LIES AND FOREIGN POLICY: AN OLD STORY

 

This is an old story. As Professor John Mearsheimer has pointed out, governments, often democracies, lie to convince their citizens that war is justified. As many have pointed out, lies have been perpetrated on all sides about the Ukraine war.

Part of the job of peace activists is to interrogate all the narratives, seek truth, and stand up for basic principles: no war, no interventions overt and covert, and justice for all people.

And it is a testament to the potential wisdom of people that governments feel they must lie to achieve their goals.

**********************************************

Foreign Policy Lies Lead to War

July 25, 2003

By Harry Targ

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed motor boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of North Vietnam. The administration of Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an unprovoked act of North Vietnamese aggression.

Two days later it was announced that another attack on U.S. ships in international waters had occurred and the U.S. responded with air attacks on North Vietnamese targets. President Johnson then took a resolution he had already prepared to the Congress of the United States. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution declared that the Congress authorizes the president to do what he deemed necessary to defend U.S. national security in Southeast Asia. Only two Senators voted "no." Over the next three years the U.S. sent 500,000 troops to Vietnam to carry out a massive air and ground war in both the South and North of the country.

Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incidents, evidence began to appear indicating that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two U.S. naval vessels were in North Vietnamese coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage in the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious, evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.

President Johnson's lies to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin contributed to the devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in Vietnam that cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.

Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key aides put together a package of lies about Iraq- imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of aluminum rods which supposedly could be used for constructing nuclear weapons, development of biological and chemical weapons, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign policies built on lies can lead to imperial wars, huge expenditures on the military, economic crises at home, and military casualties abroad.

The American people must insist that their leaders tell the truth about the U.S. role in the world.

SOME FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR ALL OF US

Harry Targ

Many of us in the peace movement have had useful conversations (and debates) stimulated by the war on Ukraine. We are discussing the causes of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, both immediate and historical, and how the peace movement should respond to this important crisis.

I commend the Oliver Stone documentary to all as one detailed and informed narrative of a very complicated Ukrainian history. An important element of Stone’s narrative is the role of Ukrainian neo-fascists who were prominently active in the 2014 coup against the elected Ukraine government. These descendants of World War II neo-Nazis, Stone claims, now serve in the Ukraine army.

Also, most accounts of the Ukraine crisis today ignore the extraordinary expansion of NATO in the 1990s and the 2014 coup against the elected government of Ukraine carried out with the covert support of the United States. Including this in the accounts today adds important context, not for determining good guys and bad guys, but for figuring out what should be done and where peace forces should stand. And to be clear reflection on this context DOES NOT  DENY THE IMMORAL AND INHUMANE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE.

My takeaways so far are the following:

1.Russia has fallen into a trap that will significantly and negatively impact on its economy. It also reduces Russian influence around the world and undermines Russia’s renewed economic ties with countries in the Western Hemisphere.

2.The invasion gives fuel to the emerging anti-China Cold War rhetoric for politicians of both parties and the corporate media who suggest that Taiwan will be next, presumably after a Chinese invasion.

3.The Ukraine war is an enormous plus for military/industrial complexes in the US and in Russia as well.

4.The Ukraine story transforms the global narrative from the critical discussion of exploitation by the Global North of the Global South to the Biden narrative of “authoritarians” vs. “democracies.” For example, see the powerful presentation by V J Prashad of the essential nature of the North/South struggle. https://youtu.be/Lg9c0jv6wTA

5.The impacts of the debate on progressive forces in the US and elsewhere are potentially devastating. In the US, our discourse is shifting from a progressive agenda including President Biden’s Build Back Better program for example to stories about the relationships between Putin and former President Trump and so-called “national security.”

Biden’s State of the Union address reflects his “shift to the center.” Now we have a cause all Americans can get behind: opposing the Russians. (I am reminded  how the Soviet menace in the 1940s was used to defang CIO militancy, the drive for free health care, Henry Wallace’s call for US/Soviet dialogue and, of course, civil rights for all).

 I think the Russian invasion and the incomplete and war-oriented narrative of the Ukraine crisis dominating the news from such sources as the Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and CNN/MSNBC  constitute a real setback for us. Media news is a commodity. War and portraits of American exceptionalism are profitable commodities for the increasingly concentrated corporate media.

For these reasons and more, I endorse the Code Pink demands that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine and the United States and its allies pull back NATO forces from its presence in Eastern Europe. In addition, diplomatic efforts should ensue to replace NATO with an organization that can provide security for Europe and the Global South.  The Code Pink frame gives appropriate recognition to both  the immorality of the Russian action and the context, including NATO expansion and the events in Ukraine since 2014.

