“They will try to scare us with war - of course, they are trying to scare us,” Khrushchev reasoned.
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The Soviet leader just could not be sure that - contrary to common sense - the United States would not resort to war to defend its position in Berlin. “They are smart people, and they understand this,” he concluded.īut there were doubts, too. Nor did he think that the United Kingdom and France, which also occupied West Berlin, would support a general war in Europe over the matter that could easily turn nuclear. By this, he meant that the United States would not risk a suicidal war with the Soviet Union, armed with a thermonuclear arsenal, over a bubble of Western control in the heart of the Soviet bloc that Moscow could easily pop. That “son of a bitch” Kennedy, Khrushchev told his colleagues, understood that “the correlation of forces has changed” and therefore America had to take the Soviet Union seriously. The key question for him was how hard to push the Americans without accidentally causing war. Before setting out for Austria, Khrushchev held a council in the Kremlin, where he spelled out his approach to the Berlin problem. He had hoped to intimidate the youthful president into yielding to his demands on Berlin. Kennedy was elected president, Khrushchev agreed to meet him in Vienna. Khrushchev demanded Eisenhower’s apology, received none, and stormed out in rage from the four-power summit in Paris, convened in a bid to lessen the East-West tensions. These hopes were shattered, though, when on May 1, 1960, Soviet forces shot down an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Gary Powers. Khrushchev’s trip there, and talks with Eisenhower at Camp David, even fed hopes of an early end to the Cold War. Eisenhower, while firm on Berlin, tried to massage Khrushchev’s ego by inviting him for a visit to the United States. If they refused, he threatened, Moscow would sign its own separate treaty with East Germany, which (by implication) could then expel the Western powers from the city.įaced with a predictably negative Western reaction, the Soviet leader subsequently extended the “deadline” by another six months. 27, 1958, Khrushchev produced his so-called Berlin ultimatum, giving the United States and its allies six months to sign a peace treaty with Germany that would lead to their withdrawal from West Berlin. The situation called for an urgent solution. In 1957 alone some 250,000 left, leaving East Germany on the brink of ruin. Faced with the grim realities of life under communism, the East Germans (especially the younger professionals) were voting with their feet, crossing the street into West Berlin - a Western outpost in the heart of communist East Germany. Behind such bravado, though, was a deep sense of insecurity about Moscow’s deteriorating position in East Germany in general and in East Berlin in particular. Khrushchev vividly described Berlin as the testicles of the West, which he could squeeze to make the Americans squeal. The conflict over Berlin pitched Moscow against Washington, bringing the two to the brink of a nuclear war, but Soviet and American leaders eventually found enough wisdom to come back from the precipice. The Berlin crisis (1958 to 1961) offers important lessons for the present dilemmas in Ukraine. And - for all the intentions to the contrary - there would always remain the possibility of inadvertent escalation that may yet turn the Russo-Ukrainian conflict into a broader conflagration and upend the European order as we know it.Īll of this will make you reach for the bookshelf to see if we encountered anything similar in the past, and how we managed to survive.
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Other predatory powers might draw their own lessons. Ukraine might not survive as a sovereign state. But the consequences could still be dire, both for Kyiv and the region. There would be little appetite in the broader region for a military showdown with Russia, and Ukraine would have to fall back on its own forces. Could World War III start over Ukraine? Probably not - at least not in the short run.