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Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam
In his thousand-day presidency, John F. Kennedy led America through one of its most difficult and potentially explosive eras. With the Cold War at its height and the threat of communist advances in Europe and the Third World, Kennedy had the unenviable task of maintaining U.S. solidarity without leading the western world into a nuclear catastrophe.
In Kennedy's Wars , noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace. He recreates insightfully the political and intellectual milieu of the foreign policy establishment during Kennedy's era with vivid profiles of his top advisors--Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Robert Kennedy--and influential figures such as Dean Acheson and Walt Rostow. Tracing the evolution of traditional liberalism into the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy's cabinet, Freedman evaluates their responses to the tensions in Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. He gives each conflict individual attention, showing how foreign policy decisions came to be defined for each new crisis in the light of those that had gone before. The book follows Kennedy as he wrestles with the succession of major conflicts--taking advice, weighing the risks of inadvertently escalating the Cold War into outright
military confrontation, exploring diplomatic options, and forming strategic judgments that would eventually prevent a major war during his presidency.
In Kennedy's Wars , noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace. He recreates insightfully the political and intellectual milieu of the foreign policy establishment during Kennedy's era with vivid profiles of his top advisors--Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Robert Kennedy--and influential figures such as Dean Acheson and Walt Rostow. Tracing the evolution of traditional liberalism into the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy's cabinet, Freedman evaluates their responses to the tensions in Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. He gives each conflict individual attention, showing how foreign policy decisions came to be defined for each new crisis in the light of those that had gone before. The book follows Kennedy as he wrestles with the succession of major conflicts--taking advice, weighing the risks of inadvertently escalating the Cold War into outright
military confrontation, exploring diplomatic options, and forming strategic judgments that would eventually prevent a major war during his presidency.
560 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2000
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270 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Freedman
97 books252 followersSir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 22, 2012
After p. 100
Freedman's book is the product of many years' study and thought. He evokes that segment of the Cold War quite effectively.
Nonetheless, I will voice one objection. He does not explain, make no effort at all to explain why it was that all strategic/tactical thought and policy debate focused upon nuclear weapons and nuclear war? Why was the possibility/eventuality of obliterating the conditions that sustain life on this planet the very first thought that sprang to the minds of diplomats and politicians as they "managed" international relations? Why the obsession with missiles and megatons?
As far as I can tell, all the bluster merely hid the fact that deterrence was also self-deterrence. Those weapons were never used, would never have been used for all the threats and bluster, and all the huffing and puffing. So it's a bit difficult for me now to suppress laughter at the theatrics of international relations and electoral politics of the Cold War era.
Perhaps it was all posturing and showmanship before herds of terminally mindless and vaguely human voters. Maybe it was all to keep those (ultimately) trillions of dollars flowing to defense industries.
But perhaps not. Perhaps leaders really were willing to obliterate the conditions that sustain life on this planet. Perhaps that willingness/readiness among heads of state represented a presupposition so absolute that it need not be stated or explained. Perhaps they were all Curtis Lemays. Perhaps they really did believe that the US still wins if every Soviet dies and only one American survives. Curious.
So I would have welcomed an exploration of this segment of the political mindset of that time. Otherwise, Friedman narrates wonderfully, but explains very little of historical significance.
After p. 325
My view hasn't changed. I've discerned that the overarching issue was the ways and means of conducting cold war and that Eisenhower had adopted one set of solutions, which Kennedy found unacceptable. It also seems clear that Kennedy learned by doing, so that over the course of his time in office he groped toward a set of tactics that he began to rely upon to conduct the cold war. OK, I get it - I think.
What I don't understand is why Freedman, gifted historian that he is, would choose to avoid stating and discussing the historical significance of the evidence he marshalls in what amounts to a highly interesting narrative of events. As far as I can tell he has ignored a historian's (rather than a chronicler's) fundamental obligation.
Perhaps he'll reveal his conclusions at the end of his narrative. If he does, I'll still think that he made a poor choice. It's very difficult to interweave narrative and analysis in just the right mix, so as to avoid disrupting a narrative. Nonetheless, an interested and attentive reader is asking the "so what?" question page after page, and it's a reasonable question that an author is obliged to answer in increments as his narrative advances.
p. 340
OK, there it is. What we needed to know on page 1 - or before. And even at that Freedman covers all of two pages with the barest narrative of cold war ideology I've ever seen.
