Sixty years ago, John F Kennedy (JFK) was inaugurated as president of the USA. In less than three years, before he was assassinated in November 1963, he initiated major changes in foreign policy.
These foreign policy changes are documented in books such as “JFK and the Unspeakable” (2008) and “Betting on the Africans” (2012). One of the foremost scholars on JFK, James Di Eugenio, has an excellent new article of the Kennedy foreign policy at Covert Action: “Deconstructing JFK: A Coup d’Etat over Foreign Policy?”. Despite this literature, many people in the West do not realize the extent to which JFK was an exception. This article will briefly review some of the actions he took while alive, and what happened after he was gone.
While JFK was a staunch advocate for capitalism and the “free world”, in competition with the Soviet Union and communism, he promoted acceptance of non-aligned countries and supported nationalist movements in Africa, the Middle East and Third World generally. In the summer before he was killed, he reached out to the Soviet Union and proposed sweeping changes to promote peace and prevent war.
The previous Eisenhower administration was hostile to post WW2 nationalist movements in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In 1953 the CIA supervised the overthrow of Iran’s elected government. They supported the Saudi monarch and undermined the popular Egyptian Nasser. In contrast, Kennedy was sympathetic to the “winds of change” in Africa and beyond. He criticized France’s repression of the Algerian independence movement and was sympathetic to Patrice Lumumba leading the Congo’s independence from Belgium. Kennedy worked with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to preserve Congo’s independence and try to restore Lumumba to power. The CIA managed to have Patrice Lumumba executed three days before Kennedy’s inauguration.
While JFK was a staunch advocate for capitalism and the “free world”, he promoted acceptance of non-aligned countries and supported nationalist movements in Africa, the Middle East and Third World generally.
Under Kennedy, the United States started voting against the European colonial powers in Africa. Kennedy provided tangible aid to Nasser in Egypt. After Kennedy’s death, the US policy returned to support for European powers and CIA intervention. The US supported NATO ally Portugal in its wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau. The US supported secessionist and tribal forces in the Congo, Angola, Somalia, and many other countries with hugely damaging results. The US supported apartheid South Africa until the end. The US supported the sectarian Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser.
This was also a critical time for Israel Palestine. JFK was more objective and balanced that most US politicians. Just 22 years old in 1939, Kennedy visited Palestine and wrote his observations / analysis in a 4 page letter to his father. He is thoughtful and recognizes the Palestinian perspective. He speaks of the “unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude” of some Jewish leaders. In May 2019, more documents were released from the National Security Archives. They show that JFK, as president, was intent on stopping Israel from surreptitiously building a nuclear weapon. In a letter to the new Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol, Kennedy gives a diplomatic ultimatum that US support of Israel will be “seriously jeopardized” if Israel did not comply with inspection visits to the Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona. After JFK’s death, the Johnson administration was submissive to Israel and pro-Israel supporters. Johnson showed the ultimate political subservience by preventing the rescue and hiding Israeli treachery regarding the USS Liberty. The Israeli attack killed 34 and injured 172 US sailors. Would Israel have had the arrogance and chutzpah to do this if Kennedy had been in the White House? Unlikely.
The invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs took place just three months after Kennedy took office. The CIA and generals expected Kennedy to provide US air support for the anti-Castro attackers. Kennedy said no and resolved to get rid of the long-standing CIA Director who had managed the operation. Allen Dulles and two Deputy Directors were forced to resign by the end of the year. The Pentagon, CIA and anti-Castro Cubans were furious at JFK. When the Soviet Union sent nuclear capable missiles to Cuba, the hawks demanded that the US attack. Kennedy opposed this and ended up negotiating an agreement whereby the US removed its nuclear missiles in Turkey as Soviet nuclear missiles were removed from Cuba.
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country with vast natural resources and strategic location. President Sukarno led the country to independence and was a leader in the global Non-Aligned Movement seeking a middle ground between the poles of the USA and Soviet Union. The Eisenhower/Dulles administration tried to overthrow Sukarno. In contrast, JFK changed the policy from hostility to friendship. Sukarno invited JFK to visit the country and the invitation was accepted. Following JFK’s assassination, the policy returned to hostility and just two years later, in 1965, the US engineered a coup leading to the murder of about half a million Indonesian citizens suspected of being communist.
JFK visited Vietnam in 1951 as the French colonial powers were trying to assert their control. He saw the situation as 400,000 French soldiers were losing to the Vietnamese nationalist movement. Thus, when he became president, he was skeptical of the prospects. President Kennedy authorized an increase of US military advisers but never sent combat troops. As the situation deteriorated, JFK finally decided the policy was wrong. In October 1963 Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum 263 directing US withdrawal to begin in December and be completed by the end of 1965. After JFK’s death, President Johnson reversed course and began sending massive numbers of US soldiers to Vietnam. Twelve years later, after 58,000 American and about two million Vietnamese deaths, the US military departed Vietnam.
