Kennedy, John F.

Kennedy, John F. (1917–1963), thirty‐fifth U.S. president.Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to a large, wealthy, politically active Irish American family, “Jack” Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 when his financier father, Joseph Kennedy, was U.S. Ambassador to Britain. In the navy (1941–45), John Kennedy commanded a torpedo boat in the Pacific. He was hailed a hero when he helped rescue crew members after a Japanese destroyer sank PT‐109 in 1943.

As a Cold War Democrat from Massachusetts, Kennedy served in the House of Representatives (1947–53) and U.S. Senate (1953–61), calling for increased military spending and the vigorous containment of communism, particularly in the Third World.

In 1960, Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon to become the first Catholic and the youngest man (at forty‐three) to become president. In the campaign, Kennedy had incorrectly charged that the Eisenhower administration allowed a “missile gap” to develop in the Soviet Union's favor. Kennedy's failure during the CIA‐sponsored invasion of the Bay of Pigs by Cuban exiles in April 1961 may have emboldened him to be assertive elsewhere. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara dramatically expanded the defense budget, increasing nuclear missiles (from 63 to 424 ICMBs, 1961–63) and conventional forces (including the elite counterinsurgency Special Forces) under the concept of “flexible response.” Kennedy also instituted covert operations to depose Cuba's Fidel Castro, and mobilized military reservists in the Berlin Crisis of 1961. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, Kennedy directly challenged Soviet deployment of medium‐range missiles in Cuba, even risking nuclear war before the Soviets backed down. Afterwards, Kennedy obtained a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), but continued the arms buildup. NATO allies, meanwhile, began to complain that the United States too seldom consulted them.

To combat suspected communism in the Third World, Kennedy developed the Peace Corps and the Food for Peace program, but he also used military force. Responding to Communist guerrilla warfare in Southeast Asia, Kennedy accepted neutralization of Laos, but he committed American military assistance to South Vietnam, increasing the number of U.S. military “advisers” attached to the South Vietnamese Army from 685 to 16,732. By the end of 1963, 120 Americans had died in combat there. The administration later tacitly authorized the Vietnamese generals' coup against the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem, although not his murder on 1 November 1963. Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks later in Dallas, Texas.

The debate over what Kennedy would have done had he lived continues. He offered some statements favorable to hawks, others to doves. His actions, however, dramatically increased the U.S. military role in Vietnam and emphasized it as the test case against Communist wars of “national liberation.” At the end, ambiguity marked his presidency, as mystery shrouded his assassination.
[See also Berlin Crises; Central Intelligence Agency; Vietnam War: Causes.]

Bibliography

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, 1965.
Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963, 1989.
Michael R. Beschloss , The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963, 1991.
James N. Giglio , The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 1991.
Diane B. Kunz, ed., The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations During the 1960s, 1994.

Thomas G. Paterson