Kennedy's foreign policy and defense strategy was a complete shift from Eisenhower's reliance on nuclear deterrence. Kennedy sought a "flexible response" that would be more inexpensive than spending the entire defense budget on missiles and bombers to deliver nuclear weapons. Kennedy sought to increase special operations groups to fight clandestine wars against Communism. This was the thought behind the Bay of Pigs fiasco, where anti-Castro rebels landed in Cuba in an attempt to start a...
Kennedy's foreign policy and defense strategy was a complete shift from Eisenhower's reliance on nuclear deterrence. Kennedy sought a "flexible response" that would be more inexpensive than spending the entire defense budget on missiles and bombers to deliver nuclear weapons. Kennedy sought to increase special operations groups to fight clandestine wars against Communism. This was the thought behind the Bay of Pigs fiasco, where anti-Castro rebels landed in Cuba in an attempt to start a revolution. The rebels were met and captured on the beach by Castro's forces, and Kennedy looked like a laughingstock. The Soviet Union took this opportunity to put missiles in Cuba, thus creating the tense stalemate of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy became a national hero again when he blockaded Cuba and forced the Soviets to take the missiles out of Cuba; in reality, Kennedy struck a deal with the Soviet Union where he took American intercontinental ballistic missiles out of Turkey.
This was Kennedy's brightest moment; to answer your question, yes, Kennedy's response during the Cuban Missile Crisis does give him a positive grade from popular historians in terms of foreign policy. However, the situation in South Vietnam worsened as the American-backed president, Ngo Diem, was assassinated and Vietcong infiltrators started to become bolder in their attacks. Kennedy sent more "advisers," but by 1963 these advisers were starting to get into a combat role. This is a blemish on Kennedy's foreign policy record.
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