Episode 66: JFK - Kennedy & Non-Aligned Nations

In keeping with the idea that we can't say anything positive about JFK unless it's a left-handed compliment, we're supposed to view Kennedy as a mafia don who kept his friends close and his enemies closer in the non-aligned world. However, the leaders of said nations certainly didn't view JFK that way.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement

https://www.amazon.com/Kennedy-Johnson-Nonaligned-Robert-Rakove/dp/1107449383

https://www.amazon.com/Battling-Wall-Street-Kennedy-Presidency/dp/1615776680

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-posthumous-assassination-of-john-f-kennedy

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14443293

https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Last-President-World-Kennedy/dp/B0B92L1HT3

https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/jfk

https://hcommons.org/deposits/objects/hc:49654/datastreams/CONTENT/content

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14539216

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Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

JFK, non-aligned nations, Robert Rakove, Kennedy Johnson, Cold War, non-aligned movement, decolonization, Kennedy's foreign policy, Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam War, Kennedy assassination, U.S. foreign aid, Neo colonialism, Kennedy's legacy, U.S. foreign relations.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about JFK and the non aligned nations. In particular, the author, Robert Rakove has really honed in on this particular topic, and he wrote a book titled Kennedy Johnson and the non aligned world. He appeared in Oliver Stone's Docu series, Destiny betrayed. And whenever I picked up the book at the library and I started reading through it, I was like, This guy's a friendly. Do you remember that part of the Avengers where Captain America says that this guy's a friendly I was a little bit like, I don't know, kind of seems like Kennedy gets some backhanded compliments in this book, which, let's be honest, we see that very often in Kennedy scholarship. I'll tell you something positive, and then I'll walk it back, or I'll say something and I'll say it in a friendly tone, but I really don't mean it in a friendly tone. Now all of this is just my opinion, just my interpretation, and it could be wrong. I don't ever sit here and tell you that my opinion is fact. It's the only opinion that matters. No, I always say, check out these books, Docu series, movies, whatever it is I'm reviewing, go and check it out for yourself. Don't just take my word for it, because something that speaks to me may not speak to you. An impression that I get may not be the same impression that you get. I just yeah, there's something that I found about this book that was off putting to me now, in terms of the scholarship and the research and the detail and the fact that he has very clearly niched deeply into this topic, no arguments. There just a few comments that he made that made me go. I don't know about this. So pick out a frosty beverage of choice, and we will saddle up and take this ride. Let's start off by defining what is meant by the idea of a non aligned nation or the non aligned movement. Go now to Wikipedia. The non aligned movement is a forum of 120 countries that are not formally aligned with or against any major power block. It was founded with the view to advancing interest of developing countries in the context of Cold War confrontation, after the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide. The movement originated in the aftermath of the Korean War as an effort by some countries to counterbalance the rapid bipolarization of the world due to the cold war, whereby two major powers formed blocs and embarked on a policy to pull the rest of the world into their orbits. One of these was the pro Soviet Socialist bloc, whose best known Alliance was the Warsaw Pact, and the other the pro American capitalist group of countries, many of which belonged to NATO in 1961 drawing on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference of 1955 the non aligned movement was formally established in Belgrade Yugoslavia through an initiative of Yugoslav President Tito, Indian Prime Minister Nehru, Egyptian President Nasser, Ghanian President Nkrumah and Indonesian President Sukarno, this led to the first conference of heads of states, of governments of non aligned countries. The purpose of the organization was summarized by Fidel Castro in his Havana declaration of 1979 as to ensure the national independent sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non aligned countries in their struggle against imperialism, colonialism, Neo colonialism, racism and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony, as well as against great power and bloc politics. The countries of the non line movement represent nearly two thirds of the United Nations members and contain 55% of the world population. Membership is particularly concentrated in countries considered to be developing countries, although the non aligned movement also has a number of developed nations. The non aligned movement gained the most traction in the 1950s and early 1960s when the international policy of non alignment achieved major successes in decolonization, disarmament, opposition to racism and opposition to apartheid in South Africa, and