The Inauguration Of Donald Trump: Will He Stand Up To Russia Like Kennedy Or Just Follow Putin’s Lead? [Opinion]
As we wait for the impending inauguration of Donald Trump, a man who has a very different view of the Russians than previous presidents, it might be as well to considered the words and actions of one of these prior Presidents before embracing Donald Trump’s new found friendship with Vladimir Putin.
John F. Kennedy offered up his ICH Bin Ein Berliner speech in Berlin in mid-1963. Delivered in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War, it spoke to the concerns that many around the world had about the ongoing confrontation between the Western Allies and the then Soviet Union.
The principal reason that the words from this June 1963 speech endure to this day and have so much impact is because of the geopolitical situation taking place in Berlin, as well as the confrontations that Kennedy had already experienced with the Soviet Union.
For many historians – and the public in general – Kennedy’s strong defense of democratic institutions and freedom from tyranny in this speech make it one of the high points of the Kennedy presidency.
As noted by Irish Central, in late 1962 Kennedy had already faced another crisis with the Soviet Union regarding the presence of nuclear-armed ICBMs on the island of Cuba. The Russians had secretly placed these weapons in Cuba in response to the U.S. installation of nuclear missiles in Turkey.
For a few days, the world seemed on the brink of nuclear war. Kennedy put in place a blockade around the island of Cuba to prevent the Soviet Union from reinforcing its forces there. The showdown between Kennedy and Khrushchev ended with the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba.
This crisis over Cuba had taken place only a few months before Kennedy’s speech in Berlin. Berlin was still a divided city, with a wall separating East and West. Following a summit held in Vienna in 1961, Kennedy had learned that Khrushchev was planning –with the East Germans– to restrict the West’s access to Berlin.
Kennedy’s response was to begin a military mobilization. Kennedy described Berlin as “the great testing place” and stated that the United States would consider any attack by the Russians against West Berlin as being an attack upon the United States itself.
But thousands of East Germans kept swarming to West Berlin seeking the benefits of freedom. The East German leadership – with the support of the Russians – attempted to solve this problem by constructing a barbed wire wall between East and West Berlin.
The Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of oppression. When Kennedy arrived he was deeply affected by the enthusiasm of the crowds greeting him, and he was grimly impressed by the Berlin Wall and the barren and somber look of the city on the opposite side.
Kennedy’s team of speechwriters had been working for some time on the speech he would deliver. The goal in the speech was to engender a sense of solidarity with the plight of West Germans and West Berliners, in particular, while avoiding giving any offense to Khrushchev and his cronies.
Kennedy chose to rework part of the speech himself. On previous occasions, Kennedy had pointed out that during Roman times one could make no greater claim been saying “I am a citizen of Rome.” Because of this, in Kennedy’s speech in Berlin, he chose to use a roughly equivalent German sentence that would mean “I am a Berliner.”
For West Berliners, Kennedy’s words rang with conviction and truth. Looking at this speech today, we see a young statesman at the pinnacle of his powers expressing a clear desire found in people everywhere, which is the desire for freedom and prosperity.
Near the end of his speech, Kennedy further identified himself with the people of Berlin when he suggested that no one is free or can be free when any man is a slave anywhere. As noted by Politico, this is a lesson that we may have to relearn after the inauguration of Donald Trump.
[Featured Image by AP Images]
