The Foreign Service Journal, February 2010

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 77 Crisis Management Kennedy and the Berlin Wall: A Hell of a Lot Better than a War W.R. Smyser, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, $39.95, hardcover, 293 pages. R EVIEWED BY A URELIUS F ERNANDEZ W.R. (Dick) Smyser is well known to many FSJ readers as a distin- guished diplomat-scholar and Foreign Service officer who served as a special assistant to U.S. Army General Lucius D. Clay during the 1961 Berlin Crisis. Smyser’s insightful analysis of that 33- month confrontation and related is- sues makes this an important contri- bution to Cold War studies. Smyser perceptively frames his ac- count both in terms of a contest be- tween President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and the new president’s foreign policy education. And he reveals the em- barrassing extent to which many of Kennedy’s foreign policy advisers, in- cluding some in Foggy Bottom, did not serve him well in that pursuit. In his inaugural address, Kennedy had proclaimed: “Let us never nego- tiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” This approach was wel- comed by the Atlantic community as a sharp contrast with the truculence of Nikita Khrushchev, but it proved eas- ier said than done. Four major events during JFK’s first year in office shaped perceptions of his leadership. The first two — the Bay of Pigs disaster of April 1961 and the U.S.-Soviet summit in Vienna a month later — sent world confidence in the new American president plung- ing. Yet the next two — the Berlin Checkpoint Charlie confrontation in October 1961 and the virtually simul- taneous Cuban Missile Crisis — raised that confidence to higher lev- els, as Smyser insightfully explains. The Checkpoint Charlie con- frontation at the Berlin Wall demon- strated that Kennedy was capable of nuanced, even daring responses to Khrushchev’s blustering threats (in- cluding a separate German peace treaty) as the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. Kennedy’s approach outlined a template for dealing with the standoff over Cuba and future Cold War con- frontations: diplomacy backed by the threat of military force. Gen. Clay worked closely with Pres. Kennedy as the crisis unfolded and would prove himself invaluable. Not only was the general a Republican who provided essential political cover; as Smyser documents, he also func- tioned as a counterweight to the advice from a cadre of Soviet-centric advisers led by George Kennan, as well as oth- ers (e.g., McGeorge Bundy and Dean Rusk) who leaned toward concessions and compromises in dealings with Khrushchev. Fortunately, Robert Ken- nedy, Dean Acheson and Henry Kiss- inger gave contrary counsel, which shaped Kennedy’s successful policy re- sponses in Berlin and Cuba. Two years later, Kennedy ran a vic- tory lap when a million Berliners — accustomed to close American pro- tection ever since the 1948 airlift — flooded the streets to hear him declare himself “ein Berliner.” Still later, President Ronald Rea- gan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev (“tear down this wall”) and Barack Obama’s visit with enthusiastic Berlin- ers in 2008 would both remind the world of the success of Kennedy’s dar- ing policies. Henry Kissinger describes Smy- ser’s book as “the most comprehensive description of the Berlin crisis of 1961 … (that) also distills the trends essen- tial to understand the ultimate col- JFK’s handling of Berlin would become a template for future crises: diplomacy backed by the threat of military force. B OOKS