“I have no intention of reneging on undertakings I have given to Prime Minister Thatcher, Claude,” he sighed. “The price of business as usual is a bi-lateral return to the old NATO status quo vis-à-vis selective former military and strategic arrangements.” There was very real sadness, and no small tincture of regret in his voice when he added: “This is not the time to be discussing the limits to those undertakings we have seen fit to make to secure the peace. Within those ‘limits’ we will offer such assistant to our ‘allies’ as is consistent with the national security interests of the United States. However, at this time and in the weeks and months to come if the price of friendship, or damn it, if the price of just peaceful co-existence with the British is sending the Navy to the Mediterranean, whatever it eventually cost us, it will be worth it!”
Claude Betancourt was reassured somewhat by the conditionality implicit in the first part of the President’s statement, but deeply worried by his blasé attitude to putting what was left of the US Navy into what most likely, was going to be harm’s way. The implication of what Jack Kennedy had said was at some point, possibly after the first Democratic Primaries in March, certainly by the end of April if the numbers from the primaries were looking bad, he reserved the option of cutting the British adrift.
The old man sought clarification.
“What are we talking about, Jack?” He queried, like an uncle checking if his nephew had just taken out a bad loan. “Sending in the Navy if there’s a crisis, or what?”
“Re-establishing bases in the United Kingdom if possible and elsewhere in Europe, maybe. Making the right noises, up to and including re-affirming NATO-type mutual security guarantees in respect of the North Atlantic area, the Mediterranean if necessary but drawing a line,” the President concluded, uncomfortably, ‘about there.”
The old man thought that sounded a little woolly. However, he was reassured that for the moment the Administration was obviously in no mood to go overboard with the British.
“How are you with this, Bill?” He put to the Secretary of State.
William Fulbright shrugged.
“Within reason, we support our allies as best we can. We need to rebuild not just at home but overseas, too. The British are our main overseas ally but they are not our only foreign ally. Nobody’s talking about making guarantees about anything that happens beyond the old NATO boundaries. I’m happy with that or I wouldn’t have taken the job at State.”
Claude Betancourt decided he had already had pushed hard enough at the half-closed door. However, he remained deeply suspicious of the ill-advised hostages to fortune the Administration had placed squared in the hands of the British. How would they — the British in general and that crazy Thatcher woman in particular react if something untoward happened in a part of the World not specifically covered by the former ‘NATO area’?
If and when that day came the British would have every reason to feel betrayed. And then what would they do?
He glanced to the Vice President and judged that from the sour expression on the Texan’s face he had worked through the possibilities with a fine toothcomb, presumably concluding that risking a total — most likely generational rift with the old country — was worth the candle. The priority was to paper over the fracture lines in what the British used to call the ‘special relationship’. That had to be done now; the future would have to look after itself. Besides, the international threat calculus was negligible and as the President had remarked prior to Claude Betancourt’s arrival, the Navy still had ‘just enough big grey ships’ to move around the international chess board to make it look as if the Administration was as good as its word.
Grudgingly, Claude Betancourt conceded that Jack Kennedy and his advisors had probably got the balance right in the fraught negotiations with Margaret Thatcher. The British were back onside and the United States had regained access to the ‘unsinkable floating aircraft carrier’ off the shores of Western Europe. In a few months American industry would be re-colonizing the old country, Wall Street would be financing the rebuilding of the bombed cities. In a year or two the British would be so beholden to East Coast moneymen and the US Treasury that they would have no choice but to go along with whatever final settlement the Administration — or more likely the one that swept JFK into the dustbin of history — wanted to inflict on the ‘old country’.
He was being paranoid.
There was not going to be another big war, international communism had been squelched for a century and the chips with which Jack Kennedy had bought Margaret Thatcher’s support for the terms of the new rapprochement would never be cashed in.
He moved on, relaxing a little.
“So, everything’s moving to Philadelphia?” He asked, smiling a little sardonically.
Lyndon Johnson nodded.
“Bob McNamara will stay in DC to ‘manage’ the first stages of the reconstruction program. The Corps of Engineers will be overseeing phase one. General Shoup remains as Military Governor of the District of Columbia at this time. He and Bob don’t always see eye to eye but Bob needs a tough guy like Shoup to get things moving.”
“Lyndon will be one hundred percent in charge of the relocation to Philadelphia. With a free hand to do whatever is necessary,” the President interjected decisively.
Claude Betancourt was astonished that the lines of responsibility had been drawn so unambiguously. The Kennedy Administration’s pre-October War agenda had been hamstrung by muddled thinking and vacillation confused by sporadic major initiatives; post-war it had seemed trapped in a cycle of fire-fighting, incapable of getting ahead of events. Now it was as if the trauma of the Battle of Washington had broken the circle of despair and shocked the main players into action.
Curtis LeMay was conducting a purge of the command and control system of the United States military untrammelled by political interference. Bob McNamara was ‘managing’ the rebuilding of DC and planning a radical reorganisation of the armed forces. The President and the Attorney General were on the stomp trying to rebuild the Party base and directly confronting the burgeoning states’ right movement. The Warren Commission into the Causes and Conduct of the Cuban Missiles War was taking shape and would hold its opening session sometime in the spring. Lyndon Johnson was again the ringmaster of the House of Representatives; responsible for the movement of Congress, the Senate and the principal organs of the Federal Government to Philadelphia, and also, the Moon Program.
Claude Betancourt did not understand that but knew better than to get carried away with the idea that the Moon Program was in any way ephemeral either to the re-ordered direction of the Administration, or to the Vice President’s perspective on his own future career. Jack Kennedy had sneaked past Richard Nixon in 1960 because he seemed to be a new man for a new age. It helped that he had the looks of a careworn Greek god and a natural born charisma that money could not buy but basically, once he was in the White House he had continued many of his predecessor’s policies. The only difference was that Dwight Eisenhower had operated in a calmer, more measured way and avoided some of the blunders which had eventually led in late October 1962 to global thermonuclear war. The Moon Program?
Where did that fit into LBJ’s plan?
The only reason that there had been a Moon Program in the first place was because the Soviets had set their sights on the Moon; but there was no Soviet Union anymore and no Russian space program. Ergo, there was no space race. So why the new rush to go to the Moon? What profit was there in it? The whole ghastly enterprise was going to cost billions of dollars the country did not have; and if there was nobody to beat to the Moon how could one go on pretending that it was any kind of race? Unless of course, the wily old operator that he was, Lyndon Johnson had determined that he needed a high profile outrider for an agenda that was so out of left field that if it was presented to them in the wrong way the Democratic Party and the American people would reject it out of hand?