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The administration's first brush with foreign affairs was a disaster. In
the last year of the Eisenhower presidency, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) had equipped and trained a brigade of anticommunist Cuban exiles for
an invasion of their homeland. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously advised
the new president that this force, once ashore, would spark a general uprising
against the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. But the Bay of Pigs invasion was
a fiasco; every man on the beachhead was either killed or captured. Kennedy
assumed "sole responsibility" for the setback. Privately he told his father
that he would never again accept a Joint Chiefs recommendation without first
challenging it.
The Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev , thought he had taken the young president's measure when the two leaders met in Vienna in June 1961. Khrushchev ordered a wall built between East and West Berlin and threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The president activated National Guard and reserve units, and Khrushchev backed down on his separate peace threat. Kennedy then a made a dramatic visit to West Berlin, where he told a cheering crowd, Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein (I am a) Berliner.' In October 1962 a buildup of Soviet short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles was discovered in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be dismantled; he ordered a "quarantine" of Cubain effect, a blockade that would stop Soviet ships from reaching that island. For 13 days nuclear war seemed near; then the Soviet premier announced that the offensive weapons would be withdrawn. (See Cuban missile crisis.) Ten months later Kennedy scored his greatest foreign triumph when Khrushchev and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain joined him in signing the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Yet Kennedy's commitment to combat the spread of communism led him to escalate American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, where he sent not just suppliesand financial assistance, as President Eisenhower had, but 16,000 military advisers as well.
The Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev , thought he had taken the young president's measure when the two leaders met in Vienna in June 1961. Khrushchev ordered a wall built between East and West Berlin and threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The president activated National Guard and reserve units, and Khrushchev backed down on his separate peace threat. Kennedy then a made a dramatic visit to West Berlin, where he told a cheering crowd, Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein (I am a) Berliner.' In October 1962 a buildup of Soviet short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles was discovered in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be dismantled; he ordered a "quarantine" of Cubain effect, a blockade that would stop Soviet ships from reaching that island. For 13 days nuclear war seemed near; then the Soviet premier announced that the offensive weapons would be withdrawn. (See Cuban missile crisis.) Ten months later Kennedy scored his greatest foreign triumph when Khrushchev and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain joined him in signing the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Yet Kennedy's commitment to combat the spread of communism led him to escalate American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, where he sent not just suppliesand financial assistance, as President Eisenhower had, but 16,000 military advisers as well.
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Sharani Robins