Today, leaders of the United States and China must take a similar approach-as both sides seemed to acknowledge at the recent “virtual” summit. Kennedy’s approach back then helped save the peace, even during some of the darkest moments of the Cold War.

I believe we should make more use of diplomatic channels for quite informal discussion of these questions, not in the sense of negotiations …, but rather as a mechanism of communication which should, insofar as is possible, help to eliminate misunderstanding and unnecessary divergencies, however great the basic differences may be.

However, I believe that while recognizing that we do not and, in all probability will not, share a common view on all of these problems, I do believe that the manner in which we approach them and, in particular, the manner in which our disagreements are handled, can be of great importance…. I think we should recognize, in honesty to each other, that there are problems on which we may not be able to agree. While deploring the overall state of affairs in relations between the two countries, the new president argued that “if we could find a measure of cooperation on some of these current issues this, in itself, would be a significant contribution to the problem of insuring a peaceful and orderly world.” Kennedy went on to explain how the two leaders could achieve such cooperation: Kennedy wrote a personal letter to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In February 1961, at the outset of his presidency, John F.

Odd arne westad the global cold war