I'm wondering why Freedman didn't write a chapter on the views of the world situation and the dynamics of the cold war that Kennedy expressed as member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There must be loads of material to document the presuppositions that Kennedy brought with him into the White House. Then his lurching toward new views and methods under the influence of actual crisis management would have been all the more telling and dramatic.
Enough said I suppose. It's just all very frustrating. Perhaps that's why it takes me all of ten years to write a book. Well, to finish a book. I write each one at least four times.
At end.
Kennedy's befuddlement over Vietnam. This is where the entire cold war ideology, mindset and crisis management theories broke down altogether, and the ideologues couldn't make heads nor tails of a civil war driven by a concoction of nationalism, communism and extreme disaffection from Diem's authoritarian rule for the benefit of himself and his family and other Roman Catholics. Kennedy and Co. simply could not grasp concepts any more complex than the domino theory.
What numb skulls! Fortunately they are all dead. But then again, we're still in Afghanistan.
But then again, we're still in Afghanistan.
Freedman's book is the product of many years' study and thought. He evokes that segment of the Cold War quite effectively.
Nonetheless, I will voice one objection. He does not explain, make no effort at all to explain why it was that all strategic/tactical thought and policy debate focused upon nuclear weapons and nuclear war? Why was the possibility/eventuality of obliterating the conditions that sustain life on this planet the very first thought that sprang to the minds of diplomats and politicians as they "managed" international relations? Why the obsession with missiles and megatons?
As far as I can tell, all the bluster merely hid the fact that deterrence was also self-deterrence. Those weapons were never used, would never have been used for all the threats and bluster, and all the huffing and puffing. So it's a bit difficult for me now to suppress laughter at the theatrics of international relations and electoral politics of the Cold War era.
Perhaps it was all posturing and showmanship before herds of terminally mindless and vaguely human voters. Maybe it was all to keep those (ultimately) trillions of dollars flowing to defense industries.
But perhaps not. Perhaps leaders really were willing to obliterate the conditions that sustain life on this planet. Perhaps that willingness/readiness among heads of state represented a presupposition so absolute that it need not be stated or explained. Perhaps they were all Curtis Lemays. Perhaps they really did believe that the US still wins if every Soviet dies and only one American survives. Curious.
So I would have welcomed an exploration of this segment of the political mindset of that time. Otherwise, Friedman narrates wonderfully, but explains very little of historical significance.
After p. 325
My view hasn't changed. I've discerned that the overarching issue was the ways and means of conducting cold war and that Eisenhower had adopted one set of solutions, which Kennedy found unacceptable. It also seems clear that Kennedy learned by doing, so that over the course of his time in office he groped toward a set of tactics that he began to rely upon to conduct the cold war. OK, I get it - I think.
What I don't understand is why Freedman, gifted historian that he is, would choose to avoid stating and discussing the historical significance of the evidence he marshalls in what amounts to a highly interesting narrative of events. As far as I can tell he has ignored a historian's (rather than a chronicler's) fundamental obligation.
Perhaps he'll reveal his conclusions at the end of his narrative. If he does, I'll still think that he made a poor choice. It's very difficult to interweave narrative and analysis in just the right mix, so as to avoid disrupting a narrative. Nonetheless, an interested and attentive reader is asking the "so what?" question page after page, and it's a reasonable question that an author is obliged to answer in increments as his narrative advances.
p. 340
OK, there it is. What we needed to know on page 1 - or before. And even at that Freedman covers all of two pages with the barest narrative of cold war ideology I've ever seen.
I'm wondering why Freedman didn't write a chapter on the views of the world situation and the dynamics of the cold war that Kennedy expressed as member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There must be loads of material to document the presuppositions that Kennedy brought with him into the White House. Then his lurching toward new views and methods under the influence of actual crisis management would have been all the more telling and dramatic.
Enough said I suppose. It's just all very frustrating. Perhaps that's why it takes me all of ten years to write a book. Well, to finish a book. I write each one at least four times.
At end.
Kennedy's befuddlement over Vietnam. This is where the entire cold war ideology, mindset and crisis management theories broke down altogether, and the ideologues couldn't make heads nor tails of a civil war driven by a concoction of nationalism, communism and extreme disaffection from Diem's authoritarian rule for the benefit of himself and his family and other Roman Catholics. Kennedy and Co. simply could not grasp concepts any more complex than the domino theory.
What numb skulls! Fortunately they are all dead. But then again, we're still in Afghanistan.
But then again, we're still in Afghanistan.