persisted throughout the entire Cold War, despite several conflicts between members and despite some members developing closer ties with either the Soviet Union, China or the United States in the years since the. Cold War's end in 1991 the movement has focused on developing multilateral ties and connections, as well as unity among the developing nations of the world, especially those in the global south end. Quote, so, as I mentioned in the introduction, Robert Rakoff has this book Kennedy Johnson and the non aligned world, which was put out by Cambridge University Press, and was apparently published in 2013 in his introduction, which is titled A genuine departure. We first read on November 23 1963 Egypt entered a state of mourning the city of Cairo, in the words of an American diplomat, was overcome by a sense of universal tragedy over the death of United States President John F Kennedy, as the embassy counselor Donald Burgess, reported 1000 Egyptians came to the American Embassy to write messages of condolence. Many were prominent citizens, including Vice Prime Minister Ali Sabri and an influence, influential member of the Presidency Council named Anwar al Sadat. Others, though were ordinary Egyptian citizens, Burgess observed the expressions on their faces left no doubt concerning the genuineness of their sorrow. Mourners remarked that Kennedy was the first American president who really understood the afro, Asian world. In the Egyptian media, journalists normally critical of the United States declared their heartfelt sense of shock and grief over the event. An editorial in the daily al Aram stated that Kennedy had transformed the United States from the repugnant rich brother to the cherished rich brother of the human family. Egypt's grief was not exceptional. The American Embassy in Algiers reported genuine shock and dismay among average Algerians US Ambassador William J Porter received a call of condolence from an obviously shaken Algerian President Ahmed bin Bella who quickly declared a week of official mourning in New Delhi, an American diplomat observed a remarkable demonstration of admiration and sympathy by the people of India. Prime Minister Nehru spoke before the Indian parliament decrying a crime against humanity, the murder of a man of ideals, vision and courage, who sought to serve his own people as well as the larger causes of the world. The US consulate in Bombay wrote, Indians from all walks of life took occasion to mention their sorrow to Americans of their acquaintance, seldom have the Indian people been so shocked and dazed by the pop, pop of a leader of another country observed the Times of India in Indonesia, President Sukarno tearfully remarked in a lengthy eulogy, the good die young flags in Jakarta flew at half mast. Ghana's President Nkrumah eulogized a great world statesman and a relentless fighter for equality and human dignity. End, quote, I think from that kind of an introduction, we get the idea that the overall tone, or the overall theme of the book is really going to be look at how JFK made the non aligned nations a priority. He cared about them. He wanted to get away from colonialism and Neo colonialism. But as I said, I mean, in my opinion, in my interpretation, that's really not the overall tone of the book. Now it's interesting because he says these things about Kennedy and the nations that went into mourning whenever he was murdered, and then he writes contrast these scenes with those of successive years. In 1964 angry mobs assaulted us owned libraries in Egypt and Indonesia, leaders who had praised and eulogized Kennedy denounced his successor, Lyndon Johnson in increasingly fiery speeches in 1967 Egypt broke relations with the United States after the Six Day War, while other nine non aligned states vehemently denounced Johnson's war in Vietnam with dismaying rapidity, the United States had come to be seen not as an ally to third world aspirations, but as a malevolent foe, polarizing, accusatory rhetoric, unusual in the early 1960s became unremarkable by the decades end, emerging as a lasting feature of world politics, a recognizable precursor to contemporary denunciations of the United States. End quote also in the introduction, he puts in this bit that left me scratching my head a little bit, Kennedy's pursuit of this policy is one of the less well understood aspects of his presidency. Scholarship on Kennedy's foreign policy has traveled between far flung extremes. The first wave of accounts immediately following his pop pop and including key memoirs by administration insiders seemed to idealize Kennedy. He was depicted as an astute practitioner of diplomacy, able to see past the stale doctrines of 1950s era, cold war strategy. To these authors, JFK stood apart. His Cold War peers as a president likely to have drawn down Cold War tensions and avoided entanglement in Vietnam. A second wave emerging in the wake of the Vietnam War found Kennedy far less remarkable amid his cold war peers terming him aggressive even reckless in his pursuit of cold war victory, Kennedy has been taken to task for his support of coups in Latin America, as well as for his culpability in the overthrow and murder of South Vietnamese president no dim the end of the Cold War and the release of recordings made during the Cuban Missile Crisis have begun to move scholarship back toward the middle ground, although third wave