Leaders on both sides tried to exploit nuclear weapons for political advantage. Eisenhower concluded from the Korean War that nuclear threats worked. That belief underpinned his New Look policy, which aimed to use nuclear threats to deter local aggression. As Dulles explained, the United States "would depend primarily on a great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by
Means and at places of our own choosing."617 Eisenhower and Dulles considered using nuclear weapons in three crises in Asia. The first was in Indochina, where France was facing a Communist insurgency in Vietnam. There was discussion in the administration in 1954 of the possibility of using nuclear weapons to relieve French forces under siege in Dienbienphu. In the event Eisenhower took no action and made no overt nuclear threat.
The second and third crises concerned the islands of Jinmen and Mazu (Quemoy and Matsu), which lie only a few miles off the coast of China and were still controlled by the Chinese Nationalist government in Taiwan. In 1954 and 1958, the Chinese Communists bombarded the islands with artillery. Eisenhower concluded in each case that the defense of Taiwan required that the offshore islands be held. He was willing to use nuclear weapons if they were attacked, and he made that clear in March 1955 and in August 1958. These threats were not a bluff. Eisenhower gave serious consideration to the possibility of using nuclear weapons. He was not eager to do so, and he was well aware ofthe normative restraints on their use, but he did believe that nuclear threats could be used for political purposes. In each case the crisis ended when the Chinese expressed their desire for a peaceful settlement. Mao’s main purpose appears to have been to make a political point, to show that China was a force to be reckoned with, rather than to seize territory from Nationalist control. In 1958, he had the additional goal of using international tension to mobilize Chinese society for the Great Leap Forward, a radical and ill-considered plan to industrialize China.
Ironically, Khrushchev, like Eisenhower, was persuaded of the utility of nuclear threats by a crisis in which the effect of such threats appears to have been negligible. Khrushchev conducted his first experiment in nuclear diplomacy during the Suez crisis. On November 5, 1956, he sent notes to London and Paris threatening them with missile attacks if they did not withdraw their forces from Egypt, where they had landed with the intention of regaining control of the Suez Canal. He sent a similar note to the Israeli government, which had allied itself with Britain and France. On the following day, Britain decided to end the Suez operation, and France was obliged to follow suit; Israel withdrew its forces later. Most historians assign a minor role to Soviet threats in explaining the collapse of the Suez operation; they give much greater weight to Eisenhower’s opposition and US financial pressure. Khrushchev concluded otherwise. He was apparently convinced by the Suez
Crisis that nuclear threats were effective - and also that bluffs worked, since he could not have carried out the threats he made.618
Khrushchev wanted to make political gains by exploiting Soviet successes in nuclear technology and in space. He knew that a nuclear war would be catastrophic, and he knew that Eisenhower knew that too. If he could press hard enough, however, Eisenhower might back down. "I think the people with the strongest nerves will be the winners," he remarked in 1958. "That is the most important consideration in the power struggle of our time. The people with weak nerves will go to the wall."619 He believed that he could wage an effective war of nerves against the West.
On November 27, 1958, Khrushchev announced that he would conclude a peace treaty with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) within six months, thereby effectively revoking the rights ofthe occupying powers in Berlin. This was a serious challenge for the United States and NATO. The Soviet Union had overwhelming conventional superiority around West Berlin; if the Soviet Union decided to take Berlin, NATO might have to respond with nuclear weapons. Would the United States be willing to use such weapons, knowing that the Soviet Union would, in all likelihood, respond with nuclear strikes of its own? Eisenhower used this quandary to NATO’s advantage by consistently denying that war in Europe could remain conventional. He sought thereby to deny Khrushchev any leverage from the overwhelming Soviet conventional superiority around Berlin.
In the note that precipitated the crisis, Khrushchev warned Washington: "only madmen can go to the length of unleashing another world war over the preservation of the privileges of the occupationists in West Berlin."620 The difficulty for Khrushchev was that it was equally true that only a madman would start a war in order to end those privileges. Eisenhower knew that Khrushchev understood that a nuclear war would be catastrophic for everyone; he knew that Khrushchev knew that he (Eisenhower) understood it as well. In March 1959, after Khrushchev had dropped the six-month deadline, Eisenhower stated, in a television broadcast, "global conflict under modern conditions could mean the destruction of civilization. The Soviet rulers,
Themselves, are well aware of this fact."621 The best way to reduce the risk of war, he went on, was to stand firm over Berlin. Eisenhower stood his ground and Khrushchev did not carry through on his threat.
Khrushchev reopened the Berlin crisis at the Vienna summit meeting in June 1961 when he handed Kennedy an aide-memoire demanding that West Berlin become a free city and that peace treaties be signed with the GDR. Once again he set a six-month deadline, and again he applied pressure on the Western powers. He hoped that Kennedy would be more susceptible to pressure than Eisenhower, but he was mistaken. He did not follow through on his threat to sign a peace treaty. In August 1961, he decided to erect the Wall in order to staunch the flow of people to the West. This action, though it was followed by some tense confrontations between American and Soviet forces, provided the basis for a modus vivendi on Berlin.
When the Central Committee presidium (as the Politburo was then called) removed Khrushchev from power in October 1964, it drew up two indictments. The milder of these, which was read to the Central Committee, made little mention of foreign policy. The harsher indictment, which was written by D. S. Polianskii, a member of the presidium, was prepared in case Khrushchev was not willing to resign at the presidium’s request. It is worth quoting from its comments on the Berlin crisis. Comrade Khrushchev, it stated, "gave an ultimatum: either Berlin will be a free city by such and such a date, or even war will not stop us. We do not know what he was counting on, for we do not have such fools as think it necessary to fight for a 'fTee city of Berlin.’"622 Comrade Khrushchev, it continued, "wanted to frighten the Americans; however, they did not take fright, and we had to retreat, to suffer a palpable blow to the authority and prestige of the country, our policy, and our armed forces."623 It is hard to disagree with these judgments.
Both Eisenhower and Kennedy stood firm against Khrushchev’s pressure, but there was an important difference between them. Eisenhower was willing to confront Khrushchev with the prospect of general war. Kennedy wanted to have more options at his disposal: he increased US forces in Germany and explored the possibility of a limited first strike against the Soviet nuclear forces. In Berlin, Eisenhower’s policy proved to be effective, but that did not stop the Kennedy administration’s search for flexible options.
World History
