American Experience

Historian Michael Beschloss on the Soviet Union vs. the United States

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Khrushchev did not want to spend an enormous amount of money on military weapons, especially his nuclear program. Thus Khrushchev in public gave these enormous bloviating speeches about the fact that the Soviet Union is now the chief power in the world and the U.S. is in second place. He felt that if he said that in public it would remove from him the need to actually spend the number of rubles it would take to actually make the Soviets number one. Kennedy came into office and felt that because of his tenuous political position, the fact that he was elected by a narrow majority, the fact the Democrats were often prone to be seen as soft on communism, he had to reply to Khrushchev in kind. So when Khrushchev would give a speech saying, we Soviets are the number one power in the world, Kennedy would come back and say, I will not let the U.S. be the second rate power. And he would say it oftentimes in words that suggested to Khrushchev that Kennedy might actually have in mind initiating a first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union that would take advantage of America's superiority.

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