Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

What mattered to Kennedy were the earlier messages he sent to his domestic political audience and to his foreign rivals, and what those messages were likely to mean for the Democratic Party’s prospects in the midterm election. As the president saw the situation, his difficulty was, at least in part, that on September 4, before the crisis began to unfold, but after Soviet SAM missiles (defensive weapons) had been detected on Cuba, he had publicly declared:

There is no evidence of any organized combat force in Cuba from any Soviet Bloc country; of military bases provided to Russia; of a violation of the 1934 treaty relating to Guantanamo [an American military base on Cuba]; of the presence of offensive ground-to-ground missiles; or of other significant offensive capability. . . . Were it otherwise the gravest issues would arise.21

In this statement, President Kennedy made clear that he would not tolerate offensive (nuclear) weapons on Cuba, but that he viewed a defensive Soviet weapons buildup as acceptable (hence the phrase “were it otherwise”). With repeated Soviet assurances, made in public, that they had no intention of putting nuclear weapons on Cuba, Kennedy repeated his message that defensive weapons were okay but nuclear weapons would not be permitted. He probably believed that such strong language about offensive weapons was politically safe, much as Obama may have believed that his “game changer” statement was sufficient to deter Assad from using chemical weapons. Through strong language, Kennedy may have hoped to recoup some of his credibility as a foreign policy leader in the run-up to the midterm election. He certainly made clear that he was deeply concerned that, having talked tough, if he did not act tough, the Democrats would lose more seats in the midterm election and he would be impeached! In a private, recorded meeting with his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, right after JFK’s October 22 address to the nation in which he announced that the US Navy would blockade Cuba, here is what the two had to say about the domestic political fallout from the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba:

JFK:

It looks really mean, doesn’t it? But on the other hand there wasn’t any choice. If he’s going to get this mean on this one, in our part of the world [unclear], no choice. I don’t think there was a choice

RFK:

Well, there isn’t any choice. I mean, you would have been, you would have been impeached.

JFK:

Well, I think I would have been impeached.

[Unclear exchange]

If there had been a move to impeach, I would have been under [unclear], on the grounds that I said they wouldn’t do it, and . . .

RFK:

[Unclear] something else. They’d think up some other step that wasn’t necessary. You’d be . . . But now, the fact is, you couldn’t have done any less.

[Then, discussing a conversation RFK had with Georgi Bolshakov, a Soviet defense attaché] . . .

JFK:

What did he say?

RFK:

He said they are going to go through [the quarantine].

JFK:

The ships are going to go?

RFK:

He said this is, this is a defensive base for the Russians. It’s got nothing to do with the Cubans.

JFK:

Why are . . . They’re lying [unclear] that. Khrushchev’s horseshit about the election. Anyway, the sickening thing that’s so very bad is what this revealed about . . . This horror about embarrassing me in the election.22

Critically, this exchange is not about the national security situation, the wisdom of the blockade, the alternative responses that had been considered by the president’s Executive Committee appointed to assess what to do, the danger of war, or any such lofty set of ideas. It is about how Khrushchev was using the American midterm electoral setting to his own advantage and how John Kennedy needed to take tough action, not as emphasized in the speech, to protect the United States and the Western Hemisphere, but because otherwise he would have been impeached. He had, after all, assured the public that the Soviet Union would not place offensive weapons on Cuba and now it was doing so, making the president look weak at best and possibly worse—like a liar.

There are a few crucial lessons to be drawn from the cases of Cuba and Syria/Crimea/Ukraine. In each case, as with all choices of war and peace, leaders have to figure out responses that get what they want out of their foreign adversary, but also give them what they need personally and politically at home. It is possible, even likely in some instances, that there is no happy solution to these two problems. Obama, for instance, could have sent convincing signals to Putin and his backers that might have gotten them to be tougher on Assad and kept them out of Ukraine, but those signals would have turned off his backers at home and possibly benefited the Republican opposition at the expense of Democrats. Remember, only 29 percent of Democrats favored airstrikes in response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Kennedy was in a happier position in this regard, although he took a monumental risk. He himself estimated the odds of nuclear war “as between one out of three and even.”23 Imagine the consequences had he misjudged Khrushchev’s ability to control the Soviet response. Kennedy was able to satisfy his supporters at home and get Khrushchev to accept an outcome that was positive for JFK as well.

Unfortunately pundits, journalists, and other “experts” are too quick to think that war and peace is high politics that cannot be brought down to the level of personal politics. Yet these two crises, just like FDR’s decisions in the run-up to World War II and Madison’s in 1812, remind us that even the biggest decisions are shaped by basic domestic political considerations rather than judgments of national well-being. Remember, again, that President Kennedy understood that nuclear missiles in Cuba did not fundamentally alter the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the national perspective, allowing Russia to keep missiles in Cuba reduced US security only slightly. But the partisan and personal consequences were likely to be severe. The Democrats could have expected a drubbing in the upcoming midterm elections and Kennedy expected to be impeached. He was willing to risk “between one out of three and even” chances of nuclear war to avoid these eventualities!

What If?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF BEING INDECISIVE and overly reluctant to use force. If we follow the logic of the Roman fourth-century writer Vegetius, who argued that those who desire peace prepare for war, then Obama’s hesitations might be understood as a contributor to the cause of war. Figure 6.2 shows us US defense expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) from 1991—the end of the cold war—through 2015. As the figure makes clear, President Bill Clinton capitalized on the so-called peace dividend at the end of the cold war by markedly reducing defense expenditures. President George W. Bush then significantly increased expenditures, presumably to support the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. President Obama, although still having the Afghan War to cope with and coming into office with a large contingent of American combat soldiers still in Iraq, significantly reduced defense spending. From the perspective of those who share Vegetius’s view, he was not preparing for war and hence, not bolstering the prospects of peace. Against this, Obama and his supporters believed that there was a better way, a more diplomatic way, to solve foreign crises.

We agree that there generally are better ways to solve foreign crises than to go to war. Here we want to offer some ideas that we first proposed in 2014 to address how President Obama might have sent more successful signals to Putin and to the government in Ukraine, to reduce the dangers in Ukraine that unfolded following his weak response to the chemical weapons crisis in Syria, while also advancing the interests of his and the Democratic Party’s electoral base.24