The Wall

Abstract

In January 1961 the 43-year-old John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president of the United States. It appeared that a time of important generational change was upon the world. In advance of Kennedy taking office, the Soviets had refrained from pressuring the West on Berlin, but this ‘honeymoon period’ was not expected to last and the fundamentals of the crisis were stubbornly unaltered. With the arrival of the Kennedy administration, Britain’s role in the crisis changed. The failure of MacmiUan’s personal diplomacy at Paris had not dimmed his enthusiasm for summitry, but the signs were that the new administration agreed on the need for direct contact between East and West. Hence, there was little for the British to contribute, beyond repetition of their previous arguments for an interim agreement on Berlin. An early attempt by the prime minister to advise the president on how to deal with Khrushchev failed and he was ‘somewhat Brusquely’ made aware by Kennedy that he was not going to use him as an ‘honest broker’ to set up a summit with Khrushchev.1