Ukraine and the Cuban Missile Crisis: What Would JFK Do?

Ukraine and the Cuban Missile Crisis: What Would JFK Do?

Kennedy’s statecraft in the missile crisis provides a rich source of clues that can help illuminate the challenge the United States now faces, and the choices President Joe Biden is making.

In the current confrontation with Putin, the United States is fortunate to have a seasoned Cold Warrior at the helm. Biden has not only read about what JFK did in 1962, he remembers living through those fateful days. Thus, similarities between what he has done to this point, and is likely to do on the road ahead are not coincidental.

Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Image: Reuters.