Word: khrushchevism
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...Nikita Khrushchev's desire to meet and play summitry with Jack Kennedy is no secret. Ever since Kennedy's election, "Smiling Mike" Menshikov, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., has been urging the advantages of a Khrushchev-Kennedy meeting. Kennedy, however, had set himself against playing Nikita's game. He was backed in his resolve by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, whose low opinion of summitry was expressed in a Foreign Affairs article last April: "Summit diplomacy is to be approached with the wariness with which a prudent physician prescribes a habit-forming drug-a technique...
...glowing aftermath of the airmen's release, things seemed somehow different. The Administration went out of its way to prevent anything that might offend Khrushchev or otherwise cause international ill will. Jack Kennedy imposed strict controls on "tough" policy speeches by Pentagon leaders: Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke was required to rewrite a speech almost completely; Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas D. White was questioned about two paragraphs in a speech that was finally cleared. The Administration also asked for a postponement until March on a Warsaw meeting to discuss the bitter issue of five American civilians...
Then, at week's end, came U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Adlai Stevenson to express his personal opinion that Jack Kennedy would be "happy" to meet with Khrushchev if Nikita attends the United Nations General Assembly sessions in March-a suggestion that was greeted with cheers in the Russian press. And State Secretary Rusk followed up with a "clarification" of the statement he had made earlier in the week. "We do intend to use our ambassadors abroad fully," said Rusk, "but that does not mean that we are rejecting the possibility of other types of meetings." Thus, said Rusk...
...said, "is that Americans will think the Russians have really changed, that they're softening, that the worst is over." It would be just as bad if the Administration itself, however happy about effecting the release of the American airmen, were to place too much stock in Nikita Khrushchev's cold war gambit...
Such ingenuous diplomacy served as a fair warning that negotiating a peace in Laos would be fully as confusing as fighting a war there. But both Russia and the West seemed convinced that negotiations should get started. In his talks with U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson in Moscow, Khrushchev hinted that he would go along with the revival of the International Control Commission (India, Poland, Canada) in Laos, provided it was linked with a larger conference of nations to work out terms for peace. The U.S. has not agreed to a conference, but President Kennedy said last week that he wanted...