Authors: Jeffrey D. Sachs
To Move the World (18 page)
JOHN F
.
KENNEDY WAS
aware that negotiating and signing the treaty was just half the battle. The ratification by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate was the other half. The Senate defended its constitutional prerogatives like a hawk. On many occasions the Senate had dashed the best hopes of a president after a major treaty was signed. Kennedy would again draw on his vast powers of oratory and persuasion to seal the deal.
Woodrow Wilson’s failure with the League of Nations offered lessons for every subsequent president, and the lessons were especially relevant for Kennedy. He hailed from the same party as Wilson, and was an heir of Wilsonian idealism, the belief in international institutions and treaties as the basis for international peace. Kennedy was above all intent on avoiding Wilson’s mistakes in dealing with the public and the Senate. He was determined from the start of the peace campaign to ensure that everything agreed upon in negotiations would also be confirmed in the Senate.
Norman Cousins later recalled what Kennedy had said about
Wilson when he met with a small group of opinion leaders to strategize about the campaign to win Senate ratification:
Ever since Woodrow Wilson, he said, a President had to be cautious about bringing a treaty to the Senate unless he had a fairly good idea where the votes would come from. To get two-thirds of the Senate behind any issue was a difficult and dubious undertaking; to get it on a controversial treaty was almost in the nature of a miracle. He said that he could name fifteen senators who would probably vote against anything linked to Kennedy’s name—“and not all of them are Republicans.”
1
The campaign for peace was based on winning the public’s support for the treaty, and thereby pushing the Senate into agreement as well. Kennedy therefore began the campaign with a speech to the country and kept the public informed through press conferences, coverage of the Europe trip, and another major televised address on July 26, just one day after the treaty was initialed in Moscow. Beyond that, Kennedy met with national opinion leaders and actively supported the formation of the Citizens’ Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban.
2
After serving as a go-between of Kennedy and Khrushchev in the spring, Norman Cousins helped to coordinate the campaign for public support in the summer. Cousins related a meeting with Kennedy:
He reiterated the need for important business support and suggested a dozen names. He said that scientists such as James R. Killian [of MIT] and George Kistiakowsky [of Harvard] would be especially effective if
they could be recruited. He felt that religious figures, farmers, educators, and labor leaders all had key roles to play and mentioned a half dozen or more names in each category. Then he went down the list of states in which he felt extra effort was required.
3
Kennedy played a very active role in strategizing and marshaling support from a wide cross-section of public figures. Most important, Kennedy spoke publicly, spoke compellingly, and spoke often. He used the presidential bully pulpit exquisitely.
With the treaty agreed upon in Moscow on July 25, Kennedy turned to the nation in a televised address.
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Kennedy had mastered the medium, and used it to place himself directly in the living rooms and kitchens of families across the country. His remarks still radiate a power of intimacy and persuasion half a century later. He looked into the lens of the camera and the eyes of his countrymen.
“Good evening, my fellow citizens,” he began. “I speak to you tonight in a spirit of hope. Eighteen years ago the advent of nuclear weapons changed the course of the world as well as the war. Since that time, all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth.” Kennedy reminded his fellow citizens of the “vicious circle of conflicting ideology and interest,” of how “[e]ach increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension.” He recalled how seemingly endless rounds of meetings on disarmament had “produced only darkness, discord, or disillusion.”
“Yesterday,” he said dramatically, “a shaft of light cut into the darkness.”
Like a new beginning, first there was light. “Negotiations were concluded,” announced Kennedy, “on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water.” For the very first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, an agreement
had been reached on bringing “the forces of nuclear destruction under international control.”
As Kennedy described the treaty, he once again used the rhetorical tactic of beginning with a series of negatives—what the treaty was not. He would sell the treaty by underselling it. He would make it compelling as a first step on the journey to peace, not as an end point. He would not let the skeptics accuse him of starry-eyed diplomacy or, worse, appeasement. He would instead soberly inform his fellow Americans why it was right and prudent for them, for all Americans, to take this first step.
He also began with a clarification. Many plans, he noted, have been blocked by “those opposed to international inspection,” obliquely referring to the Soviet Union. Onsite inspections are needed, he explained, only for underground tests. “The treaty initialed yesterday, therefore, is a limited treaty which permits continued underground testing and prohibits only those tests that we ourselves can police.”
“We should also understand,” said Kennedy, “that it has other limits as well.” Signatories could withdraw from the treaty. “Nor does this treaty mean an end to the threat of nuclear war. It will not reduce nuclear stockpiles … it will not restrict their use in time of war.” In fact:
This treaty is not the millennium. It will not resolve all conflicts, or cause the Communists to forego their ambitions, or eliminate the dangers of war. It will not reduce our need for arms or allies or programs of assistance to others.
