On November 23, 1963, American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. At that time, the world hardly knew that Kennedy, when alive, had studied Mao Zedong’s “On Guerrilla Warfare,” and wholeheartedly encouraged his White House aides to do the same.
Also, the world hardly knew that, when confronted with the China problem, Kennedy asked his wife Jackie to fix not one but two Bloody Marys for him. Yes, the young president drank during his White House meetings.
Kennedy understood correctly that Mao was determined not to live in the Soviet shadow. A “guerrilla leader of the world,” Mao actually posed a bigger threat to America in the long run. As publicly available documents indicate, Kennedy had received intelligence warning him that Mao’s China would soon become the fifth nuclear power after the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. Indeed, Mao got the Bomb on October 16, 1964, in less than a year after the assassination of Kennedy.
Kennedy took Mao more seriously in real life than in popular narratives. To his credit, he spent a lot of presidential time trying to read Mao’s mind. He was a serious president.
It is a historical fact that, until just before his untimely death, Kennedy had all along strategized and planned to counter the Maoist movement in Asia and beyond. On the one hand, Kennedy was ready to single-handedly destroy Mao’s nuclear installations. On the other hand, he would offer Mao a “peaceful solution” even at Chiang Kai-shek’s expense. In the meantime, he was exploring a détente with either the Soviet Union or Mao’s China so as to keep both in check.
In effect, Kennedy had outlined a China plan for the succeeding administrations. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, in a spectacular manner, took a leaf out of Kennedy’s book. However, neither of them openly acknowledged their debt to Kennedy.
Author: Ren Qiulan
(in the public domain)
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