"Kennedy Talked, Khrushchev Triumphed" is the title of today's NYT op-ed by a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia and a journalist. They bring up Kennedy's failed negotiation with Khrushchev in 1961, implying that Obama should learn the lessons of that historical nugget and that sometimes, it is better to fear to negotiate. Here's the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I expect this to become a talking point for Republicans. However, the article's title and its conclusion are very misleading. Khrushchev was renowned (and despised) for interrupting his interlocutors and insulting them. Remember the shoe-banging at the UN? And yet, young Kennedy successfully negotiated us out of the most dangerous moment for mankind in history, and soft, egghead Adlai Stevenson calmly humiliated Khrushchev in the Security Council. Khrushchev was removed from power by the Communist Party in 1964, mostly because he was "politically embarrassing" in the world stage, but also because of mishandling of the missile crisis and the Sino-Soviet split (one of those things that eventually decided the Cold War). Building the Berlin Wall firmly discredited the Soviet Union and Marxism in Western Europe, forcing socialist parties to gradually turn into the social-democratic parties of today (no small feat). Kennedy, however, became such a legend in Europe after being killed (and after his Ich bin ein Berliner speech), that most people forget today the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the beginning of the Cuban embargo, and the first steps towards the Vietnam war.
In any case, historical analogies are fun, but that's about it. The Soviet threat was infinitely superior to anything we face today, and Obama, like Dan Quayle but for different reasons, is no Jack Kennedy. The main point of the moot debate they're in these days, is firmly on Obama's side. And McCain knows it (he thought the Administration should talk to Hamas, because they were the new power reality), Israel knows it (they're talking to Syria right now), and the overwhelming majority of foreign policy experts knows it. Diplomatic negotiations many times go nowhere, like everything else, but Obama's point (that one should consider talking to one's enemies) is much more modest and easy to defend than its counterpart: that one should never talk to one's enemies. And to liken that to 1930s appeasement, as Bush did, is criminally stupid. After Luttwak's highly erroneous piece last week on apostasy, this is another miss for the Times.