Why the Summit Failed:
SALISBURY, HARRISON E.
By Harrison E. Salisbury Why the Summit Failed President's approval of U-2 flight forced Soviet Premier to bow to internal pressures THE KEY TO the failure at the summit clearly lies in a...
...The factors which led to him to seek detente in the first instance still exist...
...Another change of major consequence was a decision to place command over Soviet rocket weapons in the hands of the Chief of Soviet Artillery, Marshal Mitrofan I. Nedelin, rather than in the hands of the Air Force, headed by Marshal Vershinin...
...The U.S...
...Marshal Vasily I. Chuikov, the victor at Stalingrad, was relieved of the Kiev command which he had held for many years...
...The underlying dynamics of the situation have not changed...
...There is no indication that the propaganda campaign was effective...
...It is in this circumstance that hope for an eventual summit must still lie...
...was presented as the chief threat to world peace and security...
...It may well be that he took advantage of this to indicate his sympathy with the officer corps against the "radical" Khrushchev policies...
...At just about the moment when Khrushchev was renewing his warnings on Berlin in a speech at Baku, Zhukov arrived post-haste to take soundings on American intentions at the summit...
...The first thing to be said is that there has always been opposition within the Presidium and within the higher Party echelons, not only in Moscow but particularly in Peking, to the detente policy which Khrushchev was so stubbornly pursuing...
...The Peking radio and press continued to harp on the theme of American aggressive intent...
...It was a "success" line...
...Not only did it prepare the public for detente...
...He left New York still holding out hope for the summit but vigorously asserting that the Dillon-Herter line was not calculated to lead to positive results...
...The military shake-up strengthened the Defense Minister's hand...
...Konev has actually been in poor health for some time, but Sokolovsky has appeared in Moscow several times lately and if he is ill he gives no sign of it...
...Khrushchev's decision was characteristic: to extract every last particle of drama out of the situation and to abandon the whole effort at an accommodation with the Eisenhower Administration...
...foot on U.S...
...soil the propaganda line had been laid down...
...policy, Khrushchev suddenly found the ground cut out from under him...
...As he said, if negotiations with this Administration are not possible then he will try the next...
...The Soviet Air Force, as has happened in the past, again lost out to the senior Army services...
...He and Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovsky, the last supporters of former Defense Minister Zhukov to hold high command posts, have been dropped to the bottom of the list of precedence...
...Speeches by Undersecretary C. Douglas Dillon and Herter were seized upon by the Moscow opponents of the detente policy and presented as evidence that the United States had moved away from the "spirit of Camp David," and that it was not Eisenhower's intention to negotiate on a business basis at the summit...
...Marshal Rodion Y. Malinovsky...
...Then came the U-2 incident...
...Thus a major conflict was resolved in a way which gave important prestige and recognition to the artillery corps, traditionally closely allied to the land forces (commanded by Malinovsky's close associate, Marshal Andrei A. Grechko...
...The most important of these was the quiet and unannounced removal of Marshal Vasily D. Sokolovsky as Chief of Staff and his replacement by Marshal Matvei V. Zakharov...
...That serious controversy had arisen in Moscow could be deduced from the sudden appearance in New York and Washington of Khrushchev's trusted American observer, Georgi A. Zhukov, chairman of the State Committee on Cultural Relations...
...The word "success" is employed advisedly...
...Nothing could be better calculated to play into the hands of Khrushchev's opponents...
...In any event, it can be demonstrated quite clearly that as of May 1 Khrushchev had substantial opposition to a program for positive summit negotiations—but the opposition was held in check by his own deep commitment to the program of dealing with Eisenhower...
...When Eisenhower assumed responsibility for the plane flight instead of disavowing it...
...The first sign that all this was having some effect in Moscow occurred in late March and early April...
...While Malinovsky has been long associated with Khrushchev and while it cannot be proved that he opposes the policy of detente, it also cannot be adduced that he favors it...
...The atmosphere which led to the summit was built up of years of careful and calculated effort on both sides and it will not easily be rebuilt...
...On the surface, Khrushchev seemed to have triumphed over his opponents after his successful trip to America...
...But while the Moscow critics were quieted, this was hardly the case in Peking...
...At the Central Committee meeting in late April, Khrushchev rearranged the Party secretariat and straightened out the lines of succession for his protege and would-be heir, Frol R. Kozlov...
