A common link between each of the deaths has been the fact that in a climate of war, all three sought peace.
The Trump Presidency has become a textbook lesson in disruption of the norms that had been prevailing until his term began, norms that he as well as several tens of millions of US citizens believed had long past their expiry date. A flurry of Executive Orders were issued immediately after he became President, most of which clearly prepared well in advance of his swearing in on January 20. Ultimately, it will be the US Supreme Court that decides whether the impugned orders are valid or not, and it may be mentioned that the Chief Justice has often been on the losing side in a Court where conservative Justices outnumber liberal Justices #:1. What Trump can do without much concern about a judicial challenge is to use his powers to declassify several documents that have over decades been kept from the public view. Among the most consequential has been the release of hitherto secret files relating to the J.F. Kennedy, R.F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations. A common link between each of the deaths has been the fact that in a climate of war, all three sought peace. Indeed, JFK believed that it was possible for the Soviet Union (since 1991 the Russian Federation) and the US to cease each other’s Cold War 1.0 posturing and hostile activity against the other, both overt and covert. The secret autobiography of Nikita Khrushchev, for long the all-powerful General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) as well as his secret speech to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party indicate that he was in several ways not a Cold War 1 enthusiast. Indeed, both his as well as his successor, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. Chairman Mao and the CPSU General Secretary at the time fought against the influence and interests of the USSR and China respectively, much more viciously than their efforts against the US save in rare cases such as in the Vietnam civil war between communists in North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh and the dictators of South Vietnam. President John F. Kennedy opposed sending US forces to South Vietnam, for he recognized that only local support and troops could win the civil war, no matter how plentiful the flow of US weapons and armed forces to South Vietnam. Just before he was killed in 1963, Kennedy had signed an Executive Order to bring
The presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a former soldier who was proficient in using weapons, and was suspected of being a KGB agent. In other words, a Soviet agent. The CPSU knew that Kennedy was opposed to US involvement in the Vietnam War, hence it made little sense for the USSR to assassinate him, which is what the reports spread by the CIA claimed. Very convenient from a Cold War 1.0 point of view, which was precisely the “hawk” policy pursued by his successor, his own Vice-President, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Once sworn in as President, Johnson filled his Cabinet with Kennedy appointees such as Defense Secretary Robert Strange McNamara, who enthusiastically moved 180 degrees away from the policy that Kennedy (who had appointed him to his present job from the Ford Motor Company, as did other Kennedy picks). Many tens of thousands of the lives of US soldiers, as were several hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese, lost because of a war that had been lost from the time Ngo Dien Diem ruled South Vietnam. Much later, Johnson realised what Kennedy had by 1963, that unless “Vietnamese boys” were motivated to fight the North Vietnamese, and they were not, the war was lost. It was too late for his continuance in the Presidency.
RFK would have defeated Johnson in the primaries, had he survived, and gone on as President once elected by the Kennedy mystique. He too favoured the same policy as his elder brother, of pulling US forces out of Vietnam. Although Nixon had been elected on a plank promising peace in South Vietnam, he had not defined what that meant. To him, it meant continuing the policy of Johnson and killing many more US soldiers and countless more Vietnamese. Nixon invaded Cambodia, and carpet bombed North and South Vietnam with “Agent Orange”, which led to massive fires. Later, he was forced to resign, a humiliation where an immense contribution was made by his war policy in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. As for Martin Luther King, he was assassinated because as many whites as blacks flocked to hear his speeches. He had been a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi and was in favour of peaceful protest the way the Mahatma had been. But his growing appeal among whites led to fear that he would succeed in getting civil rights legislation passed and he was shot allegedly by James Earl Ray, something disputed later by members of the King family, who believed that the lone shooter conclusion was meant to cover up the involvement of the FBI and the Memphis police. Another peace warrior paid with his life for such a view. The worry is that the same danger exists for President Trump, because of his view that only through backing the Russians would there be peace in Ukraine at the expense of Cold War 1.0 relics in the era of Cold War 2.0 between China and the US such as Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The present President of Ukraine knows that an end to the conflict with Russia would cost him his job, which is why several in the Trump administration have been saying that Zelenskyy may need to go for there to be peace in Ukraine. In contrast to Trump, several of the leaders of Europe are still in the age of Cold War 1.0. Ironically, only a policy based on strong alliances, including the US and India, giving mutual security cover to each other such as with a Quad Plus, would be able to deter China under Xi Jinping from going to war to get Taiwan, a shift which would be catastrophic for the security of the Indo-Pacific in the ongoing contest with China. Judging by the fates of JFK, RFK and Reverend King, it would appear that backing a policy of peace as opposed to war was injurious to the health of the individual so inclined.