October 19, 2023
I just finished reading “The Devil and John Foster Dulles”, Townsend Hoopes’ biography of President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. This book picks up where that left off. Written in 2000 with the benefit of the release of documents in the American archives that had not been available to previous scholars, as well as access to Soviet archives, Freedman was able to give a more complete narrative than previous scholars. Arthur Schlesinger called this “The best account we have of President Kennedy’s foreign policy” and that is high praise. The author analyzes the personalities of Kennedy and his main advisors, and how they managed the four main foreign policy crises of his presidency. After Kennedy, the Cold War was never as dangerous again. He succeeded in defusing the crises over Berlin and Cuba and negotiated a nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets. However, he was not as successful in finding a way to deal with communists in the Third World.
How to lead the free world and keep it free but not start World War III? The answer was liberal anticommunism: liberals in the Kennedy camp were proud of the New Deal and proud of the victory over the Nazis in World War II. These proved that democracies could be organized to overcome great challenges, but there an awareness that the wartime alliance with the Soviets had to be set aside when it became apparent that they were trying to not just communize Eastern Europe but also subvert the Western democracies. Liberalism had to be defended not just by reason but also by power and force. Kennedy was neither an irresponsible playboy nor a far-sighted, benevolent statesmen but a politician who was managing his fragile electoral base. He preferred to defer decisions until he absolutely had no choice in order to keep his options open. He set up the foreign policy decision making bureaucracy on a less hierarchical and more ad hoc basis than Eisenhower and the author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
The author finds that Kennedy was quite successful at managing the superpower relationship with the Soviets. After the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs and the shoe-thumping summit with Khrushchev, he realized that he needed to do some major reassessments. The result was his greatest policy successes, managing the Berlin crisis, the Test Ban Treaty, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Without getting into the details of these, which you can read in the book, Kennedy had to face down fire-breathing military leaders who wanted to send in American bombers and soldiers and were completely willing to risk nuclear war. Something that I did not know is that, through this whole time, Kennedy and Khrushchev kept up a correspondence in which they constantly signaled their red lines and their desires for peace. The whole thing held up.
The book discusses the ins and outs of nuclear strategy, new ways of looking at nuclear war, game theory and systems theory, the nuclear disarmament movement, and how they impacted foreign and political and military thinking. The US and Soviet governments did not want to blow up the world over Cuba or Berlin, but they knew it was possible and so angled around each other and with their various allies. Missile gaps and first and second strikes and massive retaliation or strategic bombing. From a certain perspective, it seems monstrous, and the book makes it clear that both Kennedy and Khrushchev thought it was monstrous too. Some people in the bureaucracy, not so much. The characters in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove were modeled on real people.
Kennedy was much less successful in the developing world He believed that the United States should be a beacon of development and freedom for people in poorer countries and set up institutions like the Peace Corps to help. Also, he supported non-traditional, counter-insurgency warfare and limited warfare, and graduated escalation. The CIA had a great role to play in this, as well as army units such as the Green Berets. However, that is where he ran into his greatest setbacks. He never was able to get the Cubans to stop inciting insurrection in Latin America. His plans for a neutralist government in Laos ended in the North Vietnamese taking control of the part of Laos nearest their border so they could ship weapons to the south. And most importantly, he could not resolve the problems in South Vietnam.
You can read about the different policy positions in the government. Some were quite prescient about the real support for the Communists in South Vietnam and the inability of the South Vietnamese government to reform in any meaningful way to make itself more popular. Others, in hindsight, were overly optimistic about the ability of the Americans to train or manage the South Vietnamese army to fight well and effectively. The military mostly wanted to send in the troops and maybe nuclear bomb Hanoi, Shanghai and Beijing if there was any trouble.
I had a friend who used to insist that “Jack Kennedy never would have sent in the troops to Vietnam.” Kennedy said “ go ask General MacArthur about a land war in Asia.” MacArthur, after Korea, was against such a move. However, the author insists that Kennedy had not decided to get the 1600 American advisors out of Vietnam. That was more of a “working assumption” Instability (which was forthcoming) could have changed that equation. He might just have followed Johnson’s path.
The book is arranged by theme rather than chronologically and this has the advantage of illustrating the decision-making in each area but the disadvantage of not always showing the links between the different crises and how they influenced each other. There are decent sketches of the main actors involved and the bureaucratic infighting that produced policy. The author knows how to write and if his prose is not scintillating, neither is it boring. The events themselves are interesting enough.
