John F. Kennedy is today rightly remembered for his firm and steady resolve that averted nuclear catastrophe during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But nine months later, Kennedy was torn with indecision as he faced another, very different foreign policy crisis.
In the summer of 1963, Kennedy was at a loss about what to do about the increasingly repressive behavior of South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem. A cabal of State Department officials was pushing for a U.S.-backed military coup and got the president, who was on a weekend getaway with his family in Hyannis Port, to hastily sign off on a cable essentially green lighting one.
But Kennedy was filled with doubts. Barely five days later, he dispatched a follow-up cable whose wording should ring through the ages.