The United States foreign policy during the presidency of John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963 included diplomatic and military initiatives in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, all conducted amid considerable Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Kennedy deployed a new generation of foreign policy experts, dubbed "the best and the brightest". In his inaugural address Kennedy encapsulated his Cold War stance: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate". His inaugural address also indirectly addressed the Soviet Union by saying that he would 'oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'

Kennedy's strategy of flexible response, managed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, was aimed to reduce the possibility of war by miscalculation. His administration resulted in the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis and refrained from further escalation of the Berlin Crisis of 1961. However, Kennedy's policies also led to implementing the Bay of Pigs invasion and escalation of the Vietnam War.

Kennedy was committed to the rapid economic development of the newly organized nations in Africa and Asia. He used modernization theory as the model to follow, and created the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, Food for Peace, and the Agency for International Development (AID). After the near escape from disaster in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he promoted disarmament and disengagement programs with Moscow, and created the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In October, 1963, he signed into law the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was accepted by Moscow and London.

Leadership team

Appointments

From election day until late December 1960, Kennedy, aided especially by his brother Robert F. Kennedy, selected his foreign policy leaders.Robert Dallek, Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (2013) excerpt He kept a few prominent holdovers, including J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI and Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence. C. Douglas Dillon, a Republican who had served as Eisenhower's Undersecretary of State was named Secretary of the Treasury. Robert McNamara, who was well known as one of Ford Motor Company's "Whiz Kids", was appointed Secretary of Defense. Rejecting liberal pressure to choose Adlai Stevenson as Secretary of State, and ignoring the powerful senator from Arkansas J. William Fulbright, the president instead turned to Dean Rusk, a restrained former Truman official. Stevenson accepted the mostly honorific appointment as the ambassador to the United Nations. Robert Kennedy was selected as Attorney General, and the younger Kennedy was often referred to as the "assistant president" in reference to his wide range of influence.

Kennedy generally assigned the State Department to handle routine issues while major foreign policy decisions were handled in the White House. The President's own reputation was built largely on his knowledge of world affairs, going back to his senior thesis at Harvard on British foreign policy in the 1930s. Kennedy found it very difficult to get domestic legislation through a Democratic Congress, but discovered that he could make significant decisions on foreign policy without consulting Congress. He set up the Peace Corps by Executive Order, and put his brother-in-law in charge. The national security council staff, which did not need Senate approval, became a little State Department, and was headed by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, a Harvard professor.Andrew Preston, "The Little State Department: McGeorge Bundy and the National Security Council Staff, 1961‐65." Presidential Studies Quarterly 31.4 (2001): 635-659. Online Other key White House aides included speechwriter Ted Sorensen, and advisers Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., press secretary Pierre Salinger, military expert General Maxwell D. Taylor, and party leader W. Averell Harriman. Vice President Johnson had a minimal role in foreign policy; instead he was sent abroad on many ceremonial visits.

CIA intelligence and espionage

The credibility of the CIA was wounded at the Bay of Pigs.Trumbull Higgins, The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs (1987). In the aftermath Kennedy issued two National Security Action Memoranda (no. 55 and 57) which redefined the CIA role. Memorandum 55 stated that it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had the "responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War" and memorandum 57 restricted the CIA's paramilitary operations by stating "Any large paramilitary operation wholly or partly covert which requires significant numbers of militarily trained personnel, amounts of military equipment which exceed normal CIA-controlled stocks and/or military experience of a kind and level peculiar to the Armed Services is properly the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role". In October 1961 Kennedy created the Defense Intelligence Agency, the purpose of which was to institutionalize the revoking of the CIA's paramilitary and other duties, and their transfer to the Department of Defense. He also forced the resignations of the three highest ranking CIA men, Allen Dulles (Director), Charles Cabell (Deputy Director), and Richard M. Bissell Jr. (Deputy Director for Plans).

Kennedy was deeply depressed and angered with the Bay of Pigs failure. He confided to Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that "I have learned one thing from this business—that is, that we have to deal with CIA... no one has dealt with CIA" and several years after his death, The New York Times reported that he told an unspecified high administration official of wanting "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds". Ultimately, The New York Times reported that "after the most rigorous inquiry into the agency's affairs, methods and problems after the Bay of Pigs, [Kennedy] did not 'splinter' it after all and did not recommend Congressional supervision." Schlesinger writes that the failure of the invasion "stimulated a wide variety of proposals for the reorganization of the CIA" within the Kennedy administration.

