An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek
Kennedy signaled his determination to keep his military guard up in an October 20 letter to General Norstad. The president authorized a continuation of the contingency planning and buildup in NATO military strength. But he also wanted to be sure that in a new Berlin crisis his wishes for a controlled escalation would be clear to U.S. commanders and would be closely followed. He told the general that military moves would only come after diplomacy had failed; current planning was only meant to assure against any “half-cocked” action. Nor would he take the country into a nuclear war until he had exhausted every diplomatic and more traditional military step in defense of the United States and Western Europe.
Yet Kennedy’s cautious approach was tempered by both international and domestic constraints that dictated he exert continuing pressure on Moscow to stand down more definitively. Consequently, on October 21, Kennedy had Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric publicly describe U.S. nuclear superiority to the Soviet Union. Despite concerns that the speech might propel the Soviets into greater efforts to achieve missile parity, Kennedy believed it would reduce the risk of war over Berlin and fears in the West that he still lacked the toughness to deter communist aggression. According to Gilpatric, the speech, given before a business council meeting in Hot Springs, Virginia, aimed to convince Moscow of America’s readiness to meet any threat to Berlin and to persuade America’s allies that increasing conventional forces did not preclude fighting a nuclear war. Rather, conventional forces were a form of insurance against a hasty, and possibly unnecessary, escalation to the ultimate weapons.
The Soviets responded to Gilpatric’s speech with mixed signals. Two days later, on October 23, the Soviets detonated a thirty-megaton nuclear bomb; Soviet Defense minister Rodion Malinovsky, speaking to the Twenty-second Communist Party Congress, declared his country unintimidated by Gilpatric’s threatening words; and Russian officers provoked a temporary confrontation between Soviet and American tanks at a checkpoint between East and West Berlin. On November 9, Khrushchev followed these actions with another long letter to Kennedy about Soviet-American differences over Germany. He returned to his complaints about the emergence of West German militarism and insisted on the continuation of two German states. “Any other approach would inevitably lead us to collision, to war.” He also complained about the dearth of fresh proposals on Berlin and warned of the “extremely sad” consequences for both the United States and the Soviet Union that could flow from “unreasonable decisions.”
At the same time, however, the Soviets struck several conciliatory notes. Little was said at the annual party congress about Berlin, Khrushchev told reporters on November 7 that “for the time being, it was not good for Russia and the United States to push each other”; urged the West German ambassador to believe that rapprochement between their two countries was his highest priority; and, in his latest letter to Kennedy, emphasized Soviet devotion to “the principles of peaceful co-existence” and his belief that reconciliation between them was not only possible but essential.
All this back and forth left official Washington uncertain and on edge. Bundy called it “a time of sustained and draining anxiety.” In a circular cable to all diplomatic posts in November, Rusk interpreted the Soviet party Congress as signaling an avoidance of a “serious risk of nuclear war” balanced by vigorous Soviet action to establish communist regimes in developing nations. Rusk thought it evident that the Soviets were as determined as ever to win the Cold War. “Unity, preparedness, and firmness of purpose” remained essential in blunting threats to Germany and Berlin.
In a conversation at the end of the month with Aleksei Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law and Izvestia editor, Kennedy, speaking on the record, echoed Rusk’s concerns. He bluntly told Adzhubei that international difficulties were the result of Soviet efforts “to communize, in a sense, the entire world. . . . It is this effort to push outward the communist system, on to country after country, that represents, I think, the great threat to peace.” In a private conversation with Adlai Stevenson, who had objected to the American resumption of nuclear tests, Kennedy said, “What choice did we have? They had spit in our eye three times. We couldn’t possibly sit back and do nothing at all. . . . All this makes Khrushchev look pretty tough. He has had a succession of apparent victories—space, Cuba, the Wall. He wants to give out the feeling that he has us on the run.”
But by November 1961, Kennedy could take satisfaction from the fact that his successful handling of the Berlin problem had forced Khrushchev to retreat. Kennedy’s measured, firm response to Khrushchev’s threats had preserved West Berlin from communist control. True, Moscow had brought an end to the talent drain from East to West by erecting the wall, but the barrier dividing Berlin became an instant potent symbol of East European discontent with communism. Of course, Kennedy took no pleasure in the continuing plight of the millions of Europeans trapped behind the Iron Curtain, no matter the propaganda advantage. But Khrushchev’s backtrack restored Kennedy’s faith in his foreign policy leadership, and Berlin could now be considered his first presidential victory in the Cold War.
DESPITE HIS SUCCESS, Kennedy had no illusion that reduced tensions over Germany promised a grand rapprochement in East-West relations or an easing of the Soviet-American contest for global influence. Russia might not force America out of Berlin or into the permanent partition of Germany, but if it established communist governments across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, it would leave the United States and its allies surrounded by hostile regimes. Any sign of weakness or hesitation to answer the communist threat in these regions would encourage Soviet hopes that America lacked the resolve to stand up for itself and its allies in new direct challenges to the United States.
