The Lost Peace Quotes

“Khrushchev backed down, Kennedy wisely instructed his staff not to betray any hint of gloating—a provocation to Soviet credibility and pride could lead to a later war. Similarly, he rejected additional plans for an invasion, which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put before him in case the Soviets did not honor a promise to remove their missiles. Kennedy continued to see an invasion as carrying huge risks: “Consider the size of the problem,” he told McNamara, “the equipment that is involved on the other side, the Nationalists [’] fervor which may be engendered, it seems to me we could end up bogged down. I think we should keep constantly in mind the British in the Boer War, the Russians in the last war with the Finnish and our own experience with the North Koreans.” Given his concerns about getting “bogged down” only ninety miles from U.S. shores, would Kennedy have been as ready as Lyndon Johnson to put hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Vietnam?”
― Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope 1945-53

“It was a telling point: Roosevelt met with Truman only twice during the eighty-two days of his fourth term, and their discussions were brief and perfunctory. Roosevelt apparently believed that his health problems would not cut short his life, or at least would not affect him before the war ended. Moreover, he didn’t seem to think that Truman needed to know about the atomic bomb or postwar plans. This may”
― Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope 1945-53

“The search for the sources of his megalomania and a description of his personality seem useful primarily as a warning against future infatuations with leaders promising national salvation through emotionally appealing but rationally simplistic nostrums”
― Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope 1945-53