John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United
States on January 20, 1961. Robert Frost, the nation's most famous
poet (and a New Englander, like JFK), delivered a poem to open
the memorable inauguration. JFK followed by delivering what is
still regarded as one of the finest inaugural addresses ever.
"Let the word go forth from this time and place," he told the
crowd, in words that are etched on his tomb in Arlington Cemetery,
"that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born
in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace."
Referring to the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union,
he declared: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well
or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to insure the survival and
the success of liberty." Most famously, the new president insisted
that Americans must "ask not what your country can do for you–ask
what you can do for your country."
After the eloquence, the business of running the country
began. JFK's Cabinet was balanced ideologically, reflecting the
closeness of the election–it included two Republicans, one as
Secretary of the Treasury and the other, Robert McNamara, as Secretary
of Defense. Dean Rusk, an able administrator, was named Secretary of
State, Adlai Stevenson became Ambassador to the United Nations,
and Washington veteran J. Edgar Hoover remained as head of the
F.B.I. Most controversial was the president's decision to pick
his younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as Attorney General. As
always, the Kennedys were looking out for each other.
JFK faced his first serious crisis just four months after
being inaugurated in January 1961. In 1959, a guerrilla leader
named Fidel Castro had toppled the corrupt Batista dictatorship
and made himself ruler of Cuba, an island nation just south of
Florida. Over the next two years, to Washington's alarm, Castro
began to move toward a Communist-style government, while seeking
aid from the Soviet Union. Under Eisenhower, the U.S. had formulated
a plan to topple the Cuban dictator, using a force of C.I.A.-trained
anti-Castro Cubans. JFK allowed the plan to go forward in April
of 1961, but tried to reduce U.S. involvement. The result was
a fiasco, as the invasion force was slaughtered and the survivors
taken prisoner, while American warships watched, helpless, from
a few miles out to sea. This Bay of Pigs disaster (named for
the ill-fated landing area) was a black eye for the U.S.'s image
overseas, and it emboldened the Soviet Union. JFK took "sole
responsibility" for what happened, and leaders of both parties
rallied around the president. The damage, however, was done.
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
saw JFK as a weak, inexperienced figure whom the U.S.S.R. could
easily bully. In June of 1961, the two world leaders met at a
summit in the Austrian capital of Vienna. The central issue for
discussion was the fate of Berlin. At the end of World War II,
the German capital had been divided, along with the nation itself,
into two zones: Communist East Berlin and democratic West Berlin.
Since the city as a whole lay in Communist East Germany (which was,
in turn, under the thumb of the U.S.S.R.), the Communists were
constantly threatening to cut off access to West Berlin, thus strangling
the democratic half of the city. In Vienna, Khrushchev renewed
this threat, suggesting that the Soviet Union might sign a treaty
with East Germany that would cut off all access by western nations
to West Berlin. JFK stood firm, and the promised blockade never
materialized; but the East Germans did throw up an ugly concrete
and barb-wired wall between East and West Berlin, to prevent their
own people from leaving for the West. The Berlin Wall became
a symbol of the Cold War, one that would endure until 1989.
The true challenge for JFK, however, lay still ahead.
Khrushchev, probing for weakness, authorized the construction
of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, from which the entire United
States could be threatened with nuclear attack. On October 16,
1962, JFK's military advisers handed him aerial reconnaissance
photographs showing these missile emplacements. Many of the president's
generals urged an immediate invasion of Cuba, but JFK held out
hope for a peaceful settlement. On October 22, he announced that
a United States naval and air quarantine would go into effect,
preventing any further missile shipments from Russia to Cuba.
He also demanded that the Soviets remove any and all nuclear weapons
already in place.
So began the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the world
teetered on the brink of nuclear war. As Russian ships steamed
closer to the blockade cordon, a flurry of telegrams shot back
and forth between Washington and Moscow. Khrushchev, alternately
conciliatory and bellicose, claimed that he was only trying to
protect Castro's government from U.S. invasion, and then suggested
that the missiles might be removed if the U.S. dismantled its own
Jupiter missiles in Turkey, just across the Black Sea from the
Soviet Union. On Wednesday, October 24, Russian ships steaming
toward Cuba turned back, and by the end of the week an agreement
had been struck: Khrushchev would remove the missiles from Cuba
in return for JFK's public pledge that the U.S. would cease trying
to undermine Castro's government, and his private pledge that
the U.S. would dismantle the Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
For decades, historians have debated who "won" this exchange.
In a sense, the Soviets were winners, since they could claim to
have protected their client state in Cuba and forced the U.S.
to remove its missiles from Turkey. In the court of world opinion,
though, it looked as if the Kennedy administration had called
the Soviet Union's bluff. More importantly, JFK's skillful and
judicious diplomacy had managed to protect American interests and stave
off the terrifying and very real threat of nuclear annihilation.
The world may never have been closer to nuclear war than in October 1963,
and it is to JFK's credit that such a war never came.