The Soviet Union was the largest communist country and primary challenger to the US and capitalist system. The Cold War included mutual recriminations and a huge amount of military spending as both sides designed and produced ever more hydrogen bombs, air and sea delivery systems. During the Cuba crisis, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khruschev both realized how dangerous the situation was. Nuclear war could have accidentally or intentionally begun. In June1963, JFK delivered the commencement address at American University. It was probably his most important speech yet is little known. JFK called for a dramatic change in US posture, from confrontation to mutual acceptance. He called for re-examination of US attitudes toward peace, the Soviet Union, the Cold War and peace and freedom within the USA itself. He called for a special communication line between Washington and Moscow to allow direct communications between the two leaders. And then Kennedy declared that the US would end nuclear testing as a first step toward general and complete disarmament.
In the last months before his death, JFK opened secret communications with Soviet Premier Khruschev and used a journalist to communicate directly with Fidel Castro. JFK proposed face-to-face talks aimed at reconciliation with Cuba.
Kennedy’s initiatives toward reconciliation and peace were opposed by the CIA and militarist elements in the government. As reported in the NY Times, Kennedy privately told one of his highest officials he “wanted to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds”. Before that could happen, JFK was assassinated, and his policy changes reversed.
From Moscow to Cairo to Jakarta, Kennedy’s death was met with shock and mourning. Leaders in those countries sensed what the assassination meant.
The day after JFK’s funeral, President Johnson supplanted Kennedy’s planned withdrawal from Viet Nam with National Security Action Memorandum 273. This resulted in 12 years of aggression and bloodshed in southeast Asia. Coups were carried out in the Dominican Republic and Indonesia. US resumed support for South African apartheid and Portuguese colonial wars. Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro escalated while military coups took place in numerous Latin American countries. In the Middle East, the US solidified support for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The author of “JFK and the Unspeakable”, Jim Douglas, writes “President Kennedy’s courageous turn from global war to a strategy of peace provides the why of his assassination. Because he turned toward peace with our enemies, the Communists, he found himself at odds with his own national security state.”
Rick Sterling
Barbara MacLean says
I appreciate this very good article, Rick Sterling. I would also suggest that folks watch – or re-watch – Oliver Stone’s terrific Movie – JFK. It presents a pretty compelling case for the strong likelihood that the CIA and the Deep State bears the responsibility of JFK’s assassination. In particular, the evidence gathered about the virtually impossibility of Oswald’s sole responsibility is very strong.
Eric C. Jacobson says
Excellent well-wrought summary of JFK’s principled peaceable foreign policy, one which cumulatively confirms that the assassination had to have been a rightist authored coup d’etat, as Jim DiEugenio’s recent article cited by Mr. Sterling similarly alludes. I would add that the coup was equally aimed at the JFK-Democratic Party’s domestic policy, whereby Kennedy’s New Frontier sought to enlarge and expand upon his WW2 Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. See my essay on (what would’ve been) President Kennedy’s 103rd birthday, here: https://www.laprogressive.com/we-dont-know-jack/.
“The dream will never die” Teddy Kennedy famously said in his Democratic National Convention speech in 1980. But (during Ronald Reagan’s and George HW Bush’s 12 years in presidential power between Jan. 1981-Jan. 1993) it most certainly did. And it’s now Joe Biden’s formidable job to revive it.
President Biden began well-enough on Jan. 20th, Inauguration Day, with a wreath display ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery https://media14.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/202101/nbc_tombuknonws_2_210119_1920x1080.focal-760×428.jpg, as JFK had done on Memorial Day in 1963: https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1351972217924554752?s=20.
I wonder what JFK and Jackie would’ve thought of their (lackluster) successor first couples (Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush and Barack and Michelle Obama) if they too could have witnessed President Biden (accompanied by Vice-President Harris) paying tribute to the unknown fallen at Arlington? https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2021_03/1663439/wreath-lay-kb-main-210120_2ad9cf88102a876fd8336729b5afd2b3.fit-760w.jpg. I can hardly imagine. But I suspect: “Not much.”
Perhaps they’d think that Joe and Kamala missed the moment: Why on earth did the new president and vice-president not also visit the hallowed graves of John and Robert Kennedy (the former decorated with an eternal flame)?
Those slain Kennedys, and Martin Luther King, Jr., were never replaced. And, to our nation’s great further detriment, the successor “teams of idealists” who would’ve followed in their footsteps never achieved positions of power and influence.
Some of us tried, as I did via a 1986 Congressional primary challenge to an incumbent Democratic Representative who had outrageously (to me) supported President Reagan’s ugly-American “gunboat diplomacy” in Lebanon in 1982-1983, which resulted in the pointless death of 241 American servicemen deployed there, including 220 Marines, 16 Navy personnel, and 3 Army soldiers, when the first suicide truck bomb of the modern era destroyed barracks there on Oct. 23, 1983. See https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/10/23/1983-beirut-barracks-bombing-the-blt-building-is-gone/ and (if it’s of interest) my responsive accountability-seeking “Kennedyesque” campaign brochure here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ilXuTzT1mlQ2ZYVzN5ekhuQ3M/view?usp=sharing.
