Free The Story of Henri Tod by William F. Buckley Page B

a U-2! That was vintage Khrushchev, right! Especially the press conference he gave when he stopped over in Vienna. Said maybe Ike was just a little cuckoo.… Brings up an interesting point. One of the things I have to ask myself is: How far do I let him go? I mean, if he starts to scream and yell, what do I do in the cause of Peace with Honor—God, I wish that phrase had never been coined. Fact is, you don’t that often get both at the same time. You make up the honor, like the Japs after Hiroshima saying they had to have their emperor. They’d have imported the people who did in Mussolini to take care of their emperor if we had said to them we had one big beautiful one left over after Hiroshima for Tokyo … OK, so what’s he up to? Seriously, what is he up to? Jack old boy, I mean, Mr. President, old boy, let’s start at the other end. What’s he not up to? He’s not up to beginning a nuclear war. Among other things, Poppa Marx wouldn’t like that. A nuclear war with maybe only Patagonians left over isn’t going to do much to validate the Marxist theory of class struggle. Okay, at what point do we start dropping nuclear bombs? A hell of a question to ask, but I’m the one who’s going to decide. Well, since you can’t argue with hypotheses (quote unquote; old Strausshaven, Harvard, Philosophy 10ab—nice guy, and little Miss Hilda Strausshaven was, well, what’s that word—synesthetic? Was she ever. He was a little nuts, but most of them are), then I can’t argue with the proposition that Khrushchev doesn’t want nuclear war. So he’s got to know that nuclear war is exactly what is going to happen if … if what? That’s the problem … He depressed a button on his desk. “Get me a Coca-Cola, please.” He smiled. Ken Galbraith once said that when Jack Kennedy really got excited, he would order a Coca-Cola. Never booze. So, he was excited? Correct … So they don’t want a nuclear war. But they do want to press on. After all, there isn’t any believable sense in which they are acting in order to end an aggression we are responsible for. The only thing we’re “responsible” for is giving shelter to East Germans who are moving out of the workers’ paradise. That’s hardly our aggressive act. Khrushchev might try demanding that we deport them. Not that it would be the first time. Ugh, 1945, 1946. God, let’s not think about that. He knows he can’t ask us to keep people from going from East Berlin to West Berlin. And once they’re in West Berlin, what are we supposed to do if they tell our processors at Marienfelde they want to go on to West Germany? That they can’t go to West Germany? The refugee stream into West Berlin is the only ongoing East-West phenomenon that’s in any way destabilizing. Laos has quieted down. The nuclear testing issue is on track. Now, how bad is it in Berlin? Is Khrushchev up against something he literally can’t stand and must do something about? Or is he simply looking around to make a little hell, and push the old revolution up a peg or two? In the last three weeks he’s talked to maybe six ambassadors or foreign ministers or whatever, and talked about how nuclear bombs might be necessary if I’m intransigent. Me , intransigent. All I want is a continuation of the status quo, that’s all. But [he was looking out on the Rose Garden at this point, where Caroline was arguing with her nurse] I’m not going to draw a line and then redraw it. That’s what happened in Cuba. It hurt me. It hurt me with Europe, it hurt me in America, and it hurt me inside. The whole point of the exercise is to find exactly where that line should be drawn, and make it absolutely clear that that line is not to be moved. We can’t simply give them Berlin. But we’ll have to give them other things, things that don’t really matter, if possible.