Kennedy scholars acknowledge his avid pursuit of cold war victory. They also note his prudence amid crises to varying degrees. They have renewed speculation that Kennedy had called into question Cardinal Cold War precepts, that he might have further eased tensions with the Soviet Union, and that he was at least less likely than Johnson to go to war in Vietnam. Kennedy's ability to mix lofty rhetoric with pragmatic, sometimes ruthless strategy presents a perennial challenge to historians, as do innumerable questions of how he might have proceeded in office after November 1963 much about him must remain unknowable. End Quote, yeah, that's when I had my Captain America moment. I was be bopping along right through the introduction, and that's when I had my Captain America this guy's a friendly moment. As I was reading, I had been thinking, this is a fairly positive portrayal of JFK, especially considering that this is an academic publication. I'm really surprised that they allowed this to go through because we're all supposed to hate JFK and think that he was a sex obsessed pervert, Playboy, moron, goofball, no deep sense of ideology, etc, etc at all. And then we get to that part, and I'm like, Okay, well, I don't know if that's the author's true opinion. I don't know if he was pressured to put that in there. I mean, we do know that editors have their say. After all, I don't know. I'm just speculating out loud. It's just my opinion, just my speculations, and they could be wrong. Now go down to my well worn copy of Donald Gibson's book battling Wall Street. His introduction is a bit different. There are too many John F Kennedys. There is the aimless Kennedy and the ambitious Kennedy. There is Kennedy the liberal and Kennedy the conservative. There is Kennedy the hawk and Kennedy the dove. There is the Kennedy who was a friend and servant of the East Coast, big business interests and the Kennedy, who was anathema to the power brokers. There are other images, some of which are closer to the truth than others. Though the complete truth about any person is unattainable. That does not mean that there is no real persona to be understood, nor does it mean that all opinions are equal. Yes, King, in the attempt to understand anything, a man, a president, an economic crisis, it is possible to move from a state of ignorance to a state of partial, even substantial knowledge in the process, total truth may remain forever elusive, but one can get closer to it. The various judgments about John F Kennedy cannot all be accurate unless he was a political chameleon who would make even the most flexible of lizards green with envy. John Kennedy's political colors did not shift and change as president and before, he had a very definite and coherent set of goals and a consistent overall strategy to achieve them, he was a practical politician and leader in the pursuit of his objectives, he was aware of what was immediately possible and what was necessary. If compromise was unavoidable, he took what he could get. We shall see, however, that he was frequently willing to confront or circumvent forces that other political leaders would rarely challenge. It is by examining Kennedy's basic goals and the most important actions taken to achieve them that we will get closer to the truth about him and his time as President, this will prove to be simpler than one might think, because not only was Kennedy, clear and consistent, but he also ran into an opposition that publicly and emphatically rejected his methods and purposes, his actions and the reaction to him not only fit together as pieces of a puzzle, but as with a puzzle, the proper arrangement of pieces yield a coherent picture. The end result will be an image that is closer to the truth, an image that will show that many of the existing ideas about Kennedy are wrong. End quote the necessity for rakov in his book, to mention this dichotomy, trichotomy between first, second and third wave Kennedy scholarship. Well, initially, people were very friendly, and they portrayed him as being something really different. Friend. And then a second wave comes along that tries to turn him into a bloodthirsty war hawk, even claiming that he had responsibility for the pop pop of Diem. Then a third wave of scholars come along, and they move the needle to the middle, ah, you know, he was pragmatic, sometimes ruthless, because we know that's a very prominent Kennedy stereotype going all the way from Joe to Jack to Bobby, ruthless. They were ruthless. They were conniving. They were underhanded. Whatever they had to do to get what they wanted, they would do it. I'm like, Why? Why does this need to be in here? And then the part about much about him must remain unknowable. What's the necessity of that? I mean, seriously, what if you're going to write a book about Kennedy and Johnson and their relationship to the non aligned world? What does this have to do with that? Why do you have to get into something about, well, lofty rhetoric with pragmatic, sometimes ruthless strategy. What's the point? What are you getting at? There stuff like that rubs me the wrong way. And I think back to Noam chomsky's book rethinking Camelot, where he says in his introduction, hey, look, I'm not going to get into the murder of JFK, except, actually, I'm going to make a comment in the introduction to rethinking Camelot, he writes, Camelot became a favorite image of liberal