Whereas Truman and Eisenhower left Russia wondering just how far they would go in the defense of Western Europe, Kennedy took a nuclear first-strike off the table. “I just don’t think that there was a very sophisticated mixture of carrots and sticks in 1961,” Kempe said. He also revamped the nuanced strategy used by past administrations to contain the communist threat. It was part history lesson and part cautionary tale.Īs Kempe, a former Wall Street Journal reporter told it, John Kennedy burned a series of olive branches offered by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the new president’s inaugural year.
Stickles ’18 Fund for Military Diplomacy. The conversation on November 3, arranged by Scott Williams ’80, P’15, was co-sponsored by the departments of German, history, and political science with support from Colgate’s Lester D. Fifty years later, Frederick Kempe, chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council and author of Berlin: 1961, stood before an audience in Persson Auditorium to discuss the issues that brought two superpowers to the brink of World War III. On a rainy October night in 1961, Soviet and American tanks sat muzzle to muzzle at Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous boundary between East and West Berlin.
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