Kennedy had hoped that the Alliance for Progress could help meet the communist threat in Latin America. But domestic and foreign constraints quickly demonstrated that the Alliance was no immediate or possibly even long-term answer to hemisphere problems. Kennedy began by setting a ten-year time frame for the plan and asking Adolf A. Berle, an assistant secretary of state under FDR, to head a Latin American task force. In June, however, Schlesinger told the president that the State Department’s Latin American experts “keenly resent the intervention of ‘outsiders’” and were “predominantly out of sympathy with the Alianza.” These men formed “a sullen knot of resistance to fresh approaches.” The administration would need to break their grip on policy if there were to be anything resembling “a new look in Latin America.”
Resistance to reform in Latin America itself was an even greater obstacle. Kennedy’s idealistic rhetoric about transforming the region had not persuaded entrenched interests across the hemisphere. “The governments of most Latin American countries have not yet grasped what this program calls for in the way of economic and social change, nor do the economically privileged groups understand the sacrifices which will be required of them,” Ambassador Thomas Mann in Mexico told Rusk in October. “The obstacles to change vary from country to country but they are all deep-seated and each will be extremely difficult to remove.” Bowles agreed. He doubted that the administration had considered how much a successful Alliance required revolutionary change. “What we are asking is that the philosophy of Jefferson and the social reforms of F.D.R. be telescoped into a few years in Latin America. And these steps will have to be taken against the wills of the rich and influential Latin Americans and the people in power. . . . The reforms we want them to make appear very radical to them. We take progressive income tax for granted, but this is shockingly radical to those countries.”
If cautious firmness was the formula for dealing with Khrushchev in Europe, where a major miscalculation could provoke the ultimate conflict, Kennedy embraced largely covert but determined anticommunist efforts in Latin America. However undemocratic such actions might have been, Kennedy believed that he had no choice but to make sure that American surrogates got what they needed to combat Moscow-supported threats.
To facilitate counterinsurgency
Bowles’s conflicts with the administration’s hard-liners had registered most clearly over Cuba and the Dominican Republic. By July, this infighting had joined with his failings as an administrator to convince Kennedy to shift him from the State Department to an embassy. But Bowles refused to accept a posting to Brazil, and when press accounts appeared about the president’s decision to oust him, Kennedy, concerned about alienating liberals, felt compelled to back away—but not for long. In the fall, Bowles and the Kennedys clashed over the value of counterinsurgency forces fighting Third World communism. Bobby, “a true believer in counterinsurgency,” which he called “social reform under pressure,” envisioned special forces training guerrilla fighters to combat communist subversion and helping the downtrodden build hospitals, roads, and schools. Bobby and the president also wanted to train Third World police forces to counter clandestine infiltration and communist-inspired mob violence. In September, Kennedy issued a National Security Action Memo (NSAM) instructing McNamara to establish police academies to train the Latin American military in these techniques. When Bowles wisely opposed this as a poor substitute for aid programs that directly met the needs of peasants in rural poverty, it convinced the president and Bobby that Bowles had to go. In November, during Thanksgiving weekend, Kennedy announced a reorganization of the State Department that made Bowles a roving ambassador and replaced him with George Ball, another Stevensonian in whom Kennedy had more confidence.
Pushing Bowles aside was part of Kennedy’s renewed determination to do something about Cuba. For six months after the Bay of Pigs failure, the administration had reached no decision on how to deal with Castro. Kennedy had approved the creation of a Special Group to discuss counterinsurgency in Cuba, but it provided no effective plan. “The Cuba matter is being allowed to slide,” Bobby noted in a memo on June 1. “Mostly because nobody really has the answer to Castro. Not many are really prepared to send American troops in there at the present time but maybe that is the answer. Only time will tell.” In July, discussions of CIA support for an underground movement foundered on the realization that no group in Cuba had sufficient political appeal to overturn Castro. Would the United States have to invade Cuba to get rid of him? JFK asked Admiral Burke at the end of the month. Burke believed that although “all hell would break loose . . . some day we would have to do it.” In September, Kennedy told Dick Goodwin that he wanted “‘to play it very quiet’ with Castro because he did not want to give Castro the opportunity to blame the United States for his troubles.” Publicly ignoring Castro and avoiding even indirect action that could encourage comparisons to David and Goliath seemed like the best temporary policy.