intellectuals entranced by the years of glory cut short cruelly by the pop pop of JFK, just at the time when he was about to go On to marvelous achievements. Murdered for that reason, according to many admirers, this book is concerned only with what actually happened, which accords poorly with the legend it touches on the Pop. Pop only obliquely, taking no stand on the culprits, except negatively. The evidence is overwhelming that it was not a high level plot with significant policy consequences. Okay, wait a minute. So if your main thesis is that Kennedy was not going to prevent the atrocity that was Vietnam, why do you need to get into anything about the pop pop and the pop poppers? And then, more specifically to that, why do you need to say that it was not a high level plot with significant policy consequences, even if the thesis of your book was simply to say, I don't think that Kennedy was killed because of Vietnam. Why does that automatically make it not a high level plot with significant policy consequences? If it was as Jim Garrison argues, a coup on American soil to make sure that the military industrial and military intelligence complexes really run the show from here on out, that's not necessarily specific to Vietnam. Look gestures broadly. Look at all the dust ups. Look at all the coups that have happened before. And since it's like anytime some dust up occurs, it has to blow up into hot, kinetic warfare, and the US just has to be involved. That's not necessarily specific to Vietnam. There are places all over the world where that has happened. So to me, it's like all right, in the same way that you have Noam Chomsky, ostensibly writing a book to say Kennedy would not have prevented the atrocity of Vietnam, but then he has to come in and make some snide remarks in the introduction. I question what rakov is doing here in his introduction. Now, I could be wrong. This is all just my opinions, my interpretation. It could be wrong, but I personally question it. In Chomsky is telling there you have this idea that, okay, there was the Camelot mythology, which I agree it was a mythology, this idea of King John and Queen Jackie and, Oh, they're so beautiful, and what a handsome couple, and they're just like, two little love birds. I'm like, Yeah, I don't, I don't know about that. Some of those photographs are beautiful. They're beautiful photographs, but we have to remember that's what they were. It's a snapshot of a moment in time, and it's very easy to tell somebody you need to look happy for this camera, because you need to smile for the public. Anybody that's had even a smidgen of fame can tell you that. But so he's okay the Camelot mythology just at the time when he was about to go on to marvelous achievements. That's a snide, underhanded way of saying he hadn't done anything worth a shit. He was about to do it, but then he got murdered, and, oh, it's so sad, he hadn't done anything memorable before, which is just an out and out lie. So you have to be careful with some of these authors. Because the language matters, the tone matters. Sometimes it's not always about what's said. It's also about what's not said. What are they hinting at? And I hate that shit. You know what say, what you're gonna say? Admit your bias. If you have a bias and you're aware of it, if it's not unconscious, then come right out and say it. When I was reading this introduction, I thought, you know, when I first started on this pursuit, I landed in the third wave camp. I was firmly in the middle ground. I thought, wait a minute. You know, you've got people that are hero worshiping, and then you've got people on the opposite side of the spectrum that are trying to turn Kennedy into the worst bastard that ever lived. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Nobody is perfect, let alone politicians, let alone a president. The middle path seems to be the most sensible one to me, and as I read more and I just paid more attention to the things he actually said his actual policies. I was like, I think, much to my surprise, maybe even to my chagrin, I'm going into what Rakove describes as the first wave. I don't hate this guy. I admire somebody like Penn Jones in Mark Lane's documentary version of rush to judgment. He's a researcher, and he says, I loved the guy. Well, you know what good for you? I'm glad that you are telling us that this is the perspective I'm coming from. And I try to do the same thing here. I really started out in a more middle of the road moderate position. But as I've read more, as I've heard more, as I've read the man's own speeches and listened to what he actually had to say for himself, I'm like, I don't hate this guy at all. My soft spot is really grown. So I think by Rakove's barometer, I would fall more into the first wave. But I'm like, Okay, wait a minute. What? What is the the point of putting this in here, if your main drive the raison d'etre of this book is to talk about these non aligned nations, why are you even going there? Oh, can't know the truth about him. So much has been written. Some people say the guy's a garbage can. Some people love him. