Kennedy, Sékou Touré, and the Success of Personal Diplomacy

Chapter three focuses on Kennedy’s relationship with Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea. Kennedy’s relationship with Touré was his first, and arguably most successful, attempt at using personal diplomacy with an African head of state. Touré was thought to have been solidly within the Soviet orbit during the Eisenhower years and, hence, was written off by that administration as a communist. Yet through personal diplomacy and persisting in the belief that Touré was not a “lost cause,” Kennedy was able to shift the Guinean to a slightly pro-Western orientation.

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