Niall Ferguson - Kissinger, Volume 1

*Johnson was a physicist by training; Linebarger an Asia specialist who (as “Cordwainer Smith”) wrote science fiction on the side; Possony would go on to devise the Strategic Defense Initiative for Ronald Reagan; Millikan and Rostow (who was not formally a member of the panel but seems to have been involved anyway) became ardent proponents of economic aid as a Cold War lever.

*This was the interview in which Dulles described “the ability to get to the verge without getting into the war” as “the necessary art”: “If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into a war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” Henceforth his name would always be associated with “brinkmanship.”

* The Reporter had been founded in 1949 by Max Ascoli, a refugee from fascist Italy, and the journalist James Reston, and was highly influential as an outlet for broadly hawkish anti-Communist commentary. It was absorbed by Harper’s Magazine in 1968.

*The witty and glamorous wife of the publisher of Time, Luce had just returned from serving as the U.S. ambassador in Rome. It was she who coined the phrase “No good deed goes unpunished.”

*It is surprising that Oppenheimer had overlooked this error.

*“Atom bomb baby, boy she can start / One of those chain reactions in my heart / A big explosion, big and loud / Mushrooms me right up on a cloud.”

*This was in fact correct: the R7 that had placed Sputnik in orbit was the first intercontinental ballistic missile, and it had been designed specifically to deliver hydrogen bombs to U.S. targets. The American equivalent, the Atlas D, was not successfully tested until July 1959, nearly two years after Sputnik . In this respect, there was a missile gap in the late 1950s.

*The allusion is to Nicolaus Sombart, the libertine son of the more famous historical sociologist Werner Sombart, who had written his doctoral thesis on Henri, comte de Saint-Simon, the aristocratic prophet of a partly socialist, partly meritocratic industrial utopia.

*Ruebhausen had been Rockefeller’s roommate at Dartmouth. Kissinger thought him a lightweight and could not stand him. The animosity was reciprocated.

*Rockefeller broke off the relationship with Hanks when he became governor of New York. However, he soon began another adulterous relationship with Margaretta “Happy” Murphy, a family friend who had worked on his campaign and joined his staff in Albany. Unlike Hanks, she was married. In 1962 Rockefeller’s wife sued for divorce. The following year Murphy and her husband were also divorced. A month later she and Rockefeller were married. During this period Hanks had been diagnosed with cancer and endured a mastectomy and a hysterectomy.

*Another refugee from Nazi Germany, Epstein had just published his definitive biography of the Weimar politician Matthias Erzberger.

*The conferences were set up in response to the 1955 manifesto issued by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein calling for scientists to meet together to assess and counter the dangers posed by “weapons of mass destruction.”

*Eisenhower’s first reference to the domino theory was at a press conference following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu: “You have a row of dominos set up. You knock over the first one…. What will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” This was odd, as he had done next to nothing to prevent the French domino from falling.

*The United States Information Agency, also known as USIS (United States Information Service) when operating abroad.

*See for example John F. Kennedy’s speech in the Senate on August 14, 1958: “We have developed what Henry Kissinger has called a Maginot-line mentality.” Kennedy felt no need to explain who Kissinger was.

*The secretary of state of New York is responsible for regulating a variety of professions and businesses in the state.

*They formed an enduring friendship, though it was not until her seventy-fifth birthday — by which time they had known each other for thirty years — that she suggested they start using the familiar Du instead of Sie .

*The Warsaw Pact was the 1955 collective defense treaty binding the Soviet Union to Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. It was a direct response to the Western decision to make West Germany a member of NATO. The original intention had been for the Federal Republic to join a European Defense Community, but the 1952 treaty creating the EDC failed to secure ratification by the French National Assembly.

*“[1] United States, British and French forces could withdraw to the line of the Weser while Soviet forces could retire to the Vistula. The German forces between the Weser and the Oder would be restricted to defensive armaments, as would the Polish forces between the Oder and the Vistula. [2]… A ceiling could be placed on NATO forces between the Rhine and the Eastern frontiers of the Federal Republic and on Warsaw Pact forces in the East German satellite so that the two military establishments would be substantially equal in number. [3] Or else NATO and Soviet forces could withdraw, say 100 miles, from the Elbe. A control system could be established between the Rhine and the Oder. [4]… the neutralization of Germany [could be coupled] with that of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. [Or] [5] we should strive for a demarcation line on the Oder, with Warsaw Pact and NATO forces withdrawn an equal distance, leaving a buffer zone manned by balanced German and Polish-Czechoslovak defensive forces under a system of inspection.”

*Cleverly, Nixon argued that appointing two superadvisers would reinforce the public perception that “this President could not work as hard as others.” That was enough to kill the idea.

*Mark Feeney has memorably suggested that Nixon was a composite of Iago, Malvolio, and Richard III, but these other personae were less visible in 1960. The challenge is to remember the prelapsarian Nixon, before Watergate and resignation forever destroyed his reputation.

*As things stood, the East German — Polish frontier roughly followed the Oder and Neisse Rivers. That meant the loss of large tracts of historic Prussia. To many Germans — and not only to former Nazis and the highly influential “League of Expellees”—this was unacceptable.

*He had originally intended to refer to “the military-industrial-congressional complex,” reflecting his own frustration at the insistence of certain congressmen — including his own successor as president — that there was a missile gap that at all costs needed to be closed. At the last minute, he struck out “congressional.”

*The other Harvard faculty named were Sam Beers (government), Abram Chayes (law), Archibald Cox (law), J. K. Galbraith (economics), Fred Holburn (government), Mark DeWolfe Howe, Jr. (law), W. Barton Leach (law), and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (history). The piece also mentioned five MIT faculty members — David Frisch, Martin Myerton, Lucian Pye, Walt Rostow, and Robert C. Wood — as well as Earl Latham from Amherst, who was then visiting at Harvard. The Globe omitted Arthur E. Sutherland, Jr., another Harvard Law School professor whom Kennedy consulted.

*The area of Washington where the State Department is located, in a building originally intended for the War Department.

*Interstate 495, the highway known as the Beltway around Washington, D.C., was opened in December 1961.

*This was not guaranteed, to be sure. Paul Nitze had turned the job down before it was offered to Bundy, in the erroneous belief that a senior position at one of the major departments would be more influential.

*The neutron bomb had first been conceived in 1958 as an “enhanced radiation” weapon. The release of fusion-produced neutrons would be lethal to humans in the vicinity of a neutron bomb’s detonation; the relatively smaller thermal and blast effects would mean that buildings and infrastructure would suffer less destruction than from a hydrogen bomb.