OPINION:
President Trump has often been compared to Richard Nixon, both favorably and unfavorably. The president’s initial opening to North Korea harkened to Nixon’s overtures to Communist China while the recent Michael Cohen hearings bring back memories of Watergate to those old enough to remember the 1970s. However, Mr. Trump’s recent meeting with Kim Jong-un puts me in mind of the early months of the administration of John F. Kennedy.
Most people who didn’t live through the years of Kennedy’s “New Frontier” only know him by the fact that he was assassinated and that he and his wife ran a self-styled “Camelot.” Some also vaguely know that Kennedy’s greatest foreign policy achievement was his handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, which took the world perilously close to thermonuclear war. Largely forgotten is the rocky first year of the Kennedy presidency from a foreign policy standpoint.
Like Mr. Trump, Kennedy came into office being viewed as an inexperienced foreign policy lightweight. His first major national security crisis was the Bay of Pigs debacle in which an American-sponsored invasion of Communist Cuba failed ignominiously. Like Mr. Trump, Kennedy believed that our European allies were not doing enough to provide for their own defense and letting the United States do the heavy lifting. As was the case with Kennedy, Mr. Trump’s first meeting with a Russian leader was widely seen as being dominated by the Russian.
When Kennedy met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, Kennedy was seen as having been bullied by the Russian premier, who blatantly threatened to reunite Berlin in divided Germany by force. Kennedy, who had gone into the meeting hoping to reduce the threat of nuclear war, came face-to-face with the reality of a brutal and intransigent communist regime. The Vienna summit was viewed at the time as a victory for Khrushchev; but in retrospect, it was the beginning of the turn-around for Kennedy’s foreign policy.
When Khrushchev threatened war over Berlin, Kennedy was shaken but unbowed. Kennedy informed the Soviet leader that if Khrushchev wanted war he would get it. From that point on, Kennedy never lost the desire to reduce nuclear tensions but he pursued his ends through a hardheaded position of strength. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall later that year, Kennedy did not overreact; instead, he acted firmly.
Kennedy reinforced U.S. troops in Germany and began rebuilding the American armed forces. Kennedy also pursued an aggressive policy of confronting communist aggression wherever it occurred in the world. After backing down Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was able to negotiate a ban on atmospheric nuclear testing and began the process of patient and measured confrontation with the Soviet Union that continued under his successors until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
President Trump obviously also had hopes of reducing nuclear tensions going into his Hanoi summit with North Korea’s Mr. Kim. As was the case with the Vienna summit, the media portrayal of Hanoi was of a presidential defeat. Mr. Trump had put a lot of work into smoothing the path. Like Kennedy before him, Mr. Trump found that goodwill is not enough in dealing with totalitarian leaders, and like Kennedy, he did not back down. Mr. Kim was offering crumbs while keeping his nukes and Mr. Trump wisely walked out.
Like Kennedy, he did not burn his bridges. Instead of making an issue of the Otto Warmbier case as human rights activists would have liked, Mr. Trump sidestepped and accepted Mr. Kim’s flimsy explanation that he didn’t know what was going on. The sanctions against North Korea stand, and Mr. Trump has set the stage for a continued long-range carrot and stick approach.
Mr. Trump could have really used a win in Hanoi given his legal problems at home; but like Kennedy in Vienna, he opted for the long game. Time will tell if Mr. Trump’s reversal of his decision to totally leave Syria and to negotiate an end to the Afghan War will succeed, but his approach of trying to let diplomacy do its job is a wise one.
Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s actual foreign policy achievements in office were slim, but his human failures stayed hidden. As with Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, death for Kennedy was a good career move. Nixon — despite his many foreign and domestic successes — was not so lucky. Mr. Trump’s presidency is an unfinished canvas. Vienna was a turning point for Kennedy. Hanoi may be for President Trump.
• Gary Anderson lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs.
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