“…diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail. A willingness to resist force, unaccompanied by a willingness to talk, could provoke belligerence– while a willingness to talk, unaccompanied by a willingness to resist force, could invite disaster.”  Kennedy’s speech at University of Washington, November 16, 1961

The 1960s were tumultuous for the foreign policy of the United States and its status in world affairs. The decade marked the closest that the planet ever came to a nuclear war between two superpowers and also marked the deepening of the war in Asia that generated the greatest domestic crisis since the end of the Civil War. Both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson witnessed other serious events that injected portent –whether the emergence of the People’s Republic of China as a nuclear power, or the challenge to NATO that the French Fifth Republic posed, or the Soviets’ military invasion of Czechoslovakia, or the war in the Middle East. Although the United States was presumed to be at the pinnacle of its power during the sixties, the end of the decade raised questions about the wisdom and skill of American leadership of the Western alliance.

In the wake of World War II, the nation fixated on a policy of containment that climaxed in the Cuban missile crisis during Kennedy’s administration and resulted, during Johnson’s presidency, in one of “the worst foreign policy disaster[s]” (Dallek, 1999, 626) in American history, namely the Vietnam War. These two pivotal episodes have become emblematic of the period and their respective presidents. While not excluding these milestones, the various interactions between the American nation, its allies, its enemies and the non-aligned countries also offer rich ground for reexamining, through the multidisciplinary lens, broader foreign policy choices leading to miscalculations, stalemates and successes.

Contributions on theories of foreign policy, international relations, hard and soft power, and cultural diplomacy are also welcome when specifically related to the context of the Kennedy- Johnson administrations. Discussions involving events or themes that emerged in the 1960s but are unmistakably relevant to the present are also encouraged. Scholars in all disciplines of the humanities, in social sciences, law, political science and international relations are invited to submit proposals.