Finally, I want to reintroduce the concept of “historical memory.” These memories are important for people and they are legitimate ways to think about what needs to change. The historical memory for many Russians probably includes the 27 million of their ancestors killed during World War II largely from invading German armies crossing through Ukraine. I assume that if I were a Russian such a memory would affect how I think about the world. I know from experience how deeply the Holocaust still affects Jewish people even today.

So peace activists will continue to debate root causes of this senseless war and what to do about it. But for now as Cold Pink and others demand: Stop the War, Withdraw Russian Troops From Ukraine, Reverse the Extension of NATO.

 

MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THE UKRAINE CRISIS

Harry Targ

I cannot get out of my mind the question: What do people who are descendants of those who experienced 27 million dead from a fascist invasion through Eastern Europe of German armies think about the world today? Do they/can they regard NATO and its expansion as merely a “security” organization? These questions do not “excuse” the Russian invasion but help explain it.

And why try to explain it? Well understanding the Russian experience and consciousness is necessary to negotiate an end to war now and in the future. Therefore, NATO has to be dismantled. Resolution of disputes between the separatist regions and Ukraine need to be achieved. International organizations need to address “fascist” currents everywhere.

The first priority in my opinion is to understand why this crisis and the ensuing war occurred. I increasingly view on the US side, the expansion of NATO in the 1990s, the Clinton support of Yeltsin’s destruction of whatever existed of socialism, the US supported coup in 2014, and the continuation in office of the “humanitarian interventionists” from the Clinton era, Bill Clinton to Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Biden. These are part of the narrative that must be told and incorporated into our politics. And I/we need to know much more about the ongoing war between the separatist regions and the government of Ukraine from 2014 to the present.

RELIGION, POLITICS, AND WAR

Harry Targ 

Originally published in The Rag Blog, September 22. 2010

Childhood Remembrances 

When I was a kid I had to go to Hebrew school to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah. I confess I would have preferred being in the school yard playing baseball to studying Hebrew. One of my few remembrances from days of religious study, aside from my resentment about time away from the ball field, was reading the stories of the tribes of Israel conquering or killing political/religious enemies. Acts of violence and hate seemed to me to be sanctioned by a wrathful God, my God. 

Down the street from where we lived were St. Timothy’s Church and school. The building was an imposing broad red-brick structure. There was no contact between the children who went to school there and those of us who attended public school a few blocks away. 

Ideology and the Place of the United States in the World 

When I grew up, began to study international relations, became an activist against the war in Vietnam and started teaching foreign policy, I saw the power of ideology in mobilizing whole peoples to hate others. War, while a byproduct of economic interest, was facilitated by ideologies of hate; by creating “the other,” who were less than human and believed in the wrong God. Millions died in the Crusades, the Inquisition in Spain, the taking of the lands of the Western Hemisphere and Africa, the occupations of China, Indonesia, Indochina, and the Middle East. Most of those deaths were justified by obedience to the Christian God. 

 In 1996 I was asked to give a talk at a church on “Is United States Foreign Policy Moral or Not?” I went to Ruth Sivard’s compilation of data on wars over the centuries, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1996. I counted up the war deaths of peoples in wars in which the United States was a direct participant, such as Korea and Vietnam, or in which the United States was indirectly involved such as Guatemala, Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. The number of those who died in those wars between 1945 and 1995 in which the United States had a role totaled 10 million. 

Of course, participation in most of these wars and covert operations was justified by a mix of secular and sacred terms: democracy, markets, and God. President Reagan had reiterated the religious zealotry articulated by virtually every politician, banker, or theologian who called for US militarism. The United States was “the city on the hill,” the “beacon of hope” for the world. 

Lloyd Gardner in his recent book, The Long Road to Baghdad, A History of U.S. Foreign Policy From the 1970s to the Present, argues that there is a vision of global perfectibility behind United States foreign policy from its rise to great power status at the dawn of the twentieth century, to Woodrow Wilson’s vision of making the world safe for democracy, to Harry Truman’s announcement of our great struggle against communism in 1947, to John Kennedy’s “new frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam, to the Reagan Doctrine, and George W. Bush’s proclamation that nations are either with us or the enemy. Underlying all this is the proposition, as Bob Dylan suggested, that “God is on our side.” 

Gardner writes that “Bush equates American foreign policy here with God’s will…God is on the side of justice; America has chosen the side of justice as its goal; therefore, God will bless American policy. Obstacles to this mission were only to be expected from forces on the wrong side of history.” 

