Cold War Study Cases

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John F. Kennedy, newly elected president, was sworn into office with the promise to “not shrink” from the responsibility of preserving freedom, the freedom popular in the western democratic, capitalistic status quo. He also called for his adversaries “to begin anew the quest for peace”. During his time as a senator, he had worked to give greater resources to the Army and to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and to erase the mythical nuclear deficit with the USSR. JFK was indeed the epitome of the Cold Warrior. However, he had a change of heart. After the Bay of Pigs failed invasion, JFK acknowledge two important facts. First of all, he observed that his Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and the Army were behaving in a warmongering fashion and that confrontation with Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev was not the solution for a more peaceful world. Circumstances forced him and the soviet Premier to the point of possible nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy and Khrushchev both made calls for peace and made concessions. The Soviets removed the missile installations from Cuba and the Americans removed their missiles from Turkey. Some believe that because of this decision, Kennedy was marked for assassinations. To make a long story short, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 22,1963 and Khrushchev was removed from office 2 motnths later. The dark forces both in Russia and in the US had moved swiftly to protect their ominous interests. The Cold War would last for another 3 decades.

Works Cited

1) Douglass, J. (2010). JFK and the unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

2) Parker, P. (2010). World history. New York: DK Pub.

3) Publishing, I. (2013). The politics book. New York: DK Pub.