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But you know, shit, we're never gonna know. What's the point of that? I don't understand that maybe I am seeing something underhanded and Snide where it isn't underhanded and Snide. I'm not perfect. Lord knows. I may be reading something into it that just simply isn't there. I'm just being honest with you that turned me off in his essay the possumist Pop, pop of John F Kennedy, which is excellent. I hope you check it out. James Dieugenio writes, In the strictest sense, the convergent movements did not actually begin after Frank Church's investigation ended. But it was at that point that what had been a right wing eccentric, easily dismissed undercurrent picked up a second wind, so much so that today it is not an eccentric undercurrent at all. It is accepted by a large amount of people, and most surprisingly, some of its purveyors are even accepted within the confines of the research community, the three threads are these, number one that the Kennedys ordered Castro's Pop Pop despite the verdict of the Church Committee on the Charlie India alpha's Pop Pop plots, as I noted last issue, the committee report could find no evidence indicating that JFK and RFK authorized the plots On Fidel Castro Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, or Diem of South Vietnam. Two that the Kennedys were really bad boys, in some ways as bad as Chicago mobsters were the gentleman killers of the Charlie India Alpha although neither JFK nor RFK was lionized by the main centers of the media while they were alive. This is true because of their early murders, many books and articles were written afterward that presented them in a sympathetic light, usually as liberal icons. This was tolerated by the media establishment as sentimental SOP, until the revelations of both Watergate and the Church Committee, this good guy image then needed to be altered, since both those crises seemed to reveal that the Kennedys were actually different than what came before them, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers and what came after Nixon. Thus began a series of anti Kennedy biographies, three that Marilyn Monroe's death was somehow ordained by her involvement with the Kennedy bad boys. Again, this was, at first, a rather peculiar cottage industry, but around the time of Watergate and the Church Committee, it was given a lift, and going back to a 1964 paradigm, it combined elements of the first two movements into a Gothic, some would say, grotesque, right wing propaganda tract, which is both humorous and depressing in its slanderous implications and almost frightening in its political and cultural. Overtones, egged on by advocates of Judith Exner, eg Liz Smith and Tony summers, this political and cultural time bomb landed in Sy Hersch's and ABC's lap. When it blew up, all parties went into a damage control mode, pointing their fingers at each other. As we examine the sorry history of all three industries, we shall see that there is plenty of blame and shame to be shared, and not just in 1997 end quote, so what? What's the necessity in a book about Kennedy and the non aligned nations, what's the necessity to accuse him of being involved in the murder of Diem of South Vietnam, to falsely make the accusation, I just keep coming back to the same question of, why is that there? Before we can even get into any meat and potatoes about what was Kennedy's relationship with the non aligned nations, we have to sludge our way through this mountain of shit, because you're not allowed to just simply say the guy was an all right guy, and he didn't want people of these developing countries to be enslaved. He did not want them to be manipulated and subjugated by Neo colonialism. He wanted these European nations to cut that shit out and let these people have their independence. Get the fuck out of the way. No, you can't say that. No, that's too positive. So we can say yes, okay, Kennedy did favor self determination and autonomy and independence, and all these nations mourned and cried when he died, but the guy was still a fucker. Am I right? Why does it always go back to that it is so mind numbing to me. Once we get into the real meat and potatoes of the book, we learn that Kennedy had a policy of engagement and that he had also grown tired of the John Foster Dulles, dichotomy of good versus evil, us versus them, east versus West, the God appointed apostles of capitalism versus the atheistic communists. Rakove also has the tendency to lump LBJ in with the new frontier movement, sort of like by virtue of the fact that he was Kennedy's running mate and then becomes the vice president, he gets lumped into the new frontier movement. And again, I'm like, You sure about that. I'll read now a good summation from the conclusion in Rakove's book. Non alignment at heart, implies a fundamental rejection of American claims to world leadership or an exceptional heritage and destiny. It is worth asking if our scorn toward the non aligned states is a response to having been demonized by the individual sukarnos And more recently, the Hugo Chavez's in their midst, or a response to being more generally, taken off our particular pedestal and set alongside other great powers. Non alignment is not a phenomenon that can be wished away in a fit of hegemonic dreaming. It has transformed World Politics irreversibly and in some ways for the better. Its core principles of self determination and a right to neutrality, however obscured by the day to day policies of the NAM represent ideals that Americans long asserted for themselves. Kennedy was right to regard non alignment seriously in his day, and we would be equally prudent to