US president John F Kennedy's encounter with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1961 and the shift from ideological debates to survival during the Cuban missile crisis.
In 1961 US president John F Kennedy attended his first summit with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev . Kennedy ’s advisers had one word of warning for the newly elected president: Whatever you do, they said, don’t talk about ideology. Needless to say, that is exactly what Kennedy did. And so he ended up entangled in a pointless argument about communism and capitalism in which Khrushchev — who like all socialists was a master of pointless theoretical debate — comprehensively thrashed him.
A year later came the Cuban missile crisis, the only point in history at which the human race came close to genuine and complete annihilation. Once more Kennedy and Khrushchev faced off against each other, except this time instead of pointscoring on political theory the survival of humankind was at stake. Suddenly, in this moment of existential dread, ideology became irrelevant. All that mattered was the outcome. Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy at a summit in 1961 Picture: Stanley Tretick/Look Magazine/Wikimedia Commons This could not matter more than it does toda
Kennedy Khrushchev Ideology Survival Cuban Missile Crisis
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