Taking a page out of JFK’s book on dealing with Russia

Watch: Andrew Cohen, author of the new book Two Days in June, tells Tom Clark how JFK’s pivot on dealing with Russia back in 1963 might instruct how the West deals with President Vladimir Putin today.

John F. Kennedy was president for 1,036 days but a new book explores just two of those days in great detail and finds some lessons for today’s politicians.

“Why am I writing another book about JFK?” asks Andrew Cohen, author of Two Days in June in an interview for The West Block. “Because in June of 1963, JFK pivots dramatically, boldly and consequentially on the two biggest issues of its generation: nuclear arms and civil rights. And he does it through two powerful speeches which are exercises in soaring rhetoric.”

Relations between Russia and the West are tense today and the Canadian government has taken a very firm stance against Russia’s President Vladimir Putin since the crisis in Ukraine began just over a year ago.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper even told Putin directly to “get out of Ukraine” while attending a G20 meeting.

Read more: Harper heading back to Ottawa after headline grabbing G20 summit in Australia

But, Kennedy took a much different approach in 1963.

Cohen sets the scene: “The events of June are very much foreshadowed by the events of eight months earlier in the fall of 1963 when you’ll recall the Cuban missile crisis. Of course JFK and Nikita Khrushchev come as close to a nuclear confrontation … as the world had seen before or since. Both Khrushchev and Kennedy are very aware of that and by June of ’63 they’re looking for a way out.”

Kennedy pesided over the largest military peacetime build-up in American history and was not known as a peacenik.

Yet, his speech on June 10, 1963 asks Americans to re-examine their perception of the Soviet Union.

“He’s going to leave behind all the rhetoric of the Cold War and Americans were well used to the Russian bear and the atrocities and the gulags and he’s going to humanize the Russians,” Cohen told Tom Clark. “And he’s going to speak of them as America’s ally in the Second World War where they had lost 20 million people. He’s going to talk about their achievements in the arts, in space. The only reason the Americans are in space is because the Russians are in space…he talks about the Russians in a way that a president had not.”

Six weeks later there is the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty — the first of the arms control treaties of the Cold War.

Is there a lesson in this for politicians facing off against Russia today?

“There’s not a straight line but we can learn from JFK the idea of reading your opponent,” said Cohen. “And as bad as it looks with Putin now, he has in the last two months absorbed several blows. One is the collapse of the ruble. The other is the collapse of oil. He is a cornered rat.”

“If he wants to reconsider his position in Ukraine, let’s give him every opportunity. Let’s use every opportunity through back channels. The Kennedys were terrific with back channels. The only reason, by the way, that what’s called a peace speech happened at American University was the Pope was involved and there were other intermediaries. The Kennedys were happy to go outside diplomatic channels to give an opponent every opportunity through every means to change his mind and I think that’s what we have to do with Putin.”

Cohen’s book is available now.

Watch below: an extended interview with Andrew Cohen about his new book: Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours that Made History