study it closely in ours. End Quote, In the American mind, we tend to think that Western world supremacy, American dominance, the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency. These things are just Givens, almost like it's a guarantee, but that is simply not the case. I want to play a brief clip for you now from my crossover episode about money for nothing inside the Federal Reserve by 1971 Nixon decides to release the dollar from the gold standard. $1 becomes just a piece of paper. By 1981 the dollar is worth about 45 cents. I'm just going to stop here, because I really want you to think about that for a second. By 1981 $1 is worth about 45 cents. That's how bad things got by taking away the gold standard and saying we need to be able to print up reams and reams of fiat currency at will. That's how much devaluation happened just in that span of time. I want you to really think about that, because whenever you hear these talking heads and social media morons that are drunk on their own toxic positivity or their paid shills or their bots, who knows? Oh, it just never happened again. We. Never have $1 collapse. We would never have $1 devaluation. We're always going to be the world's reserve currency. Everybody respects American respects $1 right? Believe that at your own risk. In her book, America's last president, Monica we sack, writes, Kennedy's approach to Africa was four pronged. First, he made substantial efforts to build a good relationship with Africa's nationalist leaders. Second, he significantly increased economic and aid programs to African countries. Third, he accepted non alignment, ie he accepted that these countries would side with neither the West nor the east. And fourth, he opposed European colonialism. End quote in her book, as well as in Rakove's book, there, I think pretty clear to point out that Kennedy, when he was giving foreign aid or humanitarian aid, it wasn't with the idea of, I'm going to buy you off. I expect that if I give this to you, you're going to agree with me on everything, and you're gonna ultimately side with the American way of doing things. I mean, let's be honest, that's pretty much how politics work. Now, there's all this dirty money that gets funneled all over the place. You don't even really know all the channels that it's being laundered through. You don't even really understand who ultimately gets it and why. I mean, in some respects, it probably is just bribe money. But who's being bribed with it? We don't even know as American citizens, we don't even know also in America's last president, Monica, we sack writes, And here she's actually quoting JFK himself. When you consider things like the Charlie India Alpha support to the 1958 rebellion against sukarnos government. Sukarnos frequently anti American attitude is understandable. JFK, Yeah, no kidding. So Monica writes, When John F Kennedy took office, Indonesia's leader, Sukarno felt hopeful about what the future entailed. Ambassador Howard Jones recounted, Sukarno had an extremely favorable reaction to Kennedy and the speeches he'd been making during his campaign, Sukarno had come to the conclusion that he and Kennedy had pretty much the same view of the economic and social revolution that was sweeping Asia and Africa. Sukarno was one of the leaders of the non aligned movement, a group that began in the mid 1950s and brought developing or third world countries together. The goal of the movement was for the countries involved to remain neutral in the great west east power struggle. It consisted of mainly recently, or excuse me, it consisted of many recently decolonized states, including Indonesia, that firmly opposed imperialism and sought to grow their own strength and independence. In fact, Sukarno helped coin the term third world at the first conference of non aligned nations that he hosted in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 Sukarno felt strongly that the newly decolonized states should be allowed to grow independently, and should not become pawns in Imperial wars between the United States and the Soviet Union. He felt that decolonized States needed to band together to mutually sustain their independence and to discuss the similar issues they faced as new states. In early 1961 the non aligned states were embarking on another conference, the Belgrade conference. Kennedy, was supportive of this movement and reflected on it at a press conference. We believe that the peoples represented at this conference are committed to a world society in which men have the right and the freedom to determine their own destiny, a world in which one people is not enslaved by the other, in which the powerful do not devour the weak. The American people share that commitment, and we have pledged the influence of this nation to the abolition of exploitation in all of its forms. The Peoples represented at Belgrade are committed to achieving a world of peace in which nations have the freedom to choose their own political and economic systems and to live their own way of life. End quote. In fact, that speech is in the public domain, so I will play a clip of it for you now, that way you can hear it in his own voice. Lastly, I am sending the following message to the conference of unaligned states convening in Belgrade on September 1. It is always encouraging when responsible world leaders join together to consider the problems that beset