The History of the Cold war: A Comparative Perspective 
Vienna Summit June 1961
During the first six months of his presidency,
stomach/colon and prostate problems, high fevers, occasional dehydration,
abscesses, sleeplessness, and high cholesterol accompanied
Kennedy's back and adrenal ailments. Medical attention was a fixed
part of his routine. His physicians administered large doses of so
many drugs that they kept an ongoing "Medicine Administration
Record" (MAR), cataloging injected and oral corticosteroids for his
adrenal insufficiency; procaine shots to painful "trigger points,"
ultrasound treatments, and hot packs for his back; Lomotil, Metamucil,
paregoric, Phenobarbital, testosterone, and Transentine to
control his diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, and weight loss; penicillin
and other antibiotics for his urinary infections and abscesses;
and Tuinal to help him sleep.
Dallek, p 398-99
"I hear there is something you want to say to
me," Kennedy told him at de Gaulle's state dinner, which Harriman
had arranged to attend. "Go to Vienna," the seventy-year-old confidendy
advised the president. "Don't be too serious, have some fun,
get to know him a little, don't let him rattle you; he'll try to rattle
you and frighten you, but don't pay any attention to that. Tum him
aside, gently. And don't try for too much. Remember that he's just as
scared as you are ... he is very aware of his peasant origins, of the
contrast between Mrs. Khrushchev and Jackie.... His style will be to
attack and then see if he can get away with it. Laugh about it, don't
get into a fight. Rise above it. Have some fun."
Thompson also recorded Khrushchev's
remark that Kennedy was "younger than his son would
have been had he lived."97 This cryptic aside was revealing. Leonid,
Khrushchev's eldest son, was born like John Kennedy in 1917. A
daredevil pilot during World War II, he was finally shot down and
killed in 1943. His father rarely talked about it, perhaps from grief
but more likely because Leonid's pre-war life had been a decadent
chronicle of drink and debauchery. So much so that in 1937 Khrushchev
practically evicted him from the household.98 For the Soviet
leader to compare Kennedy to Leonid was therefore hardly a
compliment. Not merely was the president his junior by twenty-
three years, as Khrushchev must have known from KGB reports,
Kennedy was also an inveterate womanizer. If the Soviet leader
subconsciously saw his own son across the table in Vienna, it helps
explain why he found it hard to take Kennedy seriously.
Reynolds, p. 196.
Khrushchev turned what Kennedy had hoped might be a discussion
of current issues into a philosophical debate about the virtues of
their respective systems. Kennedy began the exchange by suggesting
that they needed to find Hways and means of not permitting situations
where the two countries would be committed to actions
involving their security or endangering peace." In response, Khrushchev
seized on Kennedy's friendly, essentially innocuous opening
to begin a hectoring attack on America's past failures to advance
Soviet-American friendship, emphasizing that the United States
wanted to reach agreements with Moscow that would be "at the
expense of other peoples." He would not agree to this, Khrushchev
said. He also emphasized that there was no inherent conflict of economic
interests between the U.S. and the USSR, and though the
Soviet Union intended to eclipse America economically, it had no
intention of standing in the way of U.S. economic development."
Kennedy, who had not yet realized the extent to which Khrushchev
was intent on beating up on him, answered Khrushchev's insupportable
claims by remarking how the Soviet growth rate had impressed
him and "that this was surely a source of satisfaction to Mr.
Khrushchev, as it was to us."
Did Kennedy treat K with the "respect due an elder"?
He (Khrushchev) asserted that Eisenhower secretary of state John Foster
Dulles had aimed to liquidate communism and that good relations
between the two countries depended on a mutual acceptance of each
other's systems. Kennedy, now rising to the challenge, declared that
it was not the United States that was unsettling the global balance of
power or seeking to overturn existing spheres of control but the
Soviet Union. This is a matter of very serious concern to us," Kennedy
said. Kennedy's rejoinder seemed to incense Khrushchev or
give him an excuse to follow through with his planned assault on
the president. He disputed the assertion that Moscow aimed to impose
its will on any country. Communism would triumph, he said,
because history was on its side. Kennedy retorted that Americans did
not share the chairman's view of an inevitable communist victory.
