On broader issues of nuclear strategy, as on Berlin, a surprising convergence can be detected between Kennedy’s evolving views and policies and those of the predecessor he initially sought to distance himself from. By September 1961, satellite reconnaissance yielded unmistakable confirmation that no missile gap existed between the Soviets and the Americans. In fact, according to an authoritative National Intelligence Estimate, the Soviets possessed not the 140-200 operational ICBMs originally suspected, but a mere 10-25. Needless to say, Eisenhower’s cool confidence in superior American strength began to appear more prescient than the caricature promulgated by the Kennedy campaign of a complacent commander-in-chief asleep at the switch. The chief architect of Kennedy’s security policy, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, had his deputy, Roswell Gilpatric, publicly reveal the marked US advantage in all three legs of nuclear force structure - strategic bombers, ICBMs, and nuclear-armed submarines - to send a clear message to the Soviets while reassuring the American people.
An early proponent of developing limited-nuclear-war options as a less gruesome alternative to Eisenhower’s all-or-nothing stance, McNamara gradually grew disillusioned with the notion that any nuclear conflict with the Soviets could stop short of all-out war. Kennedy, McNamara, and other top officials arrived at the conclusion, by no later than the end of 1962, that the only alternative to a savagely destructive nuclear war was to harp constantly on the horrors of such a conflict and rely on mutual deterrence as the safest preventative measure. By the end of the Kennedy administration, mutual deterrence - or mutually assured destruction, a more graphic term for the concept - had virtually acquired the status of official doctrine.
The movement toward that doctrine was hastened by the sobering lessons learned during the climactic Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. At the height of the crisis, Kennedy acknowledged that even though Soviet ICBMs might not be completely reliable, they almost certainly possessed sufficient firepower to hit American cities and cause between 80 million and 100 million casualties. "[Y]ou’re talking about the destruction of a country!," he exclaimed.427 After having come closer to a nuclear holocaust than at any point during the entire Cold War, US and Soviet leaders recognized the need to avoid future Cuba-type confrontations and began to take some significant
Steps in that direction. These included the Limited Test Ban Treaty of August 1963, a signal achievement. At American University in Washington, DC, in June of that year, Kennedy delivered the most conciliatory speech of his presidency, urging that more attention be directed "to our common interests and to the means by which differences can be resolved."428
Scholars will long debate the relative efficacy of the national security policies crafted by Eisenhower and Kennedy during this exceptionally dangerous phase of the Cold War. Working within a broad consensus on strategic goals, they plainly adopted different tactical priorities. Those tactical shifts distinguished the two administrations fTom each other in significant respects - while distinguishing both from the Truman administration that preceded them. Yet the fundamental continuities that obtain between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations are perhaps more striking. Each saw the Cold War as a long-term struggle that encompassed not just military competition but political, economic, social, cultural, and ideological competition as well. Each, moreover, was committed not just to waging the Cold War but to winning it.
World History
