Authors: Jeffrey D. Sachs
I am grateful for the support and confidence that many people have given to me as I undertook this project. They might easily have dissuaded me from treading on the historian’s territory, but my friends and colleagues knew how much I have been moved by JFK’s words and they offered me help and encouragement rather than skepticism. I deeply hope that their support has been justified by the outcome. Of course, especially in this context, all limitations of this work are strictly my own.
My greatest thanks go to Claire Bulger, my special assistant and an indefatigable, incisive, and unerringly supportive researcher, adviser, and editor throughout the project. Claire uncovered wonderful documents in the Kennedy Library, chased down facts and references, and assisted in the completion of the manuscript in all ways. Thanks as well to all the helpful staff at the Kennedy Library, especially Stephen Plotkin. My former special assistant, Aniket Shah, also generously contributed his time and advice to this project, and his careful reading of the manuscript helped to bring it to life.
I am of course grateful to the late Theodore Sorensen, most of all for his inspiration and vast contribution to our world, but also for having the confidence that I could write a book on his favorite of all JFK speeches. That encouragement propelled me throughout the project, as did the warmth and continuing assistance of Gillian Sorensen, Ted’s wonderful wife and senior UN diplomat.
Many great scholars helped me to understand Kennedy’s peace initiative. I am especially thankful to Professor Marc Trachtenberg, whose wise and penetrating scholarship on the Cold War in
A Constructed Peace
and other works deeply informed my understanding of Kennedy’s challenges and triumphs. Professor Trachtenberg kindly gave suggestions on an early draft of the manuscript. I also thank Professor Amitai Etzioni, a longtime champion of peace and psychological interpreter of foreign affairs, whose seminal work
The Hard Way to Peace
deepened my understanding of the Cold War and the reasons for Kennedy’s approach and success. My colleague Professor Richard Gardner, leading diplomat and State Department official in the Kennedy administration, generously offered his important insights and advice.
My wife, Sonia, children Lisa, Adam, and Hannah, and son-in-law, Matt, as always, have been intimately engaged in this work at every stage. They have been pressed into service in countless ways: listening with me on endless occasions to the recorded speeches; discussing their meaning and beauty; hearing my theories on this or that aspect of JFK’s presidency; reading the manuscript; and of course suffering the long hours of my diverted attention in a house strewn with books and papers. I especially thank Adam, a writer and thinker of exceptional brilliance, for helping me at every turn of the writing. His contributions are reflected throughout the manuscript, though all clumsy phrasing that remains is surely my own.
As always, my literary agent, Andrew Wylie, and Random
House editor, Jonathan Jao, have enabled me to give life to an idea. Andrew’s support and encouragement, and Jonathan’s trenchant advice and editing, make my book writing possible and a joyful experience for me. I also thank all of the remarkable professionals at Random House for their care, advice, and support.
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1.
Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow,
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis
, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 240.
2.
In a private letter to Khrushchev on October 28, a day after the incident, Kennedy wrote, “I regret this incident and will see to it that every precaution is taken to prevent recurrence.” John F. Kennedy and Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev,
Top Secret: The Kennedy-Khrushchev Letters
, ed. Thomas Fensch (The Woodlands, TX: New Century Books, 2001), 341.
3.
Jeffrey Sachs, “The Great Convergence,”
The Reith Lectures
, BBC Radio 4 (2007).
1.
Robert Dallek,
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2003); Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); Alan Brinkley,
John F. Kennedy
(New York: Times Books, 2012); Barbara Leaming,
Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).
2.
Winston Churchill,
The World Crisis, 1911–1918
(New York: Free Press, 2005).
3.
Martin Gilbert,
Winston Churchill
(London: Oxford University Press, 1966).
4.
Neville Chamberlain, “Peace for Our Time” (speech, London, September 30, 1938), Britannia Historical Documents,
http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/peacetime.html
.
5.
David Nasaw,
The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012).
6.
John F. Kennedy,
Why England Slept
(New York: W. Funk, 1940).
