JFK Extra Credit Assignment |Name: CHAU, Tak Huen
Date of submission: 18 July 2016 | Date of visit: 16 July 2016
Situated by the seaside, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum contains far more than exhibits laying out president Kennedy’s life. During my visit there, I have made interesting observations which are highly relevant three elements in the study of international relations: individual’s influence in policy-making, assumptions of paradigms and the complexity of reality.
Policymakers’ individual traits at times may have made a profound impact on foreign policy. Contrary to assumptions of states acting in pure rationality, observations made during my visit may suggest something otherwise. In this regard, president Kennedy’s upbringing and use of heuristic device may have weighed in during his time as a decision maker. President Kennedy’s past as a soldier did more than to just left him a trauma - it made him realise the human costs in the military. An exhibit of his letters validates this point, in which president Kennedy expressed his thoughts on the horror of war. Therefore, this may have been one of the individual-level causes of …show more content…
While some people believe that the international order can be explained primarily by one of the above theories, my observation suggested otherwise. For example, president Kennedy oversaw the Bay of Pigs invasion in USSR-backed Cuba, which was an apparent and orchestrated act of aggression against a sovereign state. However, exhibits also showed him negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and implemented the ‘red telephone’ agreement with the USSR; the above are achievements premised on the belief that international relations can be cooperative and is not inherently zero-sum. Therefore, they demonstrate that reality is often a mixture of both narratives, depending on the
Date of submission: 18 July 2016 | Date of visit: 16 July 2016
Situated by the seaside, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum contains far more than exhibits laying out president Kennedy’s life. During my visit there, I have made interesting observations which are highly relevant three elements in the study of international relations: individual’s influence in policy-making, assumptions of paradigms and the complexity of reality.
Policymakers’ individual traits at times may have made a profound impact on foreign policy. Contrary to assumptions of states acting in pure rationality, observations made during my visit may suggest something otherwise. In this regard, president Kennedy’s upbringing and use of heuristic device may have weighed in during his time as a decision maker. President Kennedy’s past as a soldier did more than to just left him a trauma - it made him realise the human costs in the military. An exhibit of his letters validates this point, in which president Kennedy expressed his thoughts on the horror of war. Therefore, this may have been one of the individual-level causes of …show more content…
While some people believe that the international order can be explained primarily by one of the above theories, my observation suggested otherwise. For example, president Kennedy oversaw the Bay of Pigs invasion in USSR-backed Cuba, which was an apparent and orchestrated act of aggression against a sovereign state. However, exhibits also showed him negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and implemented the ‘red telephone’ agreement with the USSR; the above are achievements premised on the belief that international relations can be cooperative and is not inherently zero-sum. Therefore, they demonstrate that reality is often a mixture of both narratives, depending on the