John Fitzgerald Kennedy- Foreign Policies
Rating: Below Average
John Fitzgerald Kennedy ran in the 1960 as a democratic Presidential candidate. Running against Richard Nixon, the popular vote nearly split the country in half. JFK had to deal with many international crises during his approximately 3 year term and did so only fairly well. With the threat of communism still agitating foreign intercourse and affecting the United States, Kennedy had not only dealt with the fallout of Eisenhower’s, the previous president, plans, but also the reignited flame of the races with the Soviet Union. Within two months of presidency, JFK had to deal with his first foreign affair. In Cuba, Kennedy felt that they could form a coup on Fidel Castro using a plan based on Eisenhower’s that involved the use of the CIA to train Castro-refugees. 1,500 men invaded the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the hope of taking over the dictatorship when Castro’s soldiers came in and quickly defeated the rioters. At first, Washington tried to cover up the scandal and refused the admit that they had any part in the fall of the 1500 rebels, but that soon failed as the cover up story collapsed. This was not only Kennedy’s first action in Cuba, but also an extreme failure for his term. In 1961, the Soviet Union constructed the Berlin Wall. Previously, Kennedy had met with Khrushchev and only made matters worse for the divide between East and West Berlin. Khrushchev promised that he would “solve” the problems that faced the two nations with the matter in Berlin, but Kennedy retorted that if that were to happen the United States would revert to using Atomic Weaponry against the Soviet Union. The wall separating the two sides of Berlin truly showed the great divide that had bubbled up between the two colliding nations. As the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States seemed to be coming to a head, the Soviet Union sent missiles into Cuba to keep America equal to that of the Soviet Union as far as weaponry advantages were concerned. Cuba had missiles facing the United States that could reach the country in only a matter of seconds. JFK met with a group of advisors known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council in