But in those pre-internet days “the inferno of neoliberalism,” as the late great Alexander Cockburn called the resilient (impregnable-seeming) 1% donor-class-dominated oligarchic status quo in an article in his online jounal Counterpunch.org, had made it effectively impossible for me to do more than mount a model “protest” candidacy. Unlike some of the post-internet-era (and perhaps more talented) younger-generation staunchly-progressive elected Democrats of today, all I got out of my quixotic quest was this lousy press clipping: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ilXuTzT1mlcXRqYnhuVVc5X0k/view?usp=sharing.
Restoring continuity with the durably enlightened, civilized, social democratic country and peaceable world the Kennedys and King sought to create, could and should’ve formed the leadership blueprint for the new Biden-Harris Administration. True: It didn’t and it’s unlikely it ever will. We’ve seen nothing of the sort (yet?) alas. But (speaking as a confirmed idealist) it’s still early days. To paraphrase what Jesse Jackson said about himself in the 1984 Democratic National Convention speech: “God isn’t finished with Joe Biden yet.”
-Nate says
An opportunity lost .
I wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to try again ? .
-Nate
Richard Hicks says
Yes, I feel the same. I was a young Marine when JFK was President. I was one of the Marines that went to Cuba during the Missile Crisis. I was proud to serve my President then. During the Trump regime, I would have refused to serve. Thankfully, he’s gone, and in Biden, I believe that we can repair The Traitor Trump’s damage and re-establish all the trust we’ve lost around the world. Maybe someday we will find out or disclose who is really responsible for the death of what was becoming our greatest President and get a better picture of what the United States of America could have become.
-Nate says
Thank you Mr. Hicks .
I am surrounded by men old and young who think trump was the very best president ever and the he won the election to boot : they cannot comprehend winning without cheating .
-Nate
Richard Hicks says
Hi Nate, It’s incredible to me that so many Americans have lost, or never developed our country’s founding vision. As you said, the act of winning has become more important than doing the right and honorable thing. I could ramble on for hours about what we could be, but to cut it short, I think that dropping Civics from our elementary education was a terrible shortcut that eliminated any introduction to the history of our nation and how to practice the act of being an American.I’ve always felt that achieving material success should be a byproduct of doing the honest and right thing. But apparently I’m wrong. Over much of my working life, not all, but many of the people I’ve worked with, or for, have put honorable behavior below the act of “Getting the Money…NOW”. For many people that has become their way of life. This is especially noticeable in our politics today, and it’s acceptable, and even admired by way too many Americans.
-Nate says
Mr. Hicks ;
The blame for America’s lousy public schools lies directly at the feet of the gop because they understand that uneducated voters are easier to bullshit and control (sorry but that’s the fact jack) .
Sadly, the dnc is complicit because they stopped fighting back and lined up at the same trough decades ago .
I don’t think you’re wrong at all .
We just need to get off our duffs and teach all young people what’s right and just and VOTE ~ .
-Nate
Jim Thomas says
Thank you for this article. I think you summarized JFK’s evolutionary thought process well. He began his Presidency as a Cold Warrior but learned how completely off the rails the military leaders were.
I read “JFK And The Unspeakable” by James W. Douglas, which you mentioned and recommend it to anyone who wants more information about how much JFK evolved during his short tenure as President. There is no doubt in my mind that the damnable CIA murdered him, with the war criminal Allen Dulles as its ring leader.
One cold fact discussed in the book stunned me more than any other: The Joint Chiefs of Staff continued to strongly advocate the continuation of the nuclear arms race even though every serious study done on the subject revealed that the consequences would be unacceptable to any sane person.
For example, the consequences of a first strike by the U.S. against Russia (a plan which the Joint Chiefs continued to actively pursue) would be 140 million Russians killed and 30 millions U.S. citizens killed in the counter strike. The military was then, as now, unalterably opposed to a negotiated peace and disarmament, the only sane course of action.
Insanity prevailed. The nutcases and thieves who benefit from the obscene military expenditures won. JFK was murdered. The same problem continues to day with shady politicians on the puppet strings and holding the red button, with the lunatics who argue that a nuclear war can be won and the war profiteers pulling the puppet strings. Biden has filled his foreign policy posts with these neo-con warmongers, e.g., Antony Blinken.
bluewombat says
It’s good to see the ways JFK was a good guy on foreign policy, but isn’t he also the president who snuffed Che Guevara?
Richard Hicks says
Che died in 1967. 4 years after JFK.
Rob Roy says
JFK may have been our last decent president. Thanks for this article illuminating his goal for peace. The CIA is a destructive organization and, as NATO, should be disbanded. War mongering will be the downfall of this country.
Richard Hackett says
What happened to a foreign policy of peace? It’s simple; it got replaced by foreign policy that defines “profit for those already wealthy” as a public good.
War is VERY profitable for those who have wealth and power. That’s why we’ve been in a permanent state of war (without any actual DECLARED war) for over 20 years now, with no end in sight.
And the really fun part? Combined with neoliberal economics? It’s a near guarantee of fascism.
Together, neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy are called the “Washington Consensus”, and they are the basis of all policies proposed by both the Democrats and the Republicans. Until we get rid of both of them? You can count on another Trumplike would-be king every few years.
And the next one will probably be a lot better at it than Trump.
Rob Roy says
Well said, Mr. Hackett.