russian president vladimir putin's
latest warning of quote
lightning-fast retaliation should the
west interfere in ukraine
and with putin repeatedly threatening to
use nuclear weapons in the ukraine war
historians and military analysts see
similarities to the cuban missile crisis
in fact
we had david ignatius actually saying uh
i think last week that that actually
what we're going through now may be more
dangerous than what we went through in
1962 during the cuban missile crisis
let's bring in right now the ceo of the
lyndon b johnson foundation historian
mark updegrove he is the author of the
new book
uh in incomparable grace jfk
in the presidency mark thank you so much
for being with us you know
we always
we always want to look at leaders who um
who have failed uh who've learned from
their mistakes and come out on the other
side better for it uh you could look at
churchill and just
the disasters of of churchill's career
many disasters of churchill's career
and one of the great quotes from a
friend when winston is right uh he's
right but when he's wrong my
god with jfk
your book your book uh your book does a
great job uh not just painting a a
glorious picture of of camelot but you
talked about his mistakes i mean he had
he had a disastrous uh reaction to the
bay of pigs invasion he had a disastrous
vienna summit in 1961 with cruise ships
just absolutely disastrous he was
ill-prepared he left there and he knew
it too he just left there looking like a
fool being played by khrushchev
and yet a year later
he learned from his mistakes had an 85
percent approval rating by the way even
at the low points of his presidency as
you point out and he was prepared for
the cuban missile crisis because of
those foibles explain
well you know when when john f kennedy
takes the presidency he does so in grand
fashion with that wonderful
uh inaugural uh oratory that we all now
know ask not what your country can do
for you ask what you can do for your
country and even though joe he had only
won the presidency by two-tenths of a
percentage point americans rally around
their their young president were
captivated by this young guy but as you
suggested he has some early stumbles in
his presidency including the bay of pigs
quagmire and then that disastrous summit
with with nikita khrushchev shortly
thereafter but as he says as he crawls
back to the white house after his
inauguration uh he sleeps in the in the
lincoln bedroom and uh
goes to sleep in the lincoln bed and a
reporter asks him the next day what it
was like to sleep in the lincoln bed and
he said i just jumped in and hung on and
that's essentially what john f kennedy
did in his presence he jumped in and he
hung on he he was not prepared for the
presidency no no man really is prepared
for the presidency it's a daunting task
but he learned from his mistakes to your
point one of the things he did very
astutely is keep his very jingoistic
military at bay they wanted to react he
just he wanted a cooler heads to prevail
and desperately looked for peaceful
resolutions whenever potential conflict
arose
so so mark to that point that joe just
raised and you just addressed
uh the vienna summit in june of 1961 was
literally six weeks after the bay of
pigs disaster so between june of 1961
and late september and october of 1962
when the missile crisis puts everyone in
america and the world on edge
what did he learn about himself and the
presidency do you think that enabled him
to so artfully negotiate our way through
the cuban missile crisis
well i think one of it is just that that
the military was very gung-ho
uh to to
for the incursion of of cuba in the the
bay of pigs fiasco uh and uh
kennedy learns that you can't listen
just to these guys and so during the
cuban missile crisis he he he keeps his
advisors extraordinarily close
he trusts them he knows that they won't
leak anything and he looks for different
ways out one of the things that the
military wants to do is strike the uh
the the missiles that are
actually have airstrikes uh take take
out the equipment that is already being
shipped to cuba
and kennedy doesn't want to do that
that's a provocative military action he
instead advocates a naval blockade also
provocative but not as much so as an air
strike and they they hold the soviet
ships at bay to prevent them from
carrying in additional troops and arms
to cuba and show
the soviet union that we mean business
and during that time as they're holding
them at bay uh
kennedy is desperately talking to
khrushchev to find a peaceful way out of
this deal and ultimately it comes
through a quid pro quo we take uh the
soviet union takes missiles out of cuba
and we take missiles out of turkey the
world didn't know that until much after
the the crisis but that was the back
channel negotiation that we had with
khrushchev a quid pro quo we take ours
out you take yours out so the parallels
between the kennedy administration and
the current day don't just end with
tensions with moscow he obviously also
confronted challenges to voting rights
and also inflation tell us what he did
to combat those you know with civil
rights it's a complicated story jonathan
uh kennedy knows he wants to be a great
president and he thinks he'll be a great
president through foreign policy this is
at a time
when the cold war defines geopolitics
it's this we are meshed in this struggle
with the soviet union for hearts and
minds about what the better system is so
in some ways john f kennedy is trying to
keep the civil rights movement at bay
because b we are tr vying for me uh for
moral superiority with the soviet union
showing that we are the better system at
the same time the civil rights movement
is exposing the world to the very worst
of apartheid in this country the the
divisions that that we create through
this bigoted system this prejudiced
segregationist system so kennedy doesn't
want the world to see that so he's
trying to keep them at bay until he
finally steps up to civil rights in 1963
so being pushed and pushed and pushed by
the movement and tells americans this is
a moral issue that changes the course of
the civil rights movement we're in a a
time in history in this country we're
facing a lot of the similar challenges
plus the war in ukraine are there any
um lessons for the current president out
of uh your work on this book you know
one of the things is that words matter
words matter desperately we're seeing uh
vladimir
zielinski and and how he uses words his
oratory is rallying the world i think
joe biden can can learn that from
kennedy kennedy
clement atlee who was uh the successor
to winston churchill uh said of
churchill's gift for oratory during the
second world war uh
words at great moments can be deeds
and kennedy really shows us this crucial
moments in his presidency he tells us
what things mean not only to our nation
but to the world he does it through his
ishbin ein berliner speech at the berlin
wall he says that all men
in this world who are free are citizens
of berlin and therefore i say proudly i
am a berliner ich bin ein berliner mike
barnicle has the next question mike so
so mark history obviously is looking at
things through the rearview mirror but
history is a constant stenographer it's
recording daily and about moment by
moment uh the president of the united
states joseph r biden has taken a lot of
flack for what is going on in ukraine
unnecessarily so from the republican
side of the aisle that would be my view
but what do you think history will say
about the way that he pulled together an
often separated unit called nato brought
them together in strength in unity and
consistently to this moment has done
such
yeah i think he'll get due credit for
that mike that's that's my view i think
you saw a very weakened nato
during the trump administration resurge
around this and i think biden did a very
effective job of rallying nato nations
around the cause of ukraine we tend to
scrutinize our presence and get very
myopic when it comes to their
performance history tends to sort these
things out and again i think joe biden
will get due credit for rallying nations
around this so quickly and showing the
world that this aggression by russia
should not and will not stand historian
mark optigrove thank you so much the new
book is incomparable grace jfk in the
presidency we appreciate your coming on
this morning it is
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you