Temat: Evaluate President John F. Kennedy as a Foreign-Policy Maker

The first serious thing Kennedy had to tackle was the issue of Cuba. This country was ruled by the regime of Fidel Castro. In order to prevent further development of the regime the President's administration organized an invasion on the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba. As it turned out, the US brigade was captured immediately after landing in the Bay and therefore the invasion is considered to be a failure.
Another issue Kennedy had to deal with was the German question. The future of Germany after the end of the Second World War was still undetermined and the country itself was divided into two parts. The United States wanted the reunification of Germany into a single, non-communist nation, which was in opposition to what the Soviet Union desired. in response, the Soviet government built a wall dividing Berlin into two parts - eastern and western one. In this way the illusion of reunification on the part of American diplomats was shattered. This is considered to be a failure as Kennedy did nothing in prevention of the final division of Germany.
Another very important issue was the question of the Soviet missles present on the Cuban territory. There were fears that those missles could pose a danger to the United States. Therefore certain steps were taken by Kennedy administration. In order to solve the problem, Kennedy convened a meeting with his advisors, which brought, as a result, a couple of solutions. Ablockade of Cuba and an airstrike against the missles were taken into consideration. Eventually Kennedy decided to cut off the Soviets from having an opportunity to arm the missles with warheads by organizing the blockade of the island. There were talks with the Soviets to withdraw the missles from Cuba. The blockade itself was a good idea as a few days later Soviet ships bound for Cuba were turned back. After a short time there was an agreement hammered out on the basis of which Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba and the Soviets took back their weapons. This crisis was considered to be a major threat to the world's peace. To add to Kennedy's succes, it has to be mentioned that Soviet-Cuban relations worsened dramatically as Soviet behavior was treated as a betrayal to Castro.
The war in South Vietnam was another thing Kennedy had to wrestle with during his term of office. As long as possible Kennedy opposed military intervention in those remote regions of the globe. A group od advisors was sent off to assist the South Vietnamese army, train its police force and help in the process of rebuilding the country. With time, however, it became clear that the advisors were not enough and more troops were needed. Kennedy was not given to chance to resolve and end the conflict in Southeast Asia. On November 22, 1963 he was assassinated ijn Dallas.
I think that the major success of Kennedy's presidency was the fact that relations between the SU and Cuba deteriorated. The worsening could prevent any future hostile actions on both parts, actions that might endanger the security of the world. On the other hand, however, Kennedy proved ineffective because in each case he performed negative consequences are observable up until now. Vietnam and Cuba are the best examples. Germany ended up in division anyway as well.




author's note:


writing this short and very general evaluation of Kennedy's presidency I used:

Lafaber, Walter. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad. Second Ed. New York, London: WW Norton & Company, 1994.


the author: Bartosz M. Kraszewski, PhD student, Warsaw University.