The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy - Essay Example

20). Throughout the tenure of John F Kennedy, the nuclear arms race with the USSR and the Cold War remained his prime concerns. As a president and a statesman the spread of communism happened to be the point of focus for John F Kennedy and he considered the onus of wresting a containment of communism as the pivotal priority of the United States of America (Bose, 1998). What were the characteristics and ramifications of the containment strategy eschewed by Kennedy? Kennedy believed that Soviet Union was a potent and implacable enemy that aspired to spread its sway over the world in general and in the Western Hemisphere in particular.

Thereby Kennedy laid emphatic stress on the need to maintain a balance of power against the Soviet Union even at the cost of curtailing other salient imperatives (Bose, 1998, p. 23). On the one side Kennedy’s containment doctrine envisaged to curtail the military threat posed by the Soviet Union to the allies and the United States and on the other side it intended to contain the Soviet influence owing to the political and economic ramifications of a possible spread of the communist doctrine (Bose, 1998)).

Thereby, considering the military and politico-economic possibilities inherent in the expansion of Soviet influence, the crux of the Kennedy doctrine was to limit the spread of communism in countries across the world. . The one salient theme of Kennedy’s containment doctrine was the assertion that as United States had the wherewithal and the capacity to influence and control events at the international level, thereby the nation must play a proactive role in actually doing so. Enunciate some of the international events and crisis situations that highlighted the implications of President Kennedy’s containment doctrine?

Containment doctrine evinced multiple political and tactical ramifications during Kennedy’s tenure. Kennedy approved the Bay of Pigs invasion which involved the invasion of Cuba by a force of CIA trained Cuban exiles in 1961 (Higgins, 1987, p. 161). This invasion enjoyed an active encouragement and support from the Kennedy administration (Higgins, 1987). Sadly the entire force of the trained Cuban exiles was either killed or captured and Kennedy publicly owned the responsibility for the failure of this invasion (Higgins, 1987).

The Bay of Pigs invasions illustrated the commitment of the Kennedy government to curtail the communist influence in the Western Hemisphere. The 1961 Berlin Crisis happened to be the last major politico-military confrontation between the USSSR and the US on the European soil that saw much diplomatic initiative on the part of Kennedy administration, in tandem with the salient containment doctrine. The Berlin crisis was initiated by the USSSR as it asked for an unconditional withdrawal of the Western forces from the West Berlin (Barnes, 2005, p. 194). This crisis culminated with the partition of Berlin and the erection of the Berlin Wall (Barnes, 2005, p. 195). In pursuance of his policy of containment, Kennedy responded to the Berlin Crisis by initiating a significant increase