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Introduction

US presidents, regardless of a party, have always treated the USA as an indispensable country and the locomotive at the head of humanity, time after time amassing power and influence around the world on behalf of US interests and ambitions. Since 1945, US leaders have insisted on preserving the military supremacy, a prevalence of power - not an equilibrium of power with other countries - and they have worked on the confidence that liberal democracy is the single legitimate form of administration, other forms being not just illegitimate but temporary. They have asserted the willingness to support free nations who are opposing attempted defeat by powers of repression, to pay any price to protect liberty, to look for democratic rise in the globe, and to perform for the finale of tyranny. They have always been irritated with the status quo. Kennedy has treated the USA as a catalyst for alteration in human affairs and been maximalists, looking for revolutionary rather than gradual resolutions to problems. As such, US presidents have usually been at odds with the more cautious allies. America’s role as the globe’s champion of liberty and democracy did not start with Kennedy, of course. However, Kennedy’s vision of American international policy raised the stakes of America’s international leadership by rising an entire generation to the defense of liberty. Liberal ideology became central at the finale of the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union. Kennedy was a liberal in the foundational sense, asserting that liberalism is the finest and only hope today; for the liberal culture is a free culture, for that ground, it is a strong culture. Even though the call to public service was motivating, the President’s pledge to "bear any burden, pay any price" in the defense of liberty developed the basis for many foreign policy conflicts in the 1960s; the administration struggled to fashion policies consistent with notions of the Inaugural Address, sometimes, resulting in uncomfortable armed faults. The Cold War was in progress at the time; ties with the USSR were stressed, but were of the huge significance to the US leaders. Written in the cold war, the speech dealt almost solely with America’s place in the globe, and the Address is full of ironic passages observed through the lens of fifty years of retrospection. Kennedy asserted that the globe has changed. That is more true nowadays than then. Kennedy’s statements anticipate a hard fight against communism to maintain western democracy and to avoid nuclear war. But the Address did not predict other fights for stable prices, civil rights, the affordability of health care, and later hazards from Islamic terrorism and financial market excesses and weakness. That is why not all ideological perspectives reflected in President John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address should be embraced.

Inaugural Address

By the dawn of the 20th century, US leadership in the free globe was going quickly forward. By mid-century, super-power domination had been solidified in economic and military terms. In the 1950s, communism posed a novel trouble, which put the USA back into a state of fight and on the ready alert. But, from the economic point of view, it was a competition of totally unequal forces. Kennedy's reply to the novel opponent may be summarized in two passages from his inaugural. The initial is one of the most remembered lines from that or any presidential speech, “Let each country realize, whether it desires to see our nation well or ill, we will pay any price, accept any burden, support any associate, meet any hardship, oppose any enemy to guarantee the endurance and achievement of freedom.” The second quote has stood the test of time just partly and then in the restricted context of preventing nuclear total destruction, “Only once the arms are adequate beyond any doubt may we be confident that they will never be in use.”

Kennedy's speech was very inspiring, motivating and powerful. However, there is a dark part of the heritage of Kennedy's Inaugural Address, chiefly in foreign affairs. Although the call to public service was extremely inspiring, his pledge to "bear any burden, pay any price" in the safeguard of freedom evolved the foundation for many foreign policy tragedies in the 1960s. The Kennedy government struggled to the fashion policies consistent with the notions of the Inaugural Address, sometimes, resulting in awkward armed mistakes. First was the Bay of Pigs attack, where a group of Cuban immigrants, with the support from US advisers, initiated a faultily planned attack of Cuba, hoping it would motivate an uprising against Cuba's communist leader-Fidel Castro. The attack was a fiasco. One year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, in which the President stood toe-to-toe with Khrushchev in a dispute concerning the Soviet's positioning of nuclear arms in Cuba, 90 miles off the USA's beach. Soviets, Americans, and the world observed as Khrushchev and Kennedy brought the nations closer and closer to a war. Finally, Kennedy provided assurances against the future U.S. supported attacks of Cuba in exchange for Khrushchev removing the nuclear arms. Kennedy extended a hand of peace to the USA's foes; however, he did this not as a suppliant, but more likely from strength. Having fought in World War II, Kennedy realized what happened when one demonstrated a tyrant weakness. Kennedy mentioned military weakness at least two times in his speech, a sign that possibly he was actually concerned with the road the USA was taking. "...Civility is not a sign of weakness, and genuineness is always subject to evidence."[3] Was this a finely veiled stab at Khrushchev? Maybe, it was. The concepts of a strong military program, which the President preached were pushed by Reagan in the 1980s to contest and ultimately finish the Cold War. The single dissimilarity is that Kennedy was not condemned for holding the opinion; Reagan was hated and teased for the manners he utilized with the Soviets. Just in retrospection, people realize how right the presidents were.