How to lead the free world and keep it free but not start World War III? The answer was liberal anticommunism: liberals in the Kennedy camp were proud of the New Deal and proud of the victory over the Nazis in World War II. These proved that democracies could be organized to overcome great challenges, but there an awareness that the wartime alliance with the Soviets had to be set aside when it became apparent that they were trying to not just communize Eastern Europe but also subvert the Western democracies. Liberalism had to be defended not just by reason but also by power and force. Kennedy was neither an irresponsible playboy nor a far-sighted, benevolent statesmen but a politician who was managing his fragile electoral base. He preferred to defer decisions until he absolutely had no choice in order to keep his options open. He set up the foreign policy decision making bureaucracy on a less hierarchical and more ad hoc basis than Eisenhower and the author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
The author finds that Kennedy was quite successful at managing the superpower relationship with the Soviets. After the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs and the shoe-thumping summit with Khrushchev, he realized that he needed to do some major reassessments. The result was his greatest policy successes, managing the Berlin crisis, the Test Ban Treaty, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Without getting into the details of these, which you can read in the book, Kennedy had to face down fire-breathing military leaders who wanted to send in American bombers and soldiers and were completely willing to risk nuclear war. Something that I did not know is that, through this whole time, Kennedy and Khrushchev kept up a correspondence in which they constantly signaled their red lines and their desires for peace. The whole thing held up.
The book discusses the ins and outs of nuclear strategy, new ways of looking at nuclear war, game theory and systems theory, the nuclear disarmament movement, and how they impacted foreign and political and military thinking. The US and Soviet governments did not want to blow up the world over Cuba or Berlin, but they knew it was possible and so angled around each other and with their various allies. Missile gaps and first and second strikes and massive retaliation or strategic bombing. From a certain perspective, it seems monstrous, and the book makes it clear that both Kennedy and Khrushchev thought it was monstrous too. Some people in the bureaucracy, not so much. The characters in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove were modeled on real people.
Kennedy was much less successful in the developing world He believed that the United States should be a beacon of development and freedom for people in poorer countries and set up institutions like the Peace Corps to help. Also, he supported non-traditional, counter-insurgency warfare and limited warfare, and graduated escalation. The CIA had a great role to play in this, as well as army units such as the Green Berets. However, that is where he ran into his greatest setbacks. He never was able to get the Cubans to stop inciting insurrection in Latin America. His plans for a neutralist government in Laos ended in the North Vietnamese taking control of the part of Laos nearest their border so they could ship weapons to the south. And most importantly, he could not resolve the problems in South Vietnam.
You can read about the different policy positions in the government. Some were quite prescient about the real support for the Communists in South Vietnam and the inability of the South Vietnamese government to reform in any meaningful way to make itself more popular. Others, in hindsight, were overly optimistic about the ability of the Americans to train or manage the South Vietnamese army to fight well and effectively. The military mostly wanted to send in the troops and maybe nuclear bomb Hanoi, Shanghai and Beijing if there was any trouble.
I had a friend who used to insist that “Jack Kennedy never would have sent in the troops to Vietnam.” Kennedy said “ go ask General MacArthur about a land war in Asia.” MacArthur, after Korea, was against such a move. However, the author insists that Kennedy had not decided to get the 1600 American advisors out of Vietnam. That was more of a “working assumption” Instability (which was forthcoming) could have changed that equation. He might just have followed Johnson’s path.
The book is arranged by theme rather than chronologically and this has the advantage of illustrating the decision-making in each area but the disadvantage of not always showing the links between the different crises and how they influenced each other. There are decent sketches of the main actors involved and the bureaucratic infighting that produced policy. The author knows how to write and if his prose is not scintillating, neither is it boring. The events themselves are interesting enough.
Read
February 13, 2014Distils a lot of Cold War high politics ably: strategic doctrines, personalities, institutions are woven into the narrative without hogging the limelight. Blizzards of communiques, back-channels and draft statements are pared down into a coherent, comprehensive account. Freedman deflates much of the mythmaking that surrounds Kennedy and his cabinet, actually talks about Laos (in the process we learn why Cold War histories tend to omit Laos) and his concluding analysis of the Kennedy Vietnam counterfactual is evenhanded and compelling.
For all this it's still a dry, policy-focused diplo/mil history and a slog despite its modest 400 pages.
For all this it's still a dry, policy-focused diplo/mil history and a slog despite its modest 400 pages.
