Charles Blum, a former diplomat and trade negotiator, presented a lecture titled “JFK’s Quest for Peace” as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute’s Lunch & Learn program at Yavapai College on Thursday, April 11.
Blum focused his lecture on President John F. Kennedy’s work with foreign affairs, arguing that one little-known aspect of Kennedy’s presidency was his dedication to nuclear disarmament to secure lasting global peace, and began by quoting from his inaugural address in 1961: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
The Bay of Pigs invasion of communist Cuba, which took place between April 17 and 20, 1961, was Kennedy’s first test as president. The invasion had been planned and organized by the Central Intelligence Agency during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower beginning in April 1960. The CIA recruited 1,400 Cubans who opposed Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to make up an invasion force and secretly trained them in Central America. Over 1,100 of these were captured by the Cuban government in the failed invasion and convicted of treason in 1962. Blum added that some who weren’t convicted were double agents.
In Blum’s telling, Kennedy was fearful of committing the U.S. military to the invasion but didn’t want to terminate the operation entirely, and later lied to Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, denying that the U.S. government had been involved at all. The result was the collapse of the invasion within a day or two due to miscommunication and lack of U.S. support.
Kennedy then prioritized purging the CIA’s top leadership. In November 1961, he forced CIA Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Director Richard Bissell to resign, which Blum said caused ongoing problems between Kennedy and the CIA.
At the Vienna Summit in June 1961, Kennedy met with Khrushchev at the U.S. embassy in Austria and discussed Berlin, Cuba and Laos. They agreed that Laos should be neutralized and that there should be no proxy war there. Later that year, however, on Nov. 18, Kennedy sent 18,000 military “advisors” to Vietnam, claiming in public that they were there to teach the Vietnamese how to fight.
Blum made the case that both Kennedy and Khrushchev were linked by their experiences, with Khrushchev having made the decision to build and test the Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever designed. He said that both realized they could be responsible for decisions that could end civilization and were sobered by this realization but continued to correspond with one another.
In April 1963, Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sent a letter to Khrushchev proposing three-party talks to establish an atomic test ban treaty. In June, all three agreed to talk in Moscow. An agreement was reached in July, with a compromise on underground tests, and was signed in August. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in September and presented it to the world at the United Nations General Assembly.
Blum quoted portions of Kennedy’s peace speech from June 10, 1963, at American University, where he called peace the “necessary, rational end of rational men.”
“What kind of peace do we seek?” Kennedy asked. “Not a Pax Americana but a genuine peace that makes life worth living; for all men and women; not peace in our time but peace in all time.”
In this speech Kennedy called war irrational and described viewing peace as unattainable as a defeatist attitude. Blum also pointed out lines showing Kennedy’s desire for mutual tolerance and noting the universality of this message.
