For a topic that continues to be the subject of so much scholarly interest, there have been surprisingly few comprehensive studies of John F. Kennedy's foreign policy. While the perennial points of contention remain fertile fields of enquiry, there has been little interest in producing more sweeping accounts of the 1961–63 era. To some extent, of course, this is understandable: the unforeseen termination of Kennedy's presidency following his assassination in November 1963 has ensured that there is no natural closure to the era, and speculation over what would have happened to US foreign policy had he lived remains rife. Moreover, the topics that we do have plenty of information on were so momentous – the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Soviet Union in the Cuban missile crisis, or the unending question whether a surviving Kennedy would have taken the US to war in Vietnam as Lyndon Johnson did – that most interest continues to focus on those areas. Though there are some notable exceptions to this rule, scholars, students and teachers have long required a sophisticated and balanced synthesis of foreign affairs during Kennedy's presidency. In his new book John F. Kennedy: World Leader, the distinguished historian Stephen G. Rabe fills that gap admirably – providing a book that is not only comprehensive for scholars, but also accessible and informative for students.
Divided mostly into a series of topical chapters – the Soviet Union, Cuba, Latin America, Vietnam, Asia, the Middle East and Africa – Rabe's book provides a collection of concise summaries of the major areas of Kennedy's foreign policy. In doing so, he also situates Kennedy within his broader historical context. Each chapter outlines the situation that he inherited upon coming to power, charts the evolution of policy during his presidency, and then details the course that events took after November 1963. Rabe also conveys a masterful summary of the way that the historiography relating to Kennedy has developed, and demonstrates the enduring legacy that Kennedy has in the popular consciousness. To be sure, certain topics are familiar. The course of events surrounding Kennedy's policy in Cuba and Vietnam is well known to most scholars of this era; even so, Rabe provides succinct and compelling accounts of these topics. Of greater interest, though, are those chapters that deal with less-familiar subjects or, at least, those that do not normally make it into accounts of this period. In particular, the chapters looking at JFK's approach in Asia, the Middle East and Africa are especially interesting and add a welcome layer of breadth. Here, as elsewhere in the book, the author amply illustrates the enormous complexity of the world in which Kennedy operated, as the changing nature of the East–West Cold War collided with the ever-increasing pace of nationalism and decolonization in the global South.
Perhaps the most notable thing to come out of Rabe's account – and which he could arguably have accentuated more heavily – is the inherent limits upon US policy at this time. Though a slightly reductive rendering, there remains a view among many scholars that US power remained predominant until the fallout over the failed US war in Vietnam illustrated the innate limits of America's reach. Clearly, however, that was not the case in the early 1960s. As Rabe's account details, the Kennedy administration confronted substantial limits on its power in all areas of the world. Moreover, this was especially true in the Third World, where a combination of spreading East–West tensions, the power of indigenous nationalism, a growing disinclination to be associated with the United States, and diplomatically adept leaders all served to stymie US interests. In the Middle East, for example, Gamal Abdel Nasser proved consistently able to extract concessions from the US (though the relationship ultimately soured once Nasser committed Egyptian forces to aid a military revolution in Yemen in order to boost his own standing in the region), while prominent Israeli leaders like Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir managed to steer the administration toward an increasingly close alliance that had certainly not been their intention upon taking office in 1961. The same was true in Latin America, where Kennedy – despite the grandiose promise of the Alliance for Progress – was unable to elicit cooperation from Latin American leaders, and even in South Vietnam, where the increasingly fragile US capacity to compel Ngo Dinh Diem to follow their lead collapsed in 1963. And in South Asia, finally, Kennedy confronted further evidence of the limitations upon US power, as Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru proved typically recalcitrant when it came to publicly siding with the US in the Cold War despite a burgeoning economic relationship between Washington and Delhi.
As always in a work of such scope, there are areas that each reader would have liked to see covered in more detail. The lack of attention to Kennedy's relationship with Western Europe – beyond the occasions when the US relationship with those nations crops up in other case studies – is one such area, especially when the administration's increasing attempts to solicit greater European involvement in meeting the burden of defending the free world was a noteworthy feature of this period and would have sat neatly alongside the evidence of this being a time of relative US weakness outlined above. A more sustained examination of the influence that modernization theory and flexible response played in Kennedy's foreign policy would also have been welcome. Again, both are present in relation to their direct influence on certain case studies, but again it would have been beneficial, at least in this reviewer's mind, to include a more detailed examination of these elements.
Notwithstanding these comments, however, Rabe has performed a valuable service in producing such a detailed and succinct account of Kennedy's foreign policy. His ability to convey the complexity of the world in which Kennedy lived, and the limitations on US power that were often apparent, takes this significantly beyond being just a straightforward account of the JFK era. Rather, it will come to serve as the standard work on the topic for specialists and students alike, and provides the field with the overview of the period that had previously been so conspicuously absent.
