The tragedy of JFK’s failed attempt to end the Cold War

The story of history is the story of the roads not taken, and never more so than when it comes to the life and legacy of US President John F Kennedy.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Fifty-nine years after Kennedy’s historic ‘Peace Speech’, delivered in the form a commencement address to students and faculty at the American University in Washington on 10 June 1963, is a time to lament the loss of a leader who by the time of his assassination was on a journey towards ending the Cold War in conjunction with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Both men had emerged from the Thirteen Days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 chastened by the knowledge of how close the world had come to nuclear armageddon. They emerged determined that the world would never come close to anything like it again, having faced down hardliners within their respective governments and militaries who’d been itching for escalation and conflict.

In his book on the period, To Move The World, Jeffrey D. Sachs relates how “The world had never before peered into the abyss as it did in those days. And the two leaders who steered the world away from it, Kennedy and Khrushchev, were now joined by this near-death experience, each feeling a responsibility that only the other could understand.”