Communist states The communist world under Soviet leadership split up in the Kennedy era, with the Soviet Union and China increasingly at swords point. The American strategy was to strongly oppose China, fearing that it had the greater potential to win support in the Third World. Kennedy saw an opportunity to deal with Moscow on friendlier terms.Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (2017) pp 166-94. online .

The Cold War and flexible response

Kennedy's foreign policy was dominated by American confrontations with the Soviet Union, manifested by proxy contests in the global state of the Cold War. Like his two predecessors, Kennedy adopted the policy of containment, which purported to stop the spread of Communism. President Eisenhower's New Look policy had emphasized the use of nuclear weapons to deter the threat of Soviet aggression. Fearful of the possibility of a global nuclear war, Kennedy implemented a new strategy known as flexible response. This strategy relied on conventional arms to achieve limited goals. As part of this policy, Kennedy expanded the United States special operations forces, elite military units that could fight unconventionally in various conflicts. Kennedy hoped that the flexible response strategy would allow the U.S. to counter Soviet influence without resorting to war. At the same time, he ordered a massive build-up of the nuclear arsenal to establish superiority over the Soviet Union.

In pursuing this military build-up, Kennedy shifted away from Eisenhower's deep concern for budget deficits caused by military spending. In his 1960 presidential race, Kennedy strongly criticized Eisenhower's inadequate spending on defense. In his inaugural address he promised “to bear any burden” in the defense of liberty, and he repeatedly asked for increases in military spending and authorization of new weapon systems. From 1961 to 1964 the number of nuclear weapons increased by 50 percent, as did the number of B-52 bombers to deliver them. The new ICBM force grew from 63 intercontinental ballistic missiles to 424. He authorized 23 new Polaris submarines, each of which carried 16 nuclear missiles. He called on cities to prepare fallout shelters for nuclear war. In contrast to Eisenhower's warning about the perils of the military–industrial complex, Kennedy focused on rearmament.Stephen G Rabe, “John F. Kennedy” in Timothy J Lynch, ed., ‘’The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History’’ (2013) 1:610-615. He gave the Pentagon a global reach, with 275 major bases in 31 countries, with 1.2 million personnel stationed there. Kennedy used the military as a political instrument more often than any other postwar president, with 13 episodes a year compared to four a year under Truman; seven per year for Eisenhower; nine per year for Johnson; and five per year for Nixon and Ford.Thomas G. Paterson, Kennedy's Quest for Victory (1989) p 5

Soviet Union

On November 29, 1961, American officials declared that the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) allegedly distributed a distorted, editorialized version of the Kennedy interview, given to Izvestiya employee Alexei Adzhubey. According to U.S. officials, the omissions included Kennedy's charges that the Soviets had violated the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, as well as the moratorium on nuclear tests and his claim that the issue of divided Berlin largely stems from the Soviet refusal to agree to German reunification. Adzhubey promised to publish the full text in Izvestiya and Kennedy publicly expressed his appreciation for that.

In January 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared his support for wars of national liberation. Kennedy interpreted this step as a direct threat to the "free world". On February 15, 1961, the President asked Soviets to avoid interfering with United Nations pacification role in the Congo Crisis. Khrushchev proposed to amend the United Nations Charter by replacing the position of Secretary-General with a three-person executive called the Troyka (Russian: "group of three"). On September 25, 1961, Kennedy addressed the United Nations General Assembly, revealing his commitment to veto the Troyka plan. On February 27 of that year, in his letter to Khrushchev, the President offered an early summit meeting. Khrushchev agreed to meet in Vienna. The subsequent Vienna summit was tainted by the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Khrushchev, however, tended to attribute the responsibility for the invasion not to Kennedy, but to his subordinates.The Cold War: the essential readings, p. 104

During his meeting with Khrushchev, Kennedy's main goal was to suggest a retraction from the Cold War. Nonetheless, he did not believe that it would be feasible to change something either in divided Europe or in the Far East. Subsequently, he spoke with very general wording. However, Kennedy did take the novel step of emphasizing the importance of Allied access to West Berlin. Previous administrations had simply referred to "Berlin." The evidence suggests that Kennedy essentially accepted the permanent division of Berlin into East and West and implied that an East Berlin border closure would not bring a US response as long as West Berlin was left alone. Since he was already thinking about putting up a wall in Berlin, Khrushchev was encouraged to continue down this path.