addresses to the American people, Kennedy
exhorted America to live up to its ideals. But this
exhortation to play a world role had its dangers.
In his televised debate with Nixon, Kennedy
declaimed, ‘In the election of 1860, Abraham
Lincoln said the question was whether this nation
could exist half slave or half free. In the election
of 1960... the question is whether the world will
exist half slave or half free’, rhetoric that raised
American expectations to such a pitch and so
over-emphasised US power that withdrawal or
defeat anywhere in the world ceased to be accept-
able. The US presidency thus became the victim
of its own projection of America invincible, of
America the righter of moral wrongs anywhere in
the world (provided they were perpetrated by
communists). If Americans could reach the
moon, they would surely be able to defeat a
second-class, Third World country. The prospec-
tive disillusionment of the American people
should it turn out that they had been misled, and
that defeat in war had to be accepted, haunted
successive presidents. Indeed, the gap between
expectation and reality was to shatter the next
three presidents: Johnson over Vietnam, Nixon
over Watergate and Carter over the American
hostages in Iran.
In October 1963 Kennedy was optimistically
planning to begin withdrawing the 16,000
Americans from Vietnam, but he would not have
allowed a communist victory either. While bril-
liant men and their theories pushed him forward,
his own steadier judgement held him back. He
was inclined to ambivalence, first going along
with the advice of experts, but then cautiously
scaling their recommendations down. The appli-
cation of this ambivalence to his dealings with
Cuba led to a humiliating defeat, an early per-
sonal disaster puncturing his electoral rhetoric.
The Eisenhower administration had bequeathed
the ‘unfinished business’ of Cuba to the incom-
ing president and his advisers. Not only had
Castro nationalised American businesses and
taken over the US oil refineries but his country’s
links with the Soviet Union were becoming
closer. By 1962 he had turned Cuba into a one-
party communist state. But, even as he accepted
Soviet help, Castro was at heart a Latin American
nationalist, unwilling simply to become a Russian
pawn in the Cold War.
The problem Kennedy faced was whether to
tolerate the continued presence of Castro or to
follow through plans initiated by Eisenhower
to use Cuban exiles trained in Guatemala for an
invasion of the island to overthrow its leader.
Kennedy was urged by some advisers to go ahead
with the invasion and to provide it with air
support. He was told that many Cubans on the
island were only waiting to be rallied against
Castro. Others, including the sagacious Senator
Fulbright, warned the president against foreign
adventures. Kennedy struck a hopeless middle
course, permitting the invasion of Cuba to pro-
ceed while trying to disguise American involve-
ment. He accordingly limited the air support to
exiled pilots flying American-procured planes and
refused to sanction any direct US participation in
the air or on land.
The Bay of Pigs landing, launched on 17 April
1961 by the Cuban exiles, became for the admin-
istration and for the president personally, a humil-
iating fiasco. At least Kennedy kept his head when
on 18 and 19 April 1961 the exiles were pinned
down by Castro’s troops on the beach. By then
it was becoming clear that the invasion was failing
and that only US intervention could retrieve it.
Khrushchev, to rub salt into the wound, declared
that the Soviet Union would defend Cuba, but
Kennedy did not raise the ante further. The
Cuban exiles were left to their fate; more than a
thousand survivors were rounded up and impris-
oned by Castro.
Kennedy did not try to evade personal respon-
sibility. He tried all the harder now to retrieve
America’s good name by pushing ahead with the
Alliance for Progress, which he had already pro-
claimed in March 1961. This represented the
positive side of US policy, an effort to transform
Latin America, to solve its serious social and polit-
ical problems, eradicating destitution over the
next decade and so heading off communist revo-
lutions. Covert action against Cuba meanwhile
took dark and bizarre forms, with the Central
Intelligence Agency hatching various plots to
assassinate Castro by such ingenious devices as a