With Eisenhower comfortably settled in Pennsylvania and Kennedy settling into the White House, however, the change from the one president to the next was not as significant as it was advertised to be, as historian John Stormer writes:
The party in power in Washington changed on January 20, 1961. The basic direction of American foreign policy remained the same.
To be sure, there were some substantial differences between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations: Ike was hesitant to commit American troops into the Vietnam conflict, preferring to send observers, advisors, supplies, and cash. By contrast, Kennedy sent thousands of combat troops into Vietnam.
Both Eisenhower and Kennedy spoke sternly against the Soviet Socialists and the international communist conspiracy which the USSR operated. Kennedy’s efforts to implement his rhetoric were, especially early in his presidency, clumsy. John Stormer indicates how one might evaluate JFK’s foreign policy:
John F. Kennedy himself set the standard by which his administration must be judged. On November 8, 1961, he wrote the foreword for To Turn the Tide, a published collection of the speeches and statements he made in his first ten months as President.
Any presidency must be judged primarily on its actions, and only secondarily on its words. Too often the reverse is the case. Under close examination, there will always be some discrepancy between the words of a president and his concrete policies. No president is perfect. But the gap between word and deed should be kept to a minimum.
Kennedy himself expressed essentially this same principle:
Strong words alone, of course, do not make meaningful policy; they must, in foreign affairs, in particular, be backed by both a will and by weapons that are equally strong. Thus a collection of Presidential statements cannot convey their true perspective unless it is realized or recalled precisely what they signified in committing the power and majesty of the American people and government.
More than one president has made strong statements but failed to back them up with equally strong actions, or as John Stormer explains:
To evaluate President Kennedy’s Administration using the the standard he suggested requires a careful analysis of his words and actions in crisis after crisis.
The two-and-a-half years of the Kennedy presidency were indeed filled with multiple crises. Some of the crises would have happened anyway. Others may have been aimed at Kennedy by malevolent leaders like Khrushchev, Mao, and Castro. A few of the crises may have been created by Kennedy’s miscalculations.
The Soviet Socialists created a large number of foreign policy challenges between January 1960 and November 1963, from Cuba to China, from the USSR to southeast Asia, from Berlin to the Congo. How did Kennedy respond to these provocations? John Stormer explains:
In a widely publicized talk with Congressional leaders on March 26, 1961, President Kennedy promised that Laos, then under attack from Red China and North Viet Nam, would not be permitted to fall.
Yet by late 1962, Laos was solidly under the control of a communist dictatorship, and thousands of soldiers from North Vietnam and from communist China were encamped there. Beyond that, the Kennedy administration was sending foreign aid payments to Laos.
Although Sino-Soviet relationships were fraying in 1962, they had not yet ruptured. The Soviet Socialists and communist mainland China can be understood as acting in concert regarding the situation in Laos.
What happened to Laos between March 1961 and late 1962? Did Kennedy make a promise that he was unable to keep? If so, his promise was rashly made, or made without a thorough understanding of the situation. Presumably his promise was sincere. One hopes that he had a genuine desire to protect the lives and freedoms of the people of Laos.
Two interpretative options are open to the reader: either Kennedy didn’t fully know what he was doing, or he made a promise which he didn’t intend to keep. Neither option is appealing. Presidents should be slow to make such pledges.
American policy was in many ways the same during both the Eisenhower presidency and the Kennedy presidency. Kennedy, however, was weaker in the implementation of that policy.
