responsibility for. 36 During the Bay of Pigs incident, military advisors only considered one option, invade Cuba. Freedman notes that “Kennedy clearly learned that it is essential for leaders to have multiple options available for debate and discussion”. 37 Kennedy always wanted to avoid full scale war in Vietnam, knowing that a prolonged military intervention would not necessarily win the war for the US, and did not want to put American lives on the line for an uncertain outcome. 38 The “Jaw jaw is better than war war” quote from Winston Churchill embodied JFK’s attitude to foreign policy. 39 In his 3-year tenure, Kennedy managed to resolve many crises with diplomatic actions rather than military force. Garry Hess wrote that “Kennedy brought about imaginative and modernised policies which moved American foreign policy towards international peace”. 40 Kennedy’s legacy is not embodied in just words, but through his actions as well. Most notably was his attitude towards the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where he committed the U.S. to pursuing a negotiated outcome with Khrushchev instead of bombing the missiles as his military 36 Jack, Colhoun, ‘Bay of Pigs: A Disaster Waiting to Happen’, in Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933-1966 (New York, US: OR Books, 2014), pp. 110-124. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt18z4gvc.15.pdf> [accessed 5 November 2017] (p. 114). 37 Steve, Adubato, ‘Leadership Lessons from JFK’, in Lessons in Leadership (Rutgers University Press, 2016), pp. 182-186. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt1f2qqz2.25.pdf> [accessed 5 November 2017] (pp. 184-185). 38 Giglio, p. 269. 39 Freedman, p. 11. 40 David L., Anderson, ed., Shadow on the White House: Presidents and the Vietnam War, 1945-1975 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), p. 67.
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