A different cold war? European settlement of 1963 and afterward

Clark JOHNSON

Abstract


The expectation of ongoing pressure against the Soviet Union and potential allies elsewhere in world made up the thrust of early US planning for the Cold War, and were emblematic of Containment. They led the US to assume leadership of NATO in Western Europe, and to worldwide US engagements, including in Vietnam.  But the US and NATO during the 1950s could not agree on a defense strategy; Eisenhower’s plan by 1957 and 1958 was for the US to reduce its European presence in favor of national control of nuclear weapons, including by West Germany. That prospect frightened the Soviets, and more than anything else led to Khrushchev’s ultimatum on Berlin in November 1958. Kennedy, with some collaboration from Khrushchev, constructed a settlement by 1963 that would keep US forces in western Europe; keep US nuclear weapons under US control, hence prevent Germans from having them; and maintain the political status quo in central Europe.  A self-enforcing European peace could be achieved only because the Soviet goal of regional hegemony had been thwarted. But Kennedy and Khrushchev both left the scene, following which the accomplishment was poorly understood, a pattern oddly continued by most Cold War observers – including Morgenthau and Kissinger. Had it been better understood, it might have changed US policy toward less intervention in the Third World. Eisenhower left office in January 1961 with the US on the brink of showdown in central Africa, Cuba, and Laos. We got a pre-vision of a different strategy in Kennedy’s policy shifts in all of these, and in withdrawal underway of forces from Vietnam.  Meanwhile, DeGaulle offered a multi-dimensional case for neutrality in southeast Asia. A less ideological, more “realist” view would have led the US to stay “offshore,” to avoid confrontation where superpower interests were only marginally involved, and otherwise to encourage neutralist solutions.  The Cold War might have faded away; but that was not to be. Containment, as practiced, and resumed after 1963, prolonged the Cold War. Kennedy and DeGaulle were effective realists, while Eisenhower, Kissinger, and often Acheson, were not. The 1963 European settlement should have been updated during the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it was not. A consequence, in part, was the Ukraine war of 2022.

Keywords. Containment; European settlement 1963; Cold War; Realism; Hegemony in Europe; Nuclear weapons policy; MC-48; NATO history; Berlin crisis; Vietnam War;  Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Domino Theory; Neutralism; Multi-lateral Force (MLF) arrangements; Dwight Eisenhower; John Kennedy; Dean Acheson; Henry Kissinger; Nikita Khrushchev; Charles DeGaulle; Konrad Adenauer; Harold Macmillan; Walter Lippmann; Hans Morgenthau; John Mearsheimer; Marc Trachtenberg; Kissinger’s Diplomacy; Skybolt missile; Polaris missile; Ukraine War; Congolese neutrality; Laotian neutrality.

JEL. M14.

Keywords


Containment; European settlement 1963; Cold War; Realism; Hegemony in Europe; Nuclear weapons policy; MC-48; NATO history; Berlin crisis; Vietnam War; Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Domino Theory; Neutralism; Multi-lateral Force (MLF) arrangements; Dwi

Full Text:


References


Brands, H.W. (1989). The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947-1960. New York: Oxford.

Brands, H. (2022). The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great Power Rivalry Today. New Haven: Yale.

Brinkley, D. (1992). Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-1971. New Haven: Yale.

Chomsky, N. (1999). Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture. Boston: South End.

Cohen, S. (2019). “Why are We in the Ukraine?” The Nation. November 14. [Retrieved from].

Dobrynin, A. (1995). In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents. New York: Times/ Random House.

Douglass, J. (2008). JFK and the Unspeakable. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Duiker, W. (1981). The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Ferguson, N. (2015). Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist. New York: Penguin.

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) (1963). Volume 4: Vietnam, August-December 1963. State Department, INR. “Statistics on the War Effort in South Vietnam Show Unfavorable Trends.” [Retrieved from].

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1961-1963 (1988). Volume I, Vietnam, 1961; “Draft Memorandum for the President,” November 8, 1961.

Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963 (FRUS) (1996). Volume 6: Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges.

Gaddis, J. (1982). Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Oxford University.

Gaddis, J. (1997). We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University.

Gaddis, J. (2005). The Cold War: The Deals. The Spies. The Lies. The Truth. New York: Penguin.

