Robert kennedy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Robert kennedy - Essay Example Accordingly, this essay, drawing on Robert Kennedy’s posthumous chronicle, Thirteen Days, demonstrates the role of diplomacy and negotiations in the successful dissolution of the crisis (Kennedy, 2011). Essentially, the end of the Cuban missile crisis is credited to the successful missile swap between the US and the Soviet Union. The United States agreed to withdraw their missiles targeting Turkey within six months, on the condition that the USSR withdrew their missiles from Cuba. However, the success of this agreement hinged on the ability of Presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev to streamline their national interests and understand and rationalize the impending collision course they were headed towards, and steer both nations-and the entire world-- away from the threshold of reciprocally guaranteed destruction. Consequently, this state also depended on the effectiveness and ability of the people surrounding both presidents, to provide lucid advice regarding the most appropriate action to solve the crisis. According to the confessions by Theodore Sorensen, JFKs former speechwriter, JFK approached the crisis using bilateral negotiations with Moscow and within his advisory council otherwise known as the ExComm. The ExComm, was established by JFK at the beginning of the crisis to provide him with advice, and comprised of most of his trusted advisers. These negotiations played a critical role in developing an understanding between the two presidents for a peaceful dissolution of the crisis. Conversely, the ExComm officials exhibited divergent positions on the crisis: one group favored the opinion of blockading Cuba while the other group preferred some kind of military action against Cuba. However, Robert Kennedy diffused the standoff in the ExComm by likening an attack on Cuba by the US with the Pearl Harbor strike by the Japanese and ensured that his brother chose for the less violent, more