11/26/23
I sent the below letter to the Wall Street Journal
on 11/16/23 and the Journal published it on 11/24/23, the day after
Thanksgiving, providing me yet another thing for which to be thankful. I thought my readers would enjoy this missive:
11/16/23
Historians have long argued that one of the precipitating
factors behind the Cuban Missile Crisis was Premier Khrushchev’s assessment of
President Kennedy at the Vienna summit of June, 1961. Mr. Khrushchev, it is reported, considered
Mr. Kennedy a lightweight, a glamour boy who had attained his presidency with
his father’s money who was in way over his head. This assessment emboldened Mr. Khrushchev
to ship intermediate range missiles to Cuba, bringing the world to the brink of
nuclear war. Fortunately for all of us,
Mr. Kennedy proved to be of sterner stuff than Mr. Khrushchev had supposed,
leaving us all alive to discuss such things as the Cuban Missile Crisis
sixty-one years later.
It is doubtful that Chinese President Xi came away from
his meeting with President Biden (“The Biden-Xi Truce of the Moment,” Review
& Outlook, 11/16/23) thinking that Mr. Biden is a glamour boy or the scion
of a wealthy father determined to buy his son the presidency. But it is not hard to imagine that, given
Mr. Biden’s age and increasingly obvious infirmity, Mr. Xi may have determined
that Mr. Biden is indeed a lightweight who is in way over his head.
What ramifications could such an assessment, regardless
of its accuracy, have for Taiwan, the western Pacific, and/or the entire U.S./China
relationship? If Mr. Xi were to act on
such an assessment, would Mr. Biden prove to be of the sterner stuff that Mr.
Kennedy displayed in 1962?
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