So in this particular segment of the lecture on Cold War in the 50's and
heights
of the Cold War, we're really building up and I think
to this point I sort of laid the groundwork but
in this segment I'm going to look particularly at the Kennedy Administration
leading up, those years leading up to
Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And I'm going to start with the election of 1960.
In this election and you'll hear about it in
in another more domestic oriented lecture
lecture as well in 1960 John F. Kennedy faced off against
Eisenhower's vice president Richard Nixon, and remember Nixon had been a long
time
anti-Communist, very strident in his views
and in his public pronouncements on Communism.
Eisenhower had not been overly supportive
of Nixon. As I said before they didn't get along
very well, but it's intriguing that Kennedy
in running for office and then early I think particularly in his
presidency had emphasized that like Eisenhower in '52
as president Kennedy had said
I will not merely allow the sort of Eisenhower stalemate to last,
I'll not allow containment to go on but in fact
will seek to push back against the spread of Communism.
I'm gonna be a more activist and thus a stronger
anti-Communist than my opponent Richard Nixon might be.
That's kinda of a hard case to make but it's a case Kennedy felt
he needed to make in 1960. In his inaugural address
Kennedy expressed it this way quote
"let every nation know that we shall pay any price,
bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe
to assure the survival and the success
of liberty." Well that's a pretty big statement I mean that's big talk.
If you're fighting on the side of liberty the United States is gonna
support you.
And I hope you gleaned from the earlier lecture
that in fact there's a lot greater
complication to the global geopolitical situation in the 1950's
then just we're gonna support you. It had been
you know an issue with Korea with Berlin in '48
and even with the Suez Crisis in 1956.
You might also throw in there the Hungarians, are we going to help the
Hungarians?
What does this actually mean? And I think that's where presidential rhetoric often
runs into trouble
right? It sounds good, wins you the election but when it comes to what are you really
gonna do
you really have to face up to the consequences. Well
Kennedy had promised to end the missile gap
he played as did Khruschev earlier on
American fear and paranoia that the US was falling behind
technologically. In fact, Eisenhower well
knew where the United States stood in terms of its technological
advantage over the Soviet Union. One thing about
Eisenhower he was a cool customer and
he often came across in public and with the media as being a bit bumbling.
He's kinda like me I suppose you know can't string words together quite correctly.
But Eisenhower was very gifted
it turns out, in offering
answers to questions that were lengthy and often quite confusing.
I mean he did this on purpose to confuse the media and
for a for a military man that makes a heckuva lot a sense sometimes right?
Confuse your your opposition, confuse your enemy
let him think that you are weaker than you actually are
that's perfectly fine so long as you win in the end.
I think Eisenhower as president was extraordinarily wily in that regard.
But for the relatively young, and relatively inexperienced John F Kennedy
that... using that lack of clarity that business of plausible deniability
is not something that
you know immediately is a tool at his disposal.
So he's gonna try to follow a far more flexible policy,
and also build a force, a US military force that is
more capable of fighting a nuclear war, that's more efficient,
right, ending the missile gap but also he's gonna try to build up US military
forces that will be more effective
than Eisenhower's military forces had been
or the Eisenhower era's forces had been in the third
world. The 1961 military budget under John F Kennedy shot
up by 15 percent.
So Kennedy's willing to spend money.
He's also gonna propose some innovative proposals.
Among them will be a proposal for the creation of the so-called Peace Corps,
especially in Latin America,
offering skills using volunteers to build relationships not only in Latin America
but around the world in
Africa as well and helping to deliver US
aid to third world countries. In other words, Kennedy I think very much realizes
that this is a public relations fight and the Peace Corps
with using particularly young students and using them abroad is one way
to help build that image of the US
in the world.
As to why Kennedy chooses this route,
this route of kinda big talk though,
even though he's proposing the Peace Corps on one side while he's proposing
bigger better missiles on the other.
Some historians have looked for psychological causes and even
gone back to this kind of Kennedy family tendency
to want to succeed, to win this competitive
sensibility that they seem to have even to the extent of playing touch football
you know, while at the seaside.
Very competitive Robert Kennedy John Kennedy's brother was always very
competitive.
And yet, in his first outing I think we have to acknowledge that
John F Kennedy experienced a dismal
failure.
I'm talking of course about the Bay of Pigs.
An event that occurs in 1961.
An event which Kennedy doesn't have
to allow to happen,
but which will affect his presidency in huge ways.
Let me give you some background really quickly, OK?
In 1959 Fidel Castro,
Fidel Castro will lead Cuban revolutionaries
and here we can go all the way back to that era of imperialism right?
War with Spain 1898, Platt Amendment, Teller Amendment,
the United States really maintaining sort of control over what happens in
Cuba.
1959 Fidel Castro leads
a revolution. The 26th of July Movement
to a victory against the US supported government,
the so-called the Batista government, in Cuba. Now this Batista government was
extraordinarily corrupt in many ways. Cuba had become a place
for gambling,
liquor,
just a good bit of corruption. It was controlled by an elite
and it was a place of considerable poverty
for the non-elite.
Yet the United States,
because of its foreign policy under Roosevelt and then within the Cold War,
looks at any potential allies as a friend.
It's less important perhaps what the ethics of that person may be than the fact
that
they'll stick with you against the Soviet Union.
Well Castro's not necessarily interested in that.
