The Foreign Policy of the Kennedy Administration

...

Possibly the biggest advocate of peace in the entire Kennedy Administration was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson. After all, his position entails peaceful negotiation and diplomacy. Kennedy recognized that, and respected him for speaking out for peace in the initial discussion with the cabinet. He was the only one that called for diplomacy, and John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Kenny O’Donnell all respected that, considering it as a possibility. He wasn’t very personal with the president, but his ideas were respected and considered more heavily than the ideas of the others, leading to him being highly regarded professionally. This was shown when he was able to expose the Russian’s lies about Cuba in front of the whole world in the United Nations conference.

One person that experienced a change of heart during the Cuban Missile Crisis was Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff. At the beginning of the thirteen days, he was the biggest supporter of scrambling the Air Force and preparing for an airstrike on the missiles. Once General Anderson was shot down in Cuba, he changed sides and began to consider delaying the airstrikes until the invasion could offer them ground support, if the situation got to that point. The U-turn in LeMay’s attitude reassured John Kennedy that his decision to blockade the Caribbean was the correct one, since it transformed a war hawk into a supporter of peace and diplomacy.

As a whole, the Kennedy Administration had a great foreign policy. Although the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion lives in infamy. It pursued peace, not only in Cuba and the Soviet Union, but in Latin America as a whole. Kennedy proposed an “Alliance for Progress” organizations, such as the Agency for International Development (AID) and the Peace Corps. It also took a more active approach in dealing with international problems, like communism. He enthusiastically supported the Special Forces (Green Berets).