Fear and Negotiations
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For many in the United States, Communism was an enemy, and they opposed negotiating any compromise, looking forward instead to defeating the enemy. They didn't care about the fears of Communist leaders intensifying the conflict called the Cold War - as had Stalin's fears. President John F. Kennedy favored negotiations. Two months after the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy met the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev at Vienna. There, Khrushchev ignored the advice of his comrade Anastas Mikoyan and did not take Kennedy seriously enough to allow real negotiations. Two months after the Vienna meeting the Berlin Wall went up. In 1963, in agreement with the Castro regime, Khruschev began shipping missiles to Cuba that he hoped would deter another invasion of Cuba. What followed was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Negotiations that could have taken place earlier, allaying fears, now had to take place under desperate circumstances: the brink of war. President Kennedy did it without preconditions. It was vital just to start talking. As Winston Churchill said in 1954, it is better to "jaw-jaw than to war-war." In the Soviet Union, Mikoyan's approach to diplomacy was vindicated. | |
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