Saturday, November 22, 2003

JFK (Pt. 2 of 2)

(Cont. from Part 1) Kennedy's foreign policy combined a willingness to use force and the threat of force when necessary with an understanding that reducing military tensions by negotiations and enforceable treaties was also critical to maintaining peace. His Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was the first major nuclear arms-control agreement. He also understood very keenly the danger of nuclear proliferation.

The Berlin crisis is now almost forgotten. But in 1961, the Soviet threat to block Western access to West Berlin was a crisis that could have set off World War III. Kennedy refused to agree to terms that would have allowed West Berlin to be absorbed into the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Communist East Germany).

When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and GDR Communist chief Walter Ulbricht decided to construct the Berlin Wall, which went up in August of 1961, that also meant that they had backed off their threats to block Western access to West Berlin. The wall itself was a horrible thing. But Kennedy's opponents in East Berlin and Moscow understood that he was willing to risk war to defend West Berlin.

Kennedy's most famous foreign policy crisis was, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis. By reacting forcefully to the escalation of the nuclear threat represented by the stationing of Soviet missiles in Cuba, he succeeding in having them removed. By creating a decision-making process that thoroughly screened the various choices, he managed to select an approach that left American options open while allowing Khrushchev a way to back down without facing complete humiliation.

It's not surprising that Kennedy is remembered as a President that combined idealism and pragmatism, strength and restraint, aggressiveness and compassion, in a way that so many people remember in a positive way today. Both in America and abroad.

No comments: