Envisioning Détente: the Johnson Administration and the October 1964 Khrushchev Ouster.”

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H-Diplo H-Diplo Article Review 704 on “Envisioning Détente: The Johnson Administration and the October 1964 Khrushchev Ouster.”

Discussion published by George Fujii on Tuesday, June 20, 2017

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Article Review No. 704 20 June 2017

Article Review Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse Web and Production Editor: George Fujii

Simon Miles. “Envisioning Détente: The Johnson Administration and the October 1964 Khrushchev Ouster.” Diplomatic History 40:4 (September 2016): 722-749. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhv035.

URL: http://tiny.cc/AR704

Review by Stephan Kieninger, Berlin Center for Cold War Studies

Usually, Lyndon Johnson’s presidency is not remembered for its contribution to détente. Back in the late 1990s, the historians Hal Brands and Thomas A. Schwartz started to offer a more balanced [1] assessment of the Johnson Administration which did not solely focus on the Vietnam War. Schwartz argues that Lyndon Johnson made détente the centerpiece of his policy toward Europe “in the shadow of Vietnam,” leading to important arms control initiatives and to the conclusion of the Non- Proliferation Treaty in 1968. In “Envisioning Détente,” Simon Miles makes an important contribution to the study of Johnson’s détente policies. He investigates the Johnson Administration’s response to the Soviet Union’s leadership change from Nikita Khrushchev to Leonid Brezhnev in October 1964. Miles depicts the course of U.S.-Soviet relations, demonstrating how Khrushchev’s ouster shaped future U.S. policies.

Making good use of the rich materials at the Lyndon Johnson Library, Miles emphasizes the importance of U.S.-Soviet leadership communication both after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and after Khrushchev’s ouster. Miles argues that “reassurance of policy continuity proved vital in maintaining productive U.S.-Soviet relations” (726). Next, the essay highlights the relevance of Johnson’s and Khrushchev’s efforts to foster détente by taking step-to-step moves such as the exchange of frequent ‘pen pal’ letters between the White House and the Kremlin. In 1964, Johnson brought the civic air negotiations talks with the Soviet Union back on track. He initiated a

Citation: George Fujii. H-Diplo Article Review 704 on “Envisioning Détente: The Johnson Administration and the October 1964 Khrushchev Ouster.”. H-Diplo. 06-20-2017. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/183777/h-diplo-article-review-704-%E2%80%9Cenvisioning-d%C3%A9tente-johnson Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Diplo law for wheat sales to the Soviet Union. Last but not least, Johnson abandoned Cold-War rhetoric, dropping phrases like ‘ruthless totalitarians’ and ‘captive nations’ from official vocabulary. He envisaged his initiative as the first step in a longish search for a sustainable détente. In a nutshell, Miles argues that the “Cold War had become a competition between two essentially status quo, risk- averse powers over the course over Khrushchev’s time in office” (722).

Compared to Khrushchev, as Miles reiterates, Brezhnev was more consistent and predictable and “this predictability extended to foreign policy” (732). Brezhnev had a reputation as a pragmatic problem solver, and American analysts recognized that he was primarily focused on avoiding war at all cost. Thus, due to the lack of Bolshevik revolutionary zeal, Brezhnev was seen as a more reliable partner in the common search for détente and adversarial cooperation. What were the implication for U.S.-Soviet détente? Miles highlights Johnson’s and Brezhnev’s commonality in the search for a [2] lasting global non-proliferation agreement as the most promising issue of cooperation. He makes an important point in arguing that “Johnson placed U.S.-Soviet relations ahead of relations with West [3] Germany, leading to the superpowers agreeing upon and signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty” (745). In a nutshell, Miles sees Khrushchev’s ouster a “pivotal moment” (745) in the search for détente.

The conclusion of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 signaled a common U.S.-Soviet interest in a more attainable peace. At the same time, however, respect for the status quo could be combined with peaceful efforts to work for liberalizing changes. Miles suggests that the Johnson Administration’s reactions to Khrushchev’s ouster “were not devoid of internal tensions and contradictions.” He argues that “bridgebuilding with Eastern European states, for example, could easily foster suspicions in the Kremlin of U.S.-inspired disobedience, and even impending regime change, leading to a crackdown. At times, these tensions undermined the success of the Johnson administration’s attempts at building a better relationship with the Soviet Union; a ‘healthy balance,’ as Johnson put it, had to be found” (743).