So what was it if it was
not
all of these things? “[I]t is an important first step—a step towards peace—a step towards reason—a step away from war.”
Quietly, soberly, Kennedy answered the basic question that would be asked by any citizen: “[W]hat this step can mean to you
and to your children and your neighbors.” His answer had four parts:
“First, this treaty can be a step towards reduced world tension and broader areas of agreement.” Other issues—general disarmament, a comprehensive test ban—were ultimate hopes, but not attained in this treaty.
“Second, this treaty can be a step towards freeing the world from the fears and dangers of radioactive fallout.” Kennedy was careful not to oversell this point, though fallout was a cause of great public alarm. “The number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some,” but “the loss of even one human life … should be of concern to us all.
“Third, this treaty can be a step towards preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to nations not now possessing them.” Kennedy spoke of the possibility that “many other nations” would soon have nuclear capacity, and he reminded his listeners that “if only one thermonuclear bomb were to be dropped on any American, Russian, or any other city … that one bomb could release more destructive power on the inhabitants of that one helpless city than all the bombs dropped in the Second World War”:
Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union nor the United Kingdom nor France can look forward to that day with equanimity. We have a great obligation, all four nuclear powers have a great obligation, to use whatever time remains to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to persuade other countries not to test, transfer, acquire, possess, or produce such weapons.
This treaty can be the opening wedge in that campaign.
Kennedy then turned to the last point. “Fourth and finally, this treaty can limit the nuclear arms race in ways which, on balance,
will strengthen our Nation’s security far more than the continuation of unrestricted testing.” A nation’s security, Kennedy reminded the country, “does not always increase as its arms increase, when its adversary is doing the same.” Once again, Kennedy explained the fundamental illogic of an arms spiral and the mutual benefits of slowing it, something that he hoped the treaty would help to do. Violations of the treaty—secret testing—would be possible, but the strategic gains would be slight and the costs to the violator’s reputation would be very high. In sum, the treaty, “in our most careful judgment, is safer by far for the United States than an unlimited nuclear arms race.”
Throughout the address, Kennedy did not rely on a single line of jargon, nor did he suggest that the public should simply adopt the views of experts. All was laid out and explained simply and precisely, down to the very choices that the negotiators had made in the previous weeks. And so it was consistent and natural that Kennedy would conclude by calling on all citizens to participate in the upcoming Senate debate:
The Constitution wisely requires the advice and consent of the Senate to all treaties, and that consultation has already begun. All this is as it should be. A document which may mark an historic and constructive opportunity for the world deserves an historic and constructive debate.
It is my hope that all of you will take part in that debate, for this treaty is for all of us. It is particularly for our children and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington. This debate will involve military, scientific, and political experts, but it must be not left to them alone. The right and the responsibility are yours.
Kennedy concluded his address with the central theme: that we must pursue a path of peace, one that is uncertain, risky, and challenging,
but critical nevertheless. “No one can be certain what the future will bring … But history and our own conscience will judge us harsher if we do not now make every effort to test our hopes by action, and this is the place to begin. According to the ancient Chinese proverb, ‘A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.’ ”
And then came Kennedy’s inimitable call to his countrymen:
My fellow Americans, let us take that first step. Let us, if we can, step back from the shadows of war and seek out the way of peace. And if that journey is a thousand miles, or even more, let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.
Kennedy’s was a call to action no less direct and stirring than Gandhi’s call to Indians to step toward the sea to collect salt, and thereby free themselves from colonial rule. Kennedy used the word “step” fourteen times in the speech. He knew that peace would require a long journey, beyond a thousand miles and beyond a thousand days, but he cogently laid out the urgency of the first step: ratifying the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Kennedy had Senate ratification in mind at every step of the negotiating process. He would not fall into Wilson’s trap, succeeding in negotiating the treaty internationally but then failing to achieve its ratification domestically. Kennedy had an enormous advantage over Wilson, in addition to the obvious one of being able to learn from Wilson’s mistakes. Kennedy, unlike Wilson, was a former senator. There was no way that Kennedy would forget the Senate’s mores, and especially the determined way that senators
would defend their prerogative to advise and consent on a major treaty.
From the start, Kennedy considered the domestic politics of the treaty from every vantage point, and pressed his advantage in every manner available. He knew that all parts of the treaty would face scrutiny and that he had to be ready for it. He knew that he would need solid bipartisan support to get two-thirds of the Senate, since some southern Democrats would vote against the treaty. He knew that powerful American thought leaders, if not handled with care, could derail the treaty. In short, he knew that ratification would require a precise campaign whose complexities would rival those of negotiating the treaty itself.