March 3, 2020
John F. Kennedy has led the United States in his presidency only no longer than 3 years between 1961 and 1963. The period of his presidency has been described as the time with the highest tension between the two superpowers of the Cold War. His philosophy in facing the Cold War has always been consistent, to maintain a peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union as the two superpowers of the Cold War.
Lawrence Freedman has done an extensive research on this short period of the Cold War. As a president, Kennedy was once deemed too young and inexperienced by Nikita Khrushchev, his Soviet counterpart. This view from Khrushchev would soon be changed by the immense efforts of Kennedy in his foreign policy in deterring possibility of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet. As this book reached its fifth chapter, it begins to show the thorough research of Freedman into digging the two opposing views of the Cold War decision makers.
The book begins with the affairs of Berlin, a divided city lies in the middle of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As of 1961, the open access of Berlin has been a brain drain to the GDR government because of the amount of daily defections which has reached more than 1000 everyday. Khrushchev has approved the closure of West Berlin with a Wall, which led to the Berlin crisis in August 1961. As a city divided between four occupation powers, Berlin has been a place with multiple agents gaining information from both sides of the Cold War. It posed a challenge to Kennedy in addressing the heightened tension with the Soviet. And after Berlin, his mindset would be challenged into other crises in Cuba which poses a threat as a country leading to socialist bloc within the perimeter of the US and became the proxy of the Soviet to place its missiles.
The idea of this book is intriguing, about how the Cold War was fought in different parts of the globe at the same moment. And as a history book, it’s well articulated and objectively describes the situation of the Cold War from both sides. The explanation is too detailed, which might be boring to some people, but I personally enjoyed it since it added to the thrill of the tension which Kennedy administration faced at that time. On 22 November 1963, Kennedy got assassinated just before he could get a chance to campaign for re-election in 1964. 1964 saw an administration handled by Lyndon B. Johnson who was left with the staffs handpicked not by himself and inherited the mess in South Vietnam after the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem just 3 weeks before Kennedy died.
Many historians theorised the possible reaction of Kennedy amidst the escalation of the war efforts in Vietnam, but he might still be seeking for a better way to find peaceful coexistence with the Soviet. The polarisation of the Cold War after Sino-Soviet split and the limited capability of the Soviet in handling its proxies posed a hard situation for the United States. All in all, this book describes well Kennedy’s vision and how he lived in his decision making capabilities during the heightened tension of the Cold War. Highly recommended!
Lawrence Freedman has done an extensive research on this short period of the Cold War. As a president, Kennedy was once deemed too young and inexperienced by Nikita Khrushchev, his Soviet counterpart. This view from Khrushchev would soon be changed by the immense efforts of Kennedy in his foreign policy in deterring possibility of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet. As this book reached its fifth chapter, it begins to show the thorough research of Freedman into digging the two opposing views of the Cold War decision makers.
The book begins with the affairs of Berlin, a divided city lies in the middle of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As of 1961, the open access of Berlin has been a brain drain to the GDR government because of the amount of daily defections which has reached more than 1000 everyday. Khrushchev has approved the closure of West Berlin with a Wall, which led to the Berlin crisis in August 1961. As a city divided between four occupation powers, Berlin has been a place with multiple agents gaining information from both sides of the Cold War. It posed a challenge to Kennedy in addressing the heightened tension with the Soviet. And after Berlin, his mindset would be challenged into other crises in Cuba which poses a threat as a country leading to socialist bloc within the perimeter of the US and became the proxy of the Soviet to place its missiles.
The idea of this book is intriguing, about how the Cold War was fought in different parts of the globe at the same moment. And as a history book, it’s well articulated and objectively describes the situation of the Cold War from both sides. The explanation is too detailed, which might be boring to some people, but I personally enjoyed it since it added to the thrill of the tension which Kennedy administration faced at that time. On 22 November 1963, Kennedy got assassinated just before he could get a chance to campaign for re-election in 1964. 1964 saw an administration handled by Lyndon B. Johnson who was left with the staffs handpicked not by himself and inherited the mess in South Vietnam after the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem just 3 weeks before Kennedy died.
Many historians theorised the possible reaction of Kennedy amidst the escalation of the war efforts in Vietnam, but he might still be seeking for a better way to find peaceful coexistence with the Soviet. The polarisation of the Cold War after Sino-Soviet split and the limited capability of the Soviet in handling its proxies posed a hard situation for the United States. All in all, this book describes well Kennedy’s vision and how he lived in his decision making capabilities during the heightened tension of the Cold War. Highly recommended!
