Impact of the Kennedy Administration

The United States became involved in the situation in Vietnam during the Eisenhower Administration, but it was during the Kennedy Administration that U.S. involvement increased and American troops were committed to the support of South Vietnam. Herbert S. Parmet describes the Kennedy years: "'Camelot' began with smoke from a defective rostrum and closed with a burst of gunfire in the street of an American city. So ended just over a thousand days of elegance, alluring prose, chivalrous masculinity, and drama" (Parmet 3). Yet, no administration simply ends as abruptly as this. Its policies continue to have consequences, its problems have to be addressed by its successors, and its triumphs continue to serve the people long after the administration itself is out of office. This has been true of the Kennedy Administration as of others.

The image that came to be accepted for the Kennedy years was derived from the Broadway show Camelot. Historian Allan M. Winkler says that the Kennedy era

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about the plan, while Kennedy had some doubts but went along anyway, hoping the people would rise up against the Communist leaders. The Cuban militia crushed the invasion in a few days (Miroff 113). John Newhouse, in his book on the nuclear threat, cites what may have been the most threatening moment in the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis in which President Kennedy ordered all nuclear missiles removed from Cuba and challenged Khrushchev directly when he set up a blockade to prevent the Soviets from delivering any more weapons. One consequence of the success of the U.S. in this crisis was that the world would be a more stable place for a time. This did not mean any reduction in the rate of the production of nuclear bombs, however. Moreover, the growing involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam over the next few years would only increase tensions once again, bringing to a head once more the tensions between the nuclear powers. Wars like that in Vietnam were being fought as surrogate wars. Nuclear war between the principals was unthinkable, and this meant that surrogate wars were fought in which second parties substituted for the superpowers. President Eisenhower was the first to formulate the "falling domino" theory of how co
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1773
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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