9 - The Spirit of Camp David

Summary

Could the Cold War have ended at the turn of the 1960s? This chapter argues against viewing the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 plane as an unfortunate incident that precluded a superpower agreement. Khrushchev skillfully used the incident to embarrass Eisenhower and ruin the May 1960 Paris summit. However, it is doubtful that Khrushchev could have ever made the concessions – not least over Berlin – that would have led to the end of the Cold War. He remained determined to defend his revolutionary credentials, particularly against his Chinese critics. Fundamentally, the Soviet Union faced an identity crisis: was it a content superpower seeking to maintain its position or the center of world revolution aiming to overthrow the existing order? The roads not taken in 1960 remain unknown, but the sequence of events that played out over the spring and summer of 1960 led to a heating up of the Cold War.