He's not interested in US interests he's interested in changing the
economic, breaking the economic power of the elite in cuba.
Just to give you some idea how powerful American business was
in Cuba, US
companies and private interests control approximately
3 million acres in Cuba,
forty percent sugar production in Cuba, and ninety percent of telegraph
telephone and electric lines,
these utilities. Castro
proceeded, following the revolution, to nationalize this property,
to place it under the control of the national government which is is
tantamount to
to socialism of course, and then suspended promised
elections, and then
in 1960 and I kind of look like Castro doing a speech at that point
but then in 1960 would actually
sign a trade treaty with the USSR.
In mid-1960 as a result Eisenhower reduced,
remember this is happening in the Eisenhower administration Eisenhower
reduced the amount of sugar that we purchased from Cuba
for the United States. And Castro responded by seizing
more US-owned properties and companies.
So we have a sort of tit-for-tat. It doesn't have to all go
wrong immediately but it ends up doing that, and that's part of that cold war theme of
potential followed by failure.
Ineffectual diplomatic solutions or other issues
as tensions grow. So we see that happening '59, '60.
And then Eisenhower has developed plans
basically to invade Cuba. You don't know is Eisenhower gonna carry them out is
eisenhower not
you never fully know, but regardless,
those plans are in the works by the time in
1960 John F Kennedy is elected to the presidency.
Kennedy determines
to go with the plans that Eisenhower had
OK'd. These are plans for the CIA to train and equip
native Cubans who are living in exile
of the Castro government.
To train and equip them to go back to Cuba and lead
an invasion of the island nation that will then lead to
an uprising of the population against the Castro
regime. Cuban exiles
would land at a place called the Bay of Pigs
and secure a beach head. Once news spread that they were there the Cuban
people would rise up.
A revolutionary council would be formed and then,
only then, US troops would actually enter
Havana triumphantly as
basically peacekeepers assuring the success of the counterrevolution
against Castro and his government. What happened in reality
was that on April 7th 1961
the attack began but the people of Cuba
did not rise up, either out of fear or out of
sort of apathy. Within two days,
without American air support to protect the beaches
the Cuban beachhead, or the revolutionary beachhead
at the Bay of Pigs was overcome.
And those who weren't killed among the expatriates who were part of this
invasion
were taken captive and they would spend time in really awful Cuban prisons.
It was a huge, huge defeat for this new
young president who had made such claims
about what he would accomplish as president.
After the Bay of Pigs, the CIA, here we go with the sort of
special ops, and you know
through intelligence efforts,
the CIA would work to undermine Fidel Castro,
to disrupt the Cuban economy and even at times to assassinate
Fidel Castro. But the implications don't stop merely with what happens in Cuba or
with
US national opinion because now with the Bay of Pigs disaster
John F Kennedy faces an actual meeting, a first meeting.
with Nikita Khruschev of the Soviet Union.
Possibly John F Kennedy shoulda said no to this one
but he doesn't. The two men
in 1961, Khruschev again calling for negotiations
over Berlin, a solution to the problem of
Berlin and Germany,
will actually
bring Kennedy to Vienna Austria.
And understand that in response to Khruschev talking about
Berlin, John F Kennedy has gone to Congress and Congress has actually
given Kennedy approximately 3.2 billion more dollars in defense spending,
an additional amount of defense spending that's the American response remember
Kennedy's kind of acting tough here.
But by the time you get to Vienna, by the time you get to the actual meeting,
you've already had the Bay of Pigs and the opinion of the Soviets and
actually of many nations around the world or national leaders
is wait just a minute here, this young brash
big talkin fellow that's now president
he may not be all that he may be rather a hollow leader.
Certainly Khruschev had that opinion
of Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs.
They meet in Vienna, and when they do John F kennedy who constantly suffered
from
painful physical handicaps,
you know primarily related to his back and
in really in some ways wartime injuries that he had
incurred,
John F Kennedy is in severe pain and quite likely
was taking large quantities of pain medication.
He ended up basically being lectured
by Nikita Khruschev. You think about Nikita Khrushchev kinda waving his
finger at the young president's face and telling him how it's gonna be.
He already thought he was weak and not it's proven to be true.
From the Bay of Pigs and the
Vienna meetings John F Kennedy comes out looking
like a disaster.
Khruschev believes he can dominate the young president.
And in the end, it's the Soviets who decide on a solution for Berlin
and the so-called brain drain.
In August 1961, East German authorities
just kinda overnight will actually build the Berlin Wall,
which separates East from West Berlin
and will continue to do so until the Wall falls in the late 1980's.
So from 1961 to 1989,
the Berlin Wall becomes a symbol of the Iron Curtain, a symbol of the Cold War
and the division that exists between the superpowers.
Kennedy, well his response not necessarily in public was,
that the wall was better than war.
In 1963 he will go at a sort of much stronger point in his presidency he will
go
and actually speak before the Wall, in front of the Wall in Berlin
and he will enunciate those amazing words
"Ich bin ein Berliner" I am a Berliner,
like you. We're all in this Cold War.
Here's the front line. It's the Wall that separates East from West Berlin,
separates East from West in terms of the world.
But in 1961 and '62 remember,
Kennedy was being viewed as a rather weak foreign policy president.
That's going to affect what happens
in the early 1960's in regard to
the big events of the Cold War for the United States.
We'll pick up there in the next segment.