Foreign Policy and Affairs

President Kennedy administration was primarily shaped by the Cold War. Most of the resources were dedicated to the proxy interventions and world peace.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in October 1962, during the Cold War. It was the closest the world ever came to nuclear warfare. The crisis was known as the most intense thirteen days in the U.S. history. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a part of the Soviet Union campaign to spread communism around the world. The Bay of Pig invasion, an attempt to overthrown a Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, was an obvious failure. On September 4, 1962, medium-range ballistic nuclear missiles were discovered in Cuba by the U.S intelligence. Almost a month later, a U-2 plane confirmed the discovery. Kennedy called in his Joint Chiefs of Staff and assembled the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. In response, America imposed a Cuban naval quarantine. After a long period to tension between the United Stated and the Soviet Union, an agreement was finally reached. Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all U.S. missiles in Turkey and Italy, and pledged never to invade Cuba in exchange for the removal of all missiles in Cuba.

One of the earlier achievements that President Kennedy did after he took the office was the creation of Peace Corps. Americans volunteers gathered to help the undeveloped nations. They acted as a helping-hand in areas such as education, farming, health care, and construction.

On June 26, 1963, Kennedy visited the Allies West Berlin and gave a public speech criticizing communism. The young President viewed that Berlin wall as an example of the failures in the communist regime. He proclaimed, “Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”