During the summer, at a conference in Montevideo, Che Guevara, Castro’s close associate, who was representing Cuba, spoke with Goodwin. “Che was wearing green fatigues, and his usual overgrown and scraggly beard,” Goodwin told the president. “Behind the beard his features are quite soft, almost feminine, and his manner is intense. He has a good sense of humor, and there was considerable joking back and forth during the meeting.” Che “wanted to thank us very much for the invasion—that it had been a great political victory for them—enabled them to consolidate—and transformed them from an aggrieved little country to an equal.” Goodwin said, “You’re welcome. Now maybe you’ll invade Guantanamo.” “Never,” Che responded with a laugh. He also suggested the possibility of talks looking toward a rapprochement. But fearful that it would be seen as a victory for Castro and would stir sharp political protest in the United States, Kennedy expressed no interest in the idea.
By October, with the Berlin crisis winding down and the growing conviction that the Soviet-American struggle would shift to the Third World, Kennedy exhibited renewed concern about removing Castro “in some way or other . . . from the Cuban scene.” Although this was not “a crash program . . . it should proceed with reasonable speed,” Bundy told State Department officials charged with the assignment. On November 3, after Goodwin urged Kennedy to make Bobby the commander of an anti-Castro operation, the president authorized Operation Mongoose, “the development of a new program designed to undermine the Castro government.” As Bobby, whom Kennedy directed to run the operation, noted, “My idea is to stir things up on the island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder, run & operated by Cubans themselves with every group but Batistaites & Communists. Do not know if we will be successful in overthrowing Castro but we have nothing to lose in my estimate.” At a November 21 meeting attended by Kennedy, Bobby, General Edward Lansdale (whom Bobby had made chief of operations), and Goodwin, Bobby, speaking for the president, “expressed grave concern over Cuba, [and] the necessity for immediate dynamic action,” including “a variety of covert operations, propaganda” discrediting Castro, and “political action” supported by the OAS.
The CIA had been plotting Castro’s assassination during the closing months of Eisenhower’s administration, so it was not unprepared for this not-so-new assignment. Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee investigating alleged assassination plots in 1975 turned up eight schemes to kill Castro hatched between 1960 and 1965, including a contract with mobsters eager to reestablish lost business interests in Cuba. Kennedy himself discussed assassinating Castro. In March 1961, he had asked George Smathers whether “people would be gratified” if Castro were killed. In 1988, Smathers recalled Kennedy telling him that the CIA had encouraged him to believe that Castro would be “knocked off” at the start of the Bay of Pigs attack. There are additional indications that the president and Bobby talked in the fall of 1961 about killing the Cuban leader. Bobby Kennedy’s biographer Evan Thomas pointed out that “on the very same day that the Attorney General—for the first time in four months—asked about a case that risked exposing CIA plotting against Castro, the administration requested a study on the likely effect of removing Castro—and further ordered that the President’s interest in this subject be kept quiet. . . . There can be little doubt,” Thomas concluded, “that they discussed assassination as at least an option, however sordid.” “We were hysterical about Castro at the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” McNamara said later. In a conversation on November 9 with New York Times reporter Tad Szulc, Kennedy asked, “What would you think if I ordered Castro to be assassinated?” When Szulc denounced it as immoral and impractical, Kennedy entirely agreed with him. Szulc also recalled the president saying that he had raised the question because “he was u
Bobby was not advancing an assassination plot against his brother’s wishes. No secrets on foreign policy existed between them. Assassination was undoubtedly a topic of discussion and something the emotional, messianic Bobby may have seen as a necessary evil. But his more dispassionate brother seems to have resisted the suggestion, not necessarily as immoral, but as impractical and counterproductive. Kennedy realized that Castro’s death seemed likely to strengthen rather than eliminate communist control in Cuba, where the leader’s brother Raul and Che Guevara could convert his death into an emotional plea vindicating his life and beliefs. Poor planning at the Bay of Pigs had ended in disaster. By contrast, careful, modulated responses to Khrushchev’s pressure over Germany and Berlin had produced at least a temporary stand-down. The two episodes had strengthened Kennedy’s instinctual caution about any response to international dangers that could lead to war. Although the CIA continued to see assassination as a possible response to pressure to remove Castro, there is no evidence that the White House, perhaps after briefly entertaining it, saw it as anything more than a bad idea. Nevertheless, as with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy was the accountable party for his administration’s actions. Hidden acts of aggression against Third World countries by overzealous agencies were the president’s responsibility.
Kennedy’s caution in the fall regarding the advancement of American interests in the hemisphere also revealed itself in his dealings with British Guiana. There can be no question that he saw a communist takeover in the British colony as impermissible. Like Castro, Cheddi Jagan claimed to be an anticommunist social democrat, but the experience with Castro had made Washington wary. British reassurances that Jagan could be kept in the Anglo-American camp gave Kennedy only minor reason to hope that Guiana would not turn into another Cuba. In addition to his own worries about a second communist enclave in the hemisphere, which would jeopardize U.S. security and deal his administration another serious blow, he was under pressure from Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, who was denouncing Jagan as a communist agent.