But, trying to move the discussion back to current realities, Kennedy
said that the problem was to find means of averting conflict in areas
where the two sides had clashing interests.
Kennedy's admission of Soviet strength equal to that of the
United States exhilarated Khrushchev, who took it as another reason
to press the case for superior Soviet morality in international affairs
and greater devotion to democratic hopes and world peace. After the
afternoon meeting ended, Khrushchev told his comrades about JFK:
"He's very young ... not strong enough. Too intelligent and too
weak." Khrushchev's gamble - that he should take advantage of the
USSR's current prestige (the result of its perceived missile superiority;
the rise of procommunist insurgencies in Asia and Africa, Kennedy's
Bay of Pigs failure, and the success of the Soviet space program) and
attack his American counterpart - seemed to be paying off.
Khrushchev believed that if he bested JFK at the Vienna summit, it
would undermine U.S. political standing. He had not come to negotiate.
He had come to compete.
He also asked Khrushchev
to see the difference between signing a peace treaty and challenging
America's rights of access to Berlin. Khrushchev showed
no give: The U.S., he said, was trying to humiliate the USSR, and
Kennedy needed to understand that Moscow intended to counter
any U.S. aggression against East Germany with force. Kennedy "then
said that either Mr. Khrushchev did not believe that the US was serious
or the situation in that area was so unsatisfactory to the Soviet
Union that it had to take this drastic action." He regretted leaving
Vienna with the impression that the U.S. and the USSR were heading
toward a confrontation. Khrushchev replied that it was the
United States that was threatening to impose the calamity of war on
the world, not the USSR. "It is up to the US to decide whether there
will be war or peace," he said. Kennedy somberly answered, "Then,
Mr. Chairman, there will be war. It will be a cold winter."
Kennedy was angry with
himself for not having shown a tougher side from the beginning of
the talks. He believed that his behavior had strengthened Khrushchev's
conviction after the Bay of Pigs that he was an inexperienced
and irresolute president who could be bullied into concessions on
Germany and Berlin. Worst of all, he feared that his perform:ance at
the meeting had increased rather than diminished the chances of an
East-West war.
He regretted that they had got into ideology, on which Khrushchev could
not have yielded even if he wanted to:"I don't think that the president
quite appreciated the fact." Bohlen felt that Kennedy "got a
little bit out of his depth."128 As for Khrushchev, according to his
aide OlegTroyanovsky, he returned from the first day's meeting asserting
that "this man is very inexperienced, even immature."
Compared to Kennedy, he added scathingly, Eisenhower was "a
man of intelligence and vision."129
Reynold, p.206
Would Nixon have taken K on in a totally different way?
It was the first time he had ever met "somebody with whom he
couldn't exchange ideas in a meaningful way," Bobby Kennedy said
later. "I think it was a shock to him that somebody would be as
harsh and definitive" - as "unrelenting" and "uncompromising" as
Khrushchev was in Vienna.
Dallek, ch 11
This was exactly the
impression that Khrushchev had intended to create. He had hoped to get his
way on Berlin, but now that he hadn't, he wanted the U.S. president to be anxious.
Khrushchev said as much in response to the Austrian's observation.
Kennedy was upset because "the President still doesn't quite understand the
times In which we live. He doesn't yet fully understand the realignment of
forces, and he still lives by the policies of his predecessors-especially as far
as the German question is concerned. ,,89
he (Kennedy)hobbled to
the Oval Office on the evening of July 25 to speak over radio and
television to the American people, his first such address for nearly
six weeks. Berlin, he said, had become "the great testing place of
Western courage and will" and "we cannot separate its safety frorn
our own." The president dismissed claims that West Berlin was militarily untenable." So was Bastogne, he said, "and so, in fact, was
Stalingrad," making calculated reference to the iconic American
and Soviet sieges of the previous world war. "Any dangerous spot is
tenable if men-brave men-will make it so." He announced another
three billion dollars for the armed forces (the third supplemental appropriation in four months), increased calls for draftees and reservists, and substantial new spending on civil defense. "We seek peace," Kennedy declared, "but we shall not surrender. That is the central meaning of this crisis."l33
Reynolds, p. 214