At this point, the reader would expect a more detailed discussion of Johnson’s efforts to find the right balance between détente and deterrence. How did Johnson envisage bridge building? What was his personal contribution in the search for détente? How did economic and cultural bridge building fit together with the Johnson Administration’s arms control policy? Did Johnson really “prefer the international status quo to volatile transformations”? (724). Did the Johnson administration first and foremost seek stability in the international system? (724). If so, what kind of stability, and to which ends?

A closer look at the origins of bridge building suggests that Johnson’s objective was to pursue détente in dynamic ways. In May 1964, at the dedication of the George C. Marshall Research Library, Johnson coined the term bridge building as a metaphor for his policy “to rebuild all European civilization within its historic boundaries.” The aim was to “open the minds of a new generation to the values and [4] the visions of the Western civilization from which they come and to which they belong.” The objective was to overcome Europe’s division in the long run. And Johnson envisaged the stability enabled by détente as a precondition for change, as Communist regimes saw a sense of security as a prerequisite for opening up their societies to Western influence over time. Europe’s transformation was the theme of his progressive détente approach. Thus, Johnson’s dynamic détente was the [5] forerunner for the Helsinki process that contributed to bringing about the end of the Cold War.

Overall, the essay would have benefitted from more analysis pertaining to the evolution of Johnson’s policies prior to Khrushchev’s ouster. In fact it was early in 1964 when the initial strategy debates [6] took place. Johnson initiated bridge building himself. Kennedy did not leave a blueprint for détente with the Soviet Union. And Johnson was astonished by the lack of fresh ideas to counter Khrushchev’s global peace appeals. Thus, in January 1964, Johnson ordered National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy to elaborate on a long-term détente initiative. Johnson wanted Bundy to “get [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk and the five ablest men in the State Department to go up to Camp David and lock the gate this weekend and try to find some imaginative proposal or some initiative that we can take besides just reacting to actions and just let Khrushchev wire everybody twenty-five pages every two days and us just sit back and dodge.” Bundy, laughing initially, received even more of the Johnson treatment, when the President made the point that “we act like [West German Chancellor Konrad] Adenauer. [. . .] I am tired, by God, of having him [Khrushchev] be the man who wants peace and I am [7] the guy who wants war.”

This is vintage Johnson. A tighter focus on the link between personality and policy might have helped to turn the essay into an even more compelling piece. Overall, the essay offers a vivid and well- written narrative of Johnson’s détente policies. Many of Miles’s arguments are intriguing and suggestive, and they may well provide a fresh impetus for future research on Johnson’s visions for détente.

Stephan Kieninger is a research fellow at the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies and the author of Dynamic Détente. The United States and Europe, 1964-1975 (Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Rowman and Littlefield 2016). He is currently writing a book on economic détente and pan-European energy diplomacy.

Notes

[1] Hal W. Brands, Beyond Vietnam. The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999); Thomas A. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe. In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

[2] See Francis Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft. History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012).

[3] On this aspect, see “Oliver Bange, NATO and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Triangulations between Bonn, Washington and Moscow” in Andreas Wenger, Christian Nünlist, Anna Locher, eds., Transforming NATO in the Cold War. Challenges beyond Deterrence (London: Routledge, 2007), 162–180.

[4] Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks in Lexington at the Dedication of the George C. Marshall Research Library, 23 May 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1963–1964, 2 Vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), Vol. I, 709.

[5] See Stephan Kieninger, Dynamic Détente. The United States and Europe, 1964–1975 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

[6] The records of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff contain plenty of excellent evidence pertaining to the strategy discussions over new détente schemes. See NARA, RG 59, Records of the Policy Planning Staff, 1963-64, Entry A1–5041, Lot 70 D 199.

[7] Memorandum of Telephone Conversation between Johnson and Bundy, 2 January 1964, 3.00 pm, in Michael Beschloss ed., Taking Charge. The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Simon & Schuster 1997), 144, 145.