mankind. We recognize that most of the countries at Belgrade do not consider consider themselves committed on certain of the issues which confront us today. But we do know that they are committed to the United Nations Charter. The people of the United States share this commitment. We know that those gathering in Belgrade are committed to finding a way to halt the waste of the Earth's resources in the building of the implements of death and destruction. And the people of the United States have constantly pledged themselves to this goal. We believe that the peoples represented at this conference are committed to a world society in which men have the right and the freedom to. Determine their own destiny, a world in which one people is not enslaved by the other, in which the powerful do not devour the weak. The American people share that commitment, and we have pledged the influence of this nation to the abolition of exploitation in all of its forms. The Peoples represented at Belgrade are committed to achieving a world at peace in which nations have the freedom to choose their own political and economic systems and to live their own way of life, and since our earliest beginnings, this nation has shared that commitment. All this and much more the leaders at Belgrade have in common this and much more the people of the United States have in common with them. So for myself, and I'm sure for the American people, I express the hope that their deliberations there will bring us all near these goals. In contrast, if you go to the office of the historian at the State Department website under the heading the world in 1961 you will read John F Kennedy entered office determined to restore the prestige and power of the United States, which he felt had eroded during Eisenhower's watch, and to stop the expansionism of the Soviet Union. Kennedy's policy led to a concerted diplomatic effort to win new friends among the non aligned nations of the world, but it was a policy that also drew the United States into frequent, intense clashes with the Soviet Union and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. End, quote, I don't even really know how to respond to that. It's just laughable. There's a review of Rakove's book on humanity's Commons. I'll drop a link so you can check this out for yourself. In this review, we read the central historical problem that Robert B Rakove's sets out to solve in Kennedy Johnson and the non aligned world, is how to explain the remarkable transformation in the relationship between the United States and much of the post colonial world over the course of the 1960s the pop pop of John F Kennedy in 1963 was met with genuine grief in many post colonial states, reflecting the positive and hopeful light in which the United States under Kennedy had been viewed. And yet, by the second half of the decade, the United States had come to be seen not as an ally to third world aspirations, but as a malevolent foe, polarizing, accusatory rhetoric unusual in the 1960s became unremarkable by the decades end, emerging as a lasting feature of world politics, a recognizable precursor to contemporary denunciations of the United States. This shift, Rakove argues, was a consequence of changes in us, government policy, positive perceptions of the United States in the early 1960s resulted from the Kennedy administration's pursuit of a policy of engagement of the non aligned world. The subsequent souring of relations was a consequence of the abandonment of that approach under Lyndon Johnson. Central to Rakove argument is the distinction between Kennedy's approach to states in the third world that were aligned in the Cold War and those that were non aligned common historiographic characterizations of Kennedy's policy toward the third world as aggressive and interventionist have failed to appreciate the significance of this distinction. Rakove suggests in the cases of states that the US government perceived to be already aligned with the West, especially in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the Kennedy administration was intolerant of changes that might endanger that alignment, and pursued forceful interventionist policies, including sponsoring coups and other forms of covert action to avert that possibility. Right? Sure, but with regard to non aligned states, Kennedy pursued an ambitious program of outreach that though the administration never gave it an official name, Rakove characterizes as a policy of engagement. End quote. So there we go again. We have, I think, the attribution of things going on at the Charlie India alpha as automatically being things that Kennedy pushed for you. You're either with us or against us. So in a way that argues against Rakove's point, if you're with us, we want to keep you with us. So I'm going to behave like a mafioso and support coups and political pop pops, whatever it takes to keep you on our side. In the Docu series, Destiny betrayed David Talbot, who wrote the amazing book, The Devil's chessboard. I intend to do, I would say more than one episode, probably a series of episodes just about the devil's chessboard. It is really a haunting and incredible book in Destiny betrayed, The Docu series, David Talbot recounts this conversation between JFK and the French ambassador, because there had been this long history of antagonism between Charles de Gaulle in France and Alan Dulles of the Charlie India