If there are postulates of liberal ideology in the foreign policy, two are the main. First, the US security and interests are far easier to protect in a globe of political liberty. From this follows one more idea: for liberalists, the connection between the national and the international policies of states is of basic significance. Whilst Kennedy’s words met the general expectations of the Inaugural Address, it also offered a dissimilar international role for the nation. Polarizing the globe into two antagonistic camps, John F. Kennedy depicted international politics as a life-or-death fight between the forces of liberty and democracy and powers of the totalitarianism - cold war images, which were more ordinary by the time of Kennedy’s presidency. Kennedy continued to use polarizing rhetoric to offer a more active and aggressive foreign policy. Kennedy’s foreign policy vision was dedicated not merely to peaceful co-existence or the control of communism but to the spread of democracy and liberty, probably even the liberation of those nations under communist domination.

Kennedy’s commitment to this idea came early in the Address. In the most controversial line of the Inaugural Address, he made a forceful pronouncement. The repetition of a word “any” offered a general pledge to defending democracy and liberty, wherever it may be threatened. The suggestions of an utterance were far-reaching. Kennedy, naturally, did not initiate the cold war, nor did he evolve the opposition towards communism, which fueled the escalation. Yet whilst prior presidents had responded to apparent communist hazards with economic programs or defensive military postures, Kennedy appeared to be offering something else: an all-out campaign to promote the notions of liberty and democracy around the globe. Kennedy’s swear to “bear any burden,” it appeared, was no empty swear; it opened the door for a huge variety of never-ending global commitments. The promise to guarantee liberty’s survival was unclear, encompassing a huge range of probable replies to the actions, which threatened human liberty around the world. The President’s promise to defend, assist, and support countries fighting to be free appeared unrestricted and permanent - a brave leaving the cautious policies of the past. Kennedy’s promise to protect freedom also likely inspired him to initiate the American involvement in the war in Vietnam. Therefore, he initiated one of the longest, costliest, and eventually unsuccessful wars in US history, and the legacy of that failed US intervention still haunts people nowadays.

Conclusion

Kennedy’s speech was very inspiring and forceful. However, there exists a darker side to the heritage of Kennedy’s Address. The words to “pay any price, bear any burden” in the maintenance of freedom made the groundwork for numerous foreign policy dramas in the 1960s. The globe and the USA’s role are different today.  Vietnam ended the unbeatable period. Watergate slammed self-assurance in the reliability of elected politicians. Double-digit inflation hurt trust in technocratic competence of administration and evolved an environment for the movement, which saw administration not as a means for resolving troubles but rather a corrupting cancer in an organism of free capitalism, which must be downsized, in particular at the national level, to its smallest and least influential degree.  Not everyone shares the conservative philosophy, but it has dominated national politics for the past 30 years and carried on to obtain increasing favor. While the US citizenry has been engaged in an increasing national cold war over its cultural dissimilarities, other energy has been spent on containing global terrorism in armed conflicts that have no finale. The economy has become extremely excessive, and infrastructure has been neglected in favor of other priorities. General performance has been unusually weak in this century and the people fear that even if terrorism is checked, the torch is again being passed on, this time not to a younger generation but to other countries with quickly rising economies and holdings of financial prosperity. John F. Kennedy spoke in the time period without budget limitation when man could be sent to the moon and back in a few years when such a mission was defined.  Priorities were driven by desire, not cost. That globe is today gone. So, not all ideological perspectives reflected in Kennedy's Inaugural Address should be totally embraced.