make inspections of suspicious blasts, and
Khrushchev's nonaggression formula between NATO and the Warsaw
Pact. Beyond these issues, there are a batch of other Soviet
proposals:

     -- Stationing of inspectors at rail junctions, airports and
other traffic centers on both sides of the Iron Curtain to
prevent the danger of surprise attack. The U.S. is interested in
the idea as a possible basis for reducing Russia's often
psychopathic fear of West Germany. As a harmless tranquilizer,
Washington feels such an agreement could prepare the climate for
other negotiations.

     -- A troop thin-out in Central Europe. The U.S. points out
that Soviet soldiers would withdraw only a few hundred miles to
their own territory while U.S. infantry would, in effect, have to
be pulled back clear across the Atlantic. If the U.S. were to
consider this idea at all, it would insist on compensation for
the Soviet tactical advantage: the U.S. would want three or four
Russian soldiers withdrawn for every G.I.

     -- Freezing of military budgets. The Soviets brought up the
subject many times during the Geneva test ban talks, usually as a
condition of the agreement. It has never really been spelled out.
The problems involve vastly complex and secretive Soviet
accounting methods; before agreeing to anything, the U.S. would
demand a look at the books -- all of them.

     -- Atom-free zones in Central and Eastern Europe, the
Mediterranean and possible Africa. These are all variations of
the old Rapacki Plan (named after Adam Rapacki, Polish Foreign
Minister), which the West rejected in 1957, since it contained
inadequate safeguards to prevent cheating.

     -- A cutback in U.S. bases overseas. An even older Moscow
propaganda cliche. The U.S. has shut down missile bases in Italy
and Turkey when the arrival of Polaris submarines made the
launching sites obsolete; other bases will close only if they
become superfluous.

     -- General and complete disarmament. Still a Utopian vision,
but there may now be a better chance for some degree of
disarmament than at any time since World War II.

     Competition for Survival. The Moscow agreement and the
prospects it raises are not merely events in the cold war; they
are also events in the long, distinguished carer of Averell
Harriman, at 71 an old man on the New Frontier. He is a figure of
another generation, yet very much on top of present events; hard
of hearing, yet noticeably keen in his political perception; a
rambling speaker (his diction, says his secretary, is
"impressionistic"), yet hard and precise of thought. In the
period of change that is bound to follow the test ban treaty,
Harriman's thinking is more pertinent than ever.

     Says he: "We cannot find comfort in any idea that the
Communist regime is going to be overthrown or converted to our
beliefs. For the foreseeable future, the leaders in the Kremlin
are going to be guided by their firm faith in the triumphal
spread of their doctrine across the globe. On the other hand, I
do not think that the present Soviet leaders will bring on war
except by miscalculation or mistake. But we must dismiss as a
pleasant daydream any thought of peaceful coexistence and apply
ourselves to the challenge of all-out competitive coexistence --
competition for survival."