JFK TAPES: Another Summit with Khrushchev and the Politics of the Test Ban
In this excerpt from newly published transcripts of JFK’s secret White House tapes, JFK and his advisers discuss the politics of a test ban agreement and the possibility of a new summit meeting with Khrushchev.
When the United States and Soviet Union negotiated arms control in the late-1950s and early-1960s to try to ban or limit nuclear tests in an effort to slow down the arms race, one of the most difficult, recurring sticking points was making sure that each side stuck to the terms of the agreement.
Banning nuclear testing could actually end up making the arms race even more dangerous if one side was able to cheat. If the cheating side was able to gain a technological advantage over the other, it would undermine the point of arms control and risk destabilizing mutual nuclear deterrence.
It was technically possible to monitor from afar. Spy planes could collect air samples from outside a country’s airspace, and seismic detection with strategically placed equipment could pick up the geological shock of a massive explosion.
But collecting air samples was ineffective for nuclear tests conducted underground, and the vast interior of the Soviet Union pushed the limits of seismic detection boxes. Satellite imagery was still very much in its infancy, and flying over hostile territory with surveillance planes risked sparking an international crisis like the 1960 U-2 incident; and in any event, visual surveillance wasn’t very effective against underground tests.
It’s an entirely political problem.
The general consensus amongst U.S. government experts by 1962 was that remote monitoring technology was sufficiently effective and that only a relatively small number of on-the-ground inspections would be necessary to catch the Soviets if they cheated. But many influential non-scientists were skeptical.
On the one hand, they weren’t inclined to trust the Soviets not to cheat. Or, as Ronald Reagan later became fond of saying, it was important to “trust, but verify.” So largely for political reasons, it was seen as crucial to build into an agreement the right for at least a token number of on-the-ground inspections. This would provide for each side to send its own weapons inspectors into the other’s territory to do spot compliance checks.
But on the other hand, they didn’t want too many. It was all very well to insist on U.S. or international inspectors being allowed unimpeded access to go anywhere in the Soviet Union, but it would have to be reciprocal. It wasn’t just conservative American politicians that bristled at the idea of Soviet inspectors roaming through the United States — it would be all too easy to use it as an opportunity for spying.
So, for Kennedy, the problem wasn’t just negotiating with Moscow. He also had to negotiate at the same time with members of the U.S. Senate. There was no point signing a treaty with the Soviets if it was going to be a non-starter in the Senate.
From the White House Tapes: November 9, 1962
In this short segment from JFK’s secret White House recordings from November 9, 1962, President Kennedy and his advisers ruminate on the domestic political problems of an inspection regime on nuclear tests, especially when it was mostly a matter or principle.
The segment is interesting for another reason: it shows JFK thinking out load about the possibility of another summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
The two had met in Vienna the previous year, in June 1961. That meeting had taken place early in JFK’s presidency and not longer after the debacle of the Bay of Pigs. The summit had not gone especially well. Khrushchev used the occasion to resume his threats against West Berlin, insisting once again that the United States and its allies withdraw from West Berlin, or else. After that meeting, JFK told Time reporter Hugh Sidey, “I never met a man like this. I talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in 10 minutes, and he just looked at me as if to say, ‘So what?’” It set in motion a tense summer during which Kennedy called up reserves and the Soviets and East Germans built the Berlin Wall.
That’s why some day there ought to be a summit —
But in this November 1962 conversation, Kennedy saw a new opportunity for progress on three of the most important but difficult problems of the Cold War. One was West Berlin — it still wasn’t resolved, and Kennedy suspected that the crises in Cuba and West Berlin had somehow been linked in Khrushchev’s calculations. Another was stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Known as non-proliferation today and non-diffusion at the time, it was focused particularly in the near term on the prospect of China joining the nuclear club. The third issue was closely related: a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
All of these were thorny problems that had so far proved unsolvable. But something new had happened: the Cuban Missile Crisis. The brush with nuclear catastrophe was very recent — it had wrapped up only a matter of days earlier. The episode had brought home all too vividly the very real risk of global nuclear war. It had also enhanced JFK’s stature through much of the world. Kennedy hoped that the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis might create a promising new opportunity to make dramatic progress on these three problems that had proved intractable so far.
With his reel-to-reel tape recorder secretly taping the discussion, Kennedy met with a group of his senior foreign policy advisers. They included senior officials with responsibility for U.S. foreign policy toward Europe and West Germany, as well as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy.
The focus of the meeting was the impending visit of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. But it was impossible to talk about West Germany and the West Berlin problem without raising some of the most difficult problems at the heart of the Cold War.
McGeorge Bundy: I think the real problem about this is the principle of the uninspected moratorium.
Robert McNamara: It’s an entirely political problem. [Unclear].
President Kennedy: Why, because you have twenty times . . . You’d . . . There’d be at least ten or fifteen or twenty occasions that year where you would be subject to a visit —
McNamara: Yes. Exactly so.
President Kennedy: So all you’d really need would be two or three inspections, wouldn’t you?
McNamara: That’s right.
Bundy: You really need the right of inspection, and you could even agree that you weren’t going to use it until you thought the situation was very serious. I mean, as a practical matter it’s the right of inspection that matters.
President Kennedy: Well, who have we . . . Who is in our sort of . . . I suppose they’re working on this over there at [Adrian] Foster’s [Arms Control and Disarmament Agency]?[1]
Bundy: Oh, Foster is ready to produce a minimum inspection system anytime we think that the political noise is worth it. There’s no problem there. It’s very much like this non-diffusion thing and very much like the Berlin thing. If we can make a real bargain with the Russians, then our problem is to dress it up and fight it through the Senate in this case instead of the Germans.
President Kennedy: So, it may be that there’s —
Bundy: That’s why some day there ought to be a summit —
President Kennedy: [Unclear] three things that they might be . . . on this, and with [non-]diffusion, and on [West] Berlin —
Bundy: That’s right.
President Kennedy: We might have three things.
In the summer and fall of the following year, 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (it’s something known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty).
It was ultimately a less ambitious agreement than earlier negotiations had sought. By banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water, it left the signatories free to continue with underground nuclear tests. But it was an important effort to slow the arms race — at least for a while.
The Senate ratified the treaty overwhelmingly (80 to 19) in the fall, Kennedy signed in on October 7, and it came into effect a few weeks later.
[1] Adrian Foster was Deputy Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
The transcript segment above is excerpted from The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy: The Winds of Change: November 8–30, 1962, volume 5 (edited by David Coleman),(New York: W.W. Norton, 2016) pp. 82–83.
