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defense strategy of Dean Acheson who operated as Kennedy’s special counsel for
nuclear strategy and Berlin. Together with other liberals (Marcus Raskin, Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr., or Carl Kaysen), he endorsed negotiations with the USSR over Berlin,
Germany, and Central Europe. Kennedy followed Bundy’s recommendations both
before his famous TV address in July and after the construction of the Berlin Wall in
mid-August. By the end of 1961, Bundy had become a member of Kennedy’s „inner
circle“, the very small group of advisers whom the President consulted daily and
whose counsel he trusted in times of crisis.
Bundy was the first to report to Kennedy that the Russians were secretly installing
offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. During the two-week crisis, Bundy played
the role of the devil’s advocate in testing the consensus of the Kennedy administration
before the President reached his decision. He was anxious to keep the process of
decision-making open until all policy ramifications had been explored. Although
Bundy often changed his opinion during the first few days concerning the course of
action the President should pursue, his personal preference clearly was a limited air
strike against the Soviet missile bases in Cuba. Kennedy’s disappointment in his
trusted national security adviser in the first week was forgotten on the last and most
important day of the crisis, on October 27, 1962, when Bundy emphasized the importance
of the NATO alliance and invented the strategy Kennedy chose as the crisis
seemed to escalate.
After the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy administration saw itself in the middle of
a complex web of tensions with its allies Great Britain, Canada, France, and West
Germany while pursuing a cautious policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Bundy’s
ideas were crucial in finding a way out of the obvious contradiction of a NATO
nuclear multilateral force (MLF) - used as a clever U.S. strategy to counterweigh the
French-German treaty of friendship in January 1963 that shocked the American policymakers
- and in promoting negotiations with the Soviet Union leading to the Limited
Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) of August 1963. Bundy was deeply involved in writing the
famous words for Kennedy’s „peace speech“ at the American University in June 1963
and Kennedy’s even more famous words during his trip to Europe in the same month:
„Ich bin ein Berliner.“ He also followed with interest the secret disarmament negotiations
in Moscow in July 1963.
In the Kennedy years, Bundy operated „behind the throne“, as one scholar has argued.
He was one of the President’s closest cold-war advisers, counselling him on all
important foreign policy decisions, including those on Berlin and Cuba. He clearly
enjoyed working with Kennedy and due to their mutual trust Bundy’s power started to