By Richard Javad Heydarian

June 18, 2015

"Among American foreign policy hawks, President Ronald Reagan has been continuously portrayed as the tough, principled leader, who stood up to an 'evil empire' (Soviet Union) and facilitated its demise by employing a combination of uncompromising diplomacy and rapid military buildup. One of Regan's most memorable moments was his exhortation, 'Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall' during his 1987 speech in Berlin.

Reagan's predecessor, the highly charismatic John F. Kennedy, confronted an even more aggressive Moscow during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost sparked an apocalyptic nuclear showdown between the two superpowers (see Graham Allison's classic book, Essence of Decision). Ominously, Kennedy didn't have a very amicable counterpart in Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev, who didn't hesitate to threaten his American counterparts: 'We will bury you!' Kennedy decided to impose a naval blockade to prevent the deployment of Soviet nuclear arsenals to neighboring Cuba."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-javad-heydarian/time-for-china-and-the-ph_b_7610126.html

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