7.
Stephen J. Majeski, “Arms Races as Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Games,”
Mathematical Social Sciences
7, no. 3 (June 3, 1984): 253–266; Robert M. Axelrod,
The Evolution of Cooperation
(New York: Basic Books, 2006).
8.
Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,”
World Politics
30, no. 2 (1978): 167–214.
9.
Ibid., 189.
10.
“Deployment by Country, 1951–1977,” National Security Archive,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/19991020/04-46.htm
.
11.
W. H. Lawrence, “Churchill Urges Patience in Coping with Red Dangers,”
New York Times
, June 27, 1954, 1.
12.
Winston Churchill,
Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963
, ed. Robert Rhodes James (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), 8257.
13.
John F. Kennedy, “Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Civic Auditorium, Seattle, WA” (speech, Seattle, September 6, 1960),
The American Presidency Project
, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25654
.
14.
Amitai Etzioni,
The Hard Way to Peace: A New Strategy
(New York: Collier Books, 1962).
15.
Ibid., 102.
16.
John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” (speech, Washington, DC, January 20, 1961), Miller Center,
http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3365
.
17.
Quoted in Christopher A. Preble, “ ‘Who Ever Believed in the “Missile Gap”?’: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
33, no. 4 (December 2003): 805–806.
18.
Kennedy and Khrushchev,
Top Secret
, 70.
19.
Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–2006,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
62, no. 4 (2006): 66.
20.
John Lewis Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 198–236; Lawrence Freedman,
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989); Joseph M. Siracusa and David G. Coleman, “Scaling the Nuclear Ladder: Deterrence from Truman to Clinton,”
Australian Journal of International Affairs
54, no. 3 (2000): 285–288.
21.
David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy,”
International Security
7, no. 4 (Spring 1983): 66.
22.
Marifeli Pérez-Stable,
The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
23.
Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy J. Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 82–100; Michael R. Beschloss,
The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963
(New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991); Trumbull Higgins,
The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1987); Piero Gleijeses, “Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs,”
Journal of Latin American Studies
27, no. 1 (February 1995): 1–42.
24.
Beschloss,
The Crisis Years
, 145.
25.
Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, 368.
26.
John F. Kennedy, “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs” (speech, Washington, DC, May 25, 1961),
The American Presidency Project
, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8151
.
27.
Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
146–150, 156–158; Edward Lansdale, “Operation Mongoose: The Cuba Project,” February 20, 1962, Cuban History Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/subject/cia/mongoose/c-project.htm
.
28.
Kennedy and Khrushchev,
Top Secret
, 2.
29.
Ibid., 2–3.
30.
Ibid., 3.
31.
Ibid., 13–14.
32.
Ibid., 16.
33.
Ibid., 18–19.
34.
Ibid., 25.
35.
Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers; The Conference of Berlin (Potsdam Conference, 1945)
, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960).
36.
Fraser J. Harbutt,
Yalta 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
37.
Frederick H. Gareau, “Morgenthau’s Plan for Industrial Disarmament in Germany,”
Western Political Quarterly
14, no. 2 (June 1961): 517–534.
38.
James F. Byrnes, “Restatement of Policy on Germany” (speech, Stuttgart, September 6, 1946), United States Diplomatic Mission to Germany,
http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga4-460906.htm
.
39.
Marc Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 146–149.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Ibid., 212–213.
42.
Quoted in Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
123.
43.
Quoted in Beschloss,
The Crisis Years
, 224.
44.
Quoted in ibid., 217.
45.
Kennedy and Khrushchev,
Top Secret
, 218.
46.
Quoted in Beschloss,
The Crisis Years
, 218.
47.
Frederick Kempe,
Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011), 257.
48.
Deborah Welch Larson,
Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations During the Cold War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 133.
49.
“Facts About the Berlin Wall,” Agence France-Presse, accessed February 14, 2013,
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/features/11/09/09/facts-about-berlin-wall
.
50.
Quoted in Beschloss,
The Crisis Years
, 225.