Distinguished Speakers Series: "From Churchill to Kennedy: Leadership, the Special Relationship, and the Path to Peace" with Joel Nelson

The San Diego World Affairs Council Presents

The Distinguished Speakers Series

About the Program:

Featuring Joel Nelson, author of Kennedy’s Only Hero: How JFK’s Obsession with Winston Churchill Defined His Presidency

What shapes a president’s understanding of America’s place in the world? And what can we learn from two of the twentieth century’s greatest leaders and foreign policy thinkers?

Long before John F. Kennedy entered the White House, he came under Winston Churchill’s influence. From Churchill, Kennedy learned an approach to foreign policy that privileged military strength and negotiation, and which the Englishman used in the 1930s and 1940s, and which the American used in the 1950s and 1960s. This combination of arms and diplomacy—which Churchill described as “Peace Through Strength”—was a hallmark of both men’s leadership as they sought to deter Soviet aggression. As the world is confronted once more by dictators armed with nuclear weapons and bent upon territorial expansion, the strategy outlined by Kennedy and Churchill remains relevant and vitally important.

In this San Diego World Affairs Council conversation, British historian and author Joel Nelson explores the remarkable relationship at the heart of his new book, Kennedy’s Only Hero, and what it reveals about the intellectual development of America’s thirty-fifth president.

The discussion will move beyond biography to examine the larger geopolitical story: the Anglo-American “special relationship,” Kennedy’s evolution from youthful isolationist to committed internationalist, the importance of alliances and personal diplomacy, and the strategy that both men adopted to avoid World War III.

The conversation will also consider a question which Churchill and Kennedy both struggled to answer, and which remains strikingly relevant today: How can the West peacefully resolve its differences with hostile nuclear powers?

About Joel Nelson 

Joel Nelson is a British writer and historian. He has worked as an advisor to the Secretary of State for International Development, an editor at Foreign Affairs, and a Director of European Policy at an AI think-tank in Washington, D.C. He has a first-class honours degree in History from the University of Oxford, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and he was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard. Kennedy’s Only Hero is his first book, and he will be touring the United States and Canada to promote it, with confirmed stops at venues including the Jimmy Carter Library, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Richard Nixon Library, and the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.

The San Diego World Affairs Council does not endorse any specific political ideology or viewpoint. As a nonpartisan organization, we are committed to presenting a wide range of perspectives to promote informed, respectful dialogue on complex global issues. The opinions expressed by speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Council, its board, or its partners.