Galbraith, J.K. (2003). Exit Vietnam: In 1963, JFK Ordered a Complete Withdrawal from Vietnam,” Boston Review; September 1. [Retrieved from].

Gewen, B. (2020). The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World. New York: Norton.

Halberstam, D. (1972). The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House.

Ignatius, D. (2022). “Watching Russia’s Military Failures is Exhilarating. But a Cornered Putin is Dangerous,” Washington Post, March 16. [Retrieved from].

Jackson, J. (2018). DeGaulle. Cambridge MA: Harvard University.

Johnson, C. (2016). Too much idealism? Ferguson, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War, Journal of Social and Administrative Science, 3(2), 83-110. doi. 10.1453/jsas.v3i2.768

Jones, H.P. (1971). Indonesia: The Possible Dream. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Jones, H. (2003). Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War. New York: Oxford.

Kaiser, D. (2000). American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Kennan, G. (“X”) (1947). The sources of Soviet conduct, Foreign Affairs, 25(4), [Retrieved from].

Kennedy, J.F. (n.d.). Presidential Library and Museum, “The Bay of Pigs.” [Retrieved from].

Kissinger, H. (1979). White House Years. Boston: Little, Brown.

Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kissinger, H. (2011). The age of Kennan, New York Times, Nov.10. [Retrieved from].

Khrushchev, S. (2001). Commentary on thirteen days, New York Times, February 4.

Lippman, W. (n.d.). Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University.

Logevall, F. (1999). Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California.

Mahoney, R. (1983). JFK: Ordeal in Africa. New York: Oxford University.

Mahoney, R. (1999). Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy. New York: Arcade.

Mearsheimer, J. (2014). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: Norton.

Mearsheimer, J. (2014B). Why the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault: The liberal delusions that provoked Putin, Foreign Affairs. September/October. [Retrieved from].

Mearsheimer, J. (2017). The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. New Haven: Yale.

Mearsheimer, J. (2019). Bound to fail: The rise and fall of the liberal international order, International Security, 43(4), 7-50. doi. 10.1162/isec_a_00342

Mearsheimer, J. (2022). John Mearsheimer on why the US is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis. The Economist, 11 Mar 2022.

Morgenthau, H. (1969). A New Foreign Policy for the United States. New York: Praeger.

Morgenthau, H. (1970). Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960-1970. New York: Praeger.

National Security Archive, (2017). NATO expansion: What Gorbachev heard. December 12. [Retrieved from].

Newman, J. (1992). JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power. New York: Warner.

Newman, J. (2017). Countdown to Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume II. North Charleston, SC: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform.

New York Times, (1963). Moscow assails Paris-Bonn pact as peace threat: Notes reported to discuss possibility of Germans’ getting atom arms, February 6.

Parker, R. (2005). John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux.

Rosato, S., & Scheussler, J. (2011). A realist foreign policy for the United States, Perspectives on Politics, 9(4), 803-819. doi. 10.1017/S1537592711003963

Sarotte, M. (2014). A broken promise? What the west really told Moscow about NATO expansion, Foreign Affairs, September-October. doi. 10.1017/S1537592711003963

Schlesinger, A. (1965). A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Schwarz, H. (1986). Adenauer: Der Staatsmann, 1952-1967; Vol.2. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.

Stoessinger, J. (1976). Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power. New York: Norton.

Thomas, E. (2012). Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World. New York: Little, Brown.

Trachtenberg, M. (1999). A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963. Princeton NJ: Princeton University.

Trachtenberg, M. (2012). The structure of great power politics, 1963-1975, in The Cold War and After, pp.154-182. Princeton NJ: Princeton University.

Zakaria, F. (2022). Russia is the last multi-national empire, fighting to keep its colonies. Washington Post, March 31. [Retrieved from].

Zelikov, P., & Rice, C. (1995). Germany Unified and Europe Transformed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Zubok, V. (1993). Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958-1962) (1993). Working Paper No.6. Cold War International History Project. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Washington, DC.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1453/jest.v9i1.2302

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Journal of Economic and Social Thought - J. Econ. Soc. Thoug. - JEST - www.kspjournals.org

ISSN: 2149-0422

Editor: jest@ksplibrary.org   Secretarial: secretarial@ksplibrary.org   Istanbul - Turkey.

Copyright © KSP Library