'Let me be blunt: the leadership we need today is akin to what the nation needed when I steered a course away from war in Berlin and Cuba.'
Learn from our mistakes, Joe, but pay special attention to what we got right. Yes, fear led us to do some mighty stupid things. On occasion, though, fear became a spur to prudence and even wisdom. In fact, on two occasions overcoming fear enabled me to avert World War III. And that's not bragging, that's fact.
As long as East Berliners could enter West Berlin and so flee to the West, that city would remain, in Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's words,"" of the Communist bloc. Dividing Berlin dislodged that bone. Problem solved. Khrushchev got what he wanted and so did I. As a result, the likelihood that Berlin-induced tensions could trigger a great power conflagration eased markedly. True, the outcome might not have pleased East Berliners, but they weren't my chief concern.
, reputedly from my secretary of state Dean Rusk, about the negotiations with the Soviets over Cuba:"We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked." That invented quote supposedly captured the essence of the showdown over Cuba. The truth, however, was that Khrushchev and I both stared into the abyss and jointly decided to back away.to give there . In it, I pretended to be unhappy with the Wall, when in truth that structure allowed me to sleep well at night.
I urge you to think carefully before making the leap into such an unmourned past. Whatever your political advisers may imagine, displays of presidential toughness aren't what our nation needs right now. You've extricated us from the longest war in U.S. history—a courageous and necessary decision, even if abysmally implemented. The last thing the United States needs is a new war, whether centered on Ukraine, the island of Taiwan, or anyplace in between.
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