...If that doesn't work, then the Administration after that...
...In the light of the opposition within his own leadership group, within the Soviet high command and on the part of the Chinese, he had no alternative but to swing over to a "hard" policy...
...To explain some of the changes, stories were circulated claiming that Konev and Sokolovsky were ill...
...The illness, it seems certain, is political not physical...
...Moreover, in the command set-up the rocket command was given precedence over the air force...
...A shadow would have been left over the summit, but Khrushchev clearly expected to go to the conference and cash in on the advantages of having his "partners" off balance...
...Before Khrushchev ever set HARRISON E. SALISBURY, a New York Times Soviet affairs specialist, is the author of Russia on the Way (1946) and American in Russia (1954...
...The enormous scale of this propaganda drive is still unrealized in the United States...
...The evils and iniquities of the Eisenhower Administration, the Pentagon and Secretary of State Christian Herter remained, as before, the chief content of Chinese propaganda...
...who has long been a very close associate of the Defense Minister...
...It is not known precisely what he reported to Khrushchev, but if his private comments are any guide his report was not an optimistic one...
...In the early stages of the crisis Khrushchev clearly thought he could turn the incident to his own advantage...
...Khrushchev will find it considerably more difficult to enter into negotiations some months hence after the proponents of the hard line have held sway...
...Russia's Chinese allies did not seem to be moved by Khrushchev's trip or his propaganda barrages...
...it obviously drove the critics of the detente policy to cover —at least for a time...
...The decision, obviously, was to go ahead with the summit, but once again Khrushchev warned Washington of the perils of a negative policy...
...The reasons for Khrushchev's conclusion—so sharply in contrast with his enthusiastic advocacy of the cause of negotiating with Eisenhower only a few months ago —are not readily apparent...
...This was approximately the situation on the eve of the May 1 U-2 incident—with one major exception: In April, just before the Central Committee meeting there had been a series of unpublicized changes in the high command of the Soviet armed forces...
...But he was unable to play the game this way...
...There are strong suggestions that he has the customary military reservations against any policy which might reduce the striking force of the Soviet Army...
...The Party's awareness of the dangers of this program was emphasized in the elaborate propaganda which accompanied the cutback—designed to convince officers that they need not fear the hardships of life on the kolkhoz or in the factory...
...He sought to disassociate President Eisenhower and the Administration from responsibility for the plane...
...when Herter indicated that espionage flights were, are and would be basic U.S...
...By Harrison E. Salisbury Why the Summit Failed President's approval of U-2 flight forced Soviet Premier to bow to internal pressures THE KEY TO the failure at the summit clearly lies in a decision by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that further progress toward a detente with the West could not be expected with the Eisenhower Administration...
...The way was left open for a formal disavowal...
...Khrushchev is a stubborn man and he has a way of swinging Soviet policy back to certain fundamentals each time it diverges...
...But this is much easier to say than to do...
...Obviously, unless doubt and conflict existed in Moscow as to what policy to follow, he would not have been sent over by Khrushchev...
...Such situations generate their own momentum and lead in their own directions...
...But it seems certain that they were well on the way toward crystallization before the disastrous U-2 incident set in motion forces which produced the Paris catastrophe...
...On his return to the Soviet Union a campaign of unprecedented scope and magnitude was launched to establish in the public (and Party) mind the fact that not only had the Khrushchev trip been an epic adventure but it had laid the foundation for peaceful and fruitful collaboration between Khrushchev and Eisenhower, between the Soviet Union and the United States...
...It is no secret that substantial figures in the Soviet high command viewed the Khrushchev program with the same kind of skepticism (and for much the same reasons) that the Pentagon displayed toward President Eisenhower's hope of a negotiated truce in the cold war...
...Mikhail A. Suslov, the only known Stalinist in Khrushchev's inner circle, was given charge of the propaganda drive...
...It is certain that Khrushchev's program for cutting back the armed forces, particularly the program of last January for sharp cuts in the officer corps, has aroused deep military resentment...
...There were other changes of consequence: Marshal Ivan S. Konev, who had been Khrushchev's chief supporter at the time Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov was dismissed, was quietly shunted into virtual retirement...
...Suffice it to say that nothing in recent years under either Stalin or Khrushchev has matched it...
...It may be presumed that the argument over the summit (and the whole question of detente) was thoroughly ventilated at this meeting too...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 21
