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Login: Password: Your browser must have cookies turned on Greenstein, Fred I. "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (review)"
Journal of Cold War Studies - Volume 7, Number 3, Summer 2005, pp. 169-171
The MIT Press
Excerpt
Journal of Cold War Studies
[Access article in PDF] John F. Kennedy would stand high on any ranking of political leaders whose personal qualities helped shape the Cold War. His finger was on the American nuclear button during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, a confrontation that could have destroyed hundreds of millions of lives and could have eroded the habitability of most of the planet. Kennedy's advisers were sharply divided about whether to give Soviet leaders [End Page 169] the option of withdrawing the missiles they had secretly installed in Cuba or to launch an air strike on the missile sites, a course of action that might well have triggered a nuclear war. The buck stopped with Kennedy, who opted for the less draconian alternative and, unbeknownst to many of his advisers, secretly assured Moscow that his administration would accede to its demand to withdraw U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. | |
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