August 7, 2019
This is a very clear and penetrating analysis of the foreign policy of the Kennedy Administration, focusing - as the title suggests - on four key areas. Although the use of the word "wars" is arresting, the author makes clear that in many respects, this was about the avoidance of war and the management of crises.
I liked the way in which the narrative moved along with good analyses of events and there is a skillful use of source material.
Highly recommended.
I liked the way in which the narrative moved along with good analyses of events and there is a skillful use of source material.
Highly recommended.
September 8, 2014
Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam by Lawrence Freedman
JFK was assassinated six years before I was born. I have been fascinated by JFK since I don't know when. One of my interests in JFK was his foreign policy agenda. Kennedy came to power at the height of the Cold War when nuclear armageddon seemed imminent. Freedman tells a story of how JFK and his closest advisers kept the world intact for future generations.
Berlin had been a problem for many years for many presidents. Cuba had recently become more of an issue for the United States. Laos and Vietnam were related concerns for the United States in their conflict in Southeast Asia. Freedman uses exiting scholarship and newly released government documents o draw a detailed picture of a very complex puzzle. Every step the US made was carefully scrutinized to ensure they did nor misstep and cause more problems than they already had.
This book does get into some heavy details which a general reader might find tiring; a reader with more than a passing fancy would appreciate the finer details included from some of the most important documents to come out of that era. Also including personalities such as McNamara, Rusk, Rostow, Bobby Kennedy, and Acheson, helps the reader understand what Kennedy was faced with in regards to his advisers. I think this information adds so much more to the story.
I liked this book because the reader gets wrapped up in the issues of the day and is made to feel like they are part of the situation they are reading about. Freedman does a great job in getting the reader interested in the topic material.
Happy Reading,
JFK was assassinated six years before I was born. I have been fascinated by JFK since I don't know when. One of my interests in JFK was his foreign policy agenda. Kennedy came to power at the height of the Cold War when nuclear armageddon seemed imminent. Freedman tells a story of how JFK and his closest advisers kept the world intact for future generations.
Berlin had been a problem for many years for many presidents. Cuba had recently become more of an issue for the United States. Laos and Vietnam were related concerns for the United States in their conflict in Southeast Asia. Freedman uses exiting scholarship and newly released government documents o draw a detailed picture of a very complex puzzle. Every step the US made was carefully scrutinized to ensure they did nor misstep and cause more problems than they already had.
This book does get into some heavy details which a general reader might find tiring; a reader with more than a passing fancy would appreciate the finer details included from some of the most important documents to come out of that era. Also including personalities such as McNamara, Rusk, Rostow, Bobby Kennedy, and Acheson, helps the reader understand what Kennedy was faced with in regards to his advisers. I think this information adds so much more to the story.
I liked this book because the reader gets wrapped up in the issues of the day and is made to feel like they are part of the situation they are reading about. Freedman does a great job in getting the reader interested in the topic material.
Happy Reading,
Read
September 2, 2016Good analysis of the machinations and thoughts that worried the politicians at the time. It does not explain why we ended up in Vietnam following the French debacle (and as we've done again in Afghanistan after the Russian debacle). Nor does it completely explain why this was a "dirty" war from the start.
November 15, 2010
Squarely aimed at policy wonks, this is a very dry read. But for those who don't mind that kind of thing, its a fascinating insight into the decision-making at the highest level in conflict contexts.
August 21, 2007
The scary back rooms of Camelot.
April 27, 2017
Kennedy's Wars by Lawrence Freedman is about the Cold War during Kennedy's presidency, and how he handled the Soviets movements to spread Communism. President John F. Kennedy was the main focus, but his father, Joseph Kennedy, is mentioned as he introduced John Kennedy into the world of politics. His brothers, Robert, Ted, and Joseph, were also mentioned for their rolls in Kennedy's life. Kennedy's presidency lasted just over 1,000 days of presidency, when he was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. This book covers most of the major moves Kennedy made as President of the United States.
I rate this book a three out of five stars because, in my opinion, the wording was a bit hard to understand, and the book itself wasn't very exciting. The wording didn't come across as exciting during any of the book, and the mood of the book was very serious and strictly informational. This book was not very exciting, but extremely informational.
I rate this book a three out of five stars because, in my opinion, the wording was a bit hard to understand, and the book itself wasn't very exciting. The wording didn't come across as exciting during any of the book, and the mood of the book was very serious and strictly informational. This book was not very exciting, but extremely informational.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews