ABSTRACT
John Kennedy called upon his country to surge forward and renew itself. Power should not be feared, but embraced and used for the good of the USA, its people and the Western World.1 The West needed to retake the initiative. New goals were to be set. New priorities were to be identified. And throughout, there were to be renewed vigour, purpose and determination to defend freedom. As one of the architects of US Cold War policy in the 1960s put it: The problem lies not in the mysterious East, but in the inscrutable West.’2 America would have to be more flexible at home and abroad in order to meet the manifold challenges posed by the new decade of the 1960s, with which Eisenhower had only inade-quately engaged. Power would be drawn into the White House and away from ineffective parts of the Executive-in particular from the State Department, which Kennedy held in low esteem for its sluggishness and indecision.3 Congress would be asked to grant more discretionary power to the Executive, and then Kennedy, his staff, and a succession of ad hoc committees and task forces would wield that power boldly and decisively. This was the New Frontier at home and flexible response abroad, and on the agenda was the problem of East-West trade. How could this best be handled to promote US interests? What could be wrought here to help consummate the promise of Kennedy’s new vision?