alpha in the States. And as far back as 1959 the agency had discussed de Gaulle's overthrow. There was a coup attempt, but it was. Quickly put down, and there were reports that pointed a finger of blame at Allen Dulles, so JFK is assuring the French ambassador that he didn't have anything to do with it. He stands in full support of de Gaulle, and he tells the French ambassador, I am not in full control of my entire government. I am not in control of the Charlie, India alpha, and I cannot speak for what's happening there. It's a mistake to conflate whatever was going on in the Charlie India alpha with must have been what JFK wanted, because he was the president at the time. Especially if you read the devil's chessboard, you'll see this pattern of the Dulles brothers, doing whatever the hell they wanted, regardless of who was in the White House, it was much clearer, I think, that the agency was running the country. The President was a figurehead, or even just a sock puppet. Maybe he would go along with what they wanted to do. Maybe he wouldn't. And if he didn't, they would figure out a way to circumvent him and just do whatever the hell that they wanted. So look, I'm rubbing my face like Gordon Ramsay when he's in a bad restaurant, we can't even discuss the positive aspects of JFKs leadership, of his attitude towards non aligned states without it turning into something really bitter and terrible. Well, if I compliment the guy, then I have to make it a left handed or backhanded compliment. I can't just say, Look at what he did. This is something that I think more people should pay attention to. I think he was on the right track by not saying you're either with us or against us, like some kind of Mafia don. No, no, we're. We just we can't go there. I think back to the episode I recorded about the ugly American and how Kennedy was so taken with that book that he bought copies and gave those copies to all of his colleagues in the Senate, he really understood the message that was being conveyed in that book. It's no wonder that America is losing the Cold War. It's no wonder that communism is spreading, because look at the way that American politicians and diplomats behave. They go to these foreign countries, they don't know how to speak the language. They just expect that everybody will deal with them in English. They don't respect the customs, they don't eat the food. They all just hang out together as a group of expats, and they act like if they have to go somewhere to commingle with the natives of the country, they're slumming it. Oh, that's ghetto. Oh, that's trashy. We don't want to go there. And no wonder people are like, fuck you. We don't want you around here, if that's how you're going to behave. Why is it that Americans behave really well and are hospitable in their own country, but the minute they leave the country and they go somewhere else, they want to act like a rotten asshole? No, we. The thing is, we're just not allowed to to do anything that would spit Polish Kennedy's image. If we say, let's scrub off the tarnish and get rid of the smear campaigns and the bullshit and the lies, you know, we find somebody that cared about people, that didn't want Neo colonialism, that didn't want America to badger everybody and to get involved in every dust up that there was, and to say you're either with us or against us, and if you're not with us permanently, if you ever disagree with us on something, then we'll kill you. We'll start dropping bombs. We'll take away humanitarian aid. We will do something to fuck you over. We're just not allowed to see him in any kind of positive light. If somebody tries to make a positive argument, then they have to shut it down by saying something really rotten in the same breath, heavy existential sigh. I will end where I began. It's my opinion, and it could be wrong. Maybe I am misinterpreting certain aspects of Ray COVID book, or, I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm, I'm just looking at it the wrong way, or I'm, I'm too touchy on this. I don't know. It is an interesting book. And as I said before, there's a lot of good scholarship, a lot of good research that's gone into it. And I really wish that it could be more like here are the facts. Make up your own mind, instead of saying things like, Well, I mean, he wanted to make sure that people who were with the US stayed with the US, and he wasn't above staging codes and pulling people out. I mean, it's impossible to ever really know the guy. It's like, is it, though? Is it? That's another narrative that's worn the hell out for me. I agree with Donald Gibson. Not every opinion has merit, and we can't crawl inside somebody else's flag. Suit and know every thought that they're thinking that's impossible for us to do, but you can at least rough out a persona. You can get a general idea, draw your own conclusions. I do think that the book is worth reading. I don't put it in the same category as like a rethinking Camelot or a dark side of Camelot, I believe that it really does have some incredibly good merits, and there are researchers with, I think, quite frankly, better books that have relied on it, because it does niche in so well to this question about non aligned countries, as I said, I just could have done without some of the editorializing. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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