Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Decline of the Cold War

Abstract

As Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1960 Kennedy had campaigned vigorously on the issue of American defence unpreparedness and on the dangers of the ‘missile gap’. He had distanced himself from Eisenhower by stressing his youth and vigour (he was 43 in 1960: Eisenhower was nearly 70). He contrasted his bold programmes for a reinvigorated United States (‘getting the United States moving again’) with Eisenhower’s feeble and lacklustre policies. Domestically this meant economic expansion and full employment, while in foreign policy terms his ‘New Frontier’ rhetoric insisted that in future the United States would ally herself with the progressive forces in the world. Nationalism would no longer, as in Dulles’s day, be regarded as a potential threat to the free world — indeed, the United States would encourage and assist Third World aspirations. In his inaugural speech the new President declared that ‘we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty’ [25:205]. This high-flown language presaged a more active policy, as universalist and anti-communist as Eisenhower’s had been, but under Kennedy and Johnson, armed with sufficient military strength to enable the United States to act more decisively in situations where Eisenhower would probably have been more cautious [25].