The Campaign Against Islam in the United States 

Now politicians are demanding that the constitutional right of sectors of the Islamic community in New York to build a community center be denied because they offend the sensibilities of the Christians and Jews living in the city, indeed in the entire nation. They ignore the history of their co-religionists who have misused people’s faith to justify conquest and mass slaughter. They deny the fact that the presence of their religious institutions in other lands or located throughout communities in the United States create fear and anger among those of different faiths or no faith. Perhaps most scurrilous of all is the way that the public mind is being manipulated and used for purposes of political gain at a time when joblessness, environmental devastation, and hatred spread across the land. The little boy studying the Old Testament sixty years ago was uncomfortable about aspects of his religion that he could only partially understand. 

The great American writer, Mark Twain much earlier described the irony of religious fanaticism as he reported on a massacre of Muslim rebels fighting U.S. military occupiers at the dawn of the twentieth century in the Philippines: “Contrast these things with the great statistics which have arrived from that Moro crater! There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded. . .. The enemy numbered six hundred-including women and children-and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.”

NATO: FROM FIGHTING SOCIALISM TO GLOBAL EMPIRE, FOREVER WARS CONTINUE

 Harry Targ

 Original essay on NATO posted on May 12, 2012

 (To quote a tired but true slogan, “war is not the answer.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens the lives and property of Ukraine’s, the lives of Russian soldiers and protesters, raises fears of an escalation of war throughout Europe, and raises the danger of nuclear war.

“We” need to demand “back-channel negotiations” as occurred during the Cuban missile crisis, diplomacy at the United Nations, and summit meetings of diplomats from Russia, Ukraine, and Europe. And conversations on the agenda should include forbidding Ukraine from joining NATO, establishing regional autonomy for Ukraine citizens who want it, pulling back NATO bases from Eastern European states, and/or abolishing NATO itself because the reason for its creation in the first place, defending against an attacking Soviet Union, no longer an issue.

The "we” at this moment could be a resurgent international peace movement, taking inspiration from peace activists in Russia and around the world. As horrible as this moment is, it is potentially a “teachable moment,” a moment when peace becomes part of the global progressive agenda again and people all around the world can begin to examine existing international institutions such as NATO.

The essay below about NATO remains an important part of the story. And while we react with shock and condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whatever the complicated and understandable motivations, we need to be familiar with the historic context of the very dangerous warfare that we are living through now.

As James Goldgeier wrote over twenty years ago on a Brookings Institute web page: “The dean of America’s Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.’ Kennan, the architect of America’s post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.” James Goldgeier, Brookings Institute,  “The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO: How, When, Why, and What Next?“, June 1, 1999).

ro

During World War II an “unnatural alliance” was created between the United States, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union. What brought the three countries together, the emerging imperial giant, the declining capitalist power, and the first socialist state, was the shared need to defeat fascism in Europe. Rhetorically, the high point of collaboration was reflected in the agreements made at the Yalta Conference, in February, 1945 three months before the German armies were defeated.

At Yalta, the great powers made decisions to facilitate democratization of former Nazi regimes in Eastern Europe, a “temporary” division of Germany for occupation purposes, and a schedule of future Soviet participation in the ongoing war against Japan. Leaders of the three states returned to their respective countries celebrating the “spirit of Yalta,” what would be a post-war world order in which they would work through the new United Nations system to modulate conflict in the world.

Within two years, after conflicts over Iran with the Soviet Union, the Greek Civil War, the replacement of wartime President Franklin Roosevelt with Harry Truman, and growing challenges to corporate rule in the United States by militant labor, Truman declared in March, 1947 that the United States and its allies were going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of “International Communism.” The post-war vision of cooperation was reframed as a struggle of the “free world” against “tyranny.”

In addition to Truman’s ideological crusade, his administration launched an economic program to rebuild parts of Europe, particularly what would become West Germany, as capitalist bastions against the ongoing popularity of Communist parties throughout the region. Along with the significant program of reconstructing capitalism in Europe and linking it by trade, investment, finance, and debt to the United States, the U.S. with its new allies constructed a military alliance that would be ready to fight the Cold War against International Communism.

Representatives of Western European countries met in Brussels in 1948 to establish a program of common defense and one year later with the addition of the United States and Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. The new NATO charter, inspired largely by a prior Western Hemisphere alliance, the Rio Pact (1947), proclaimed that “an armed attack against one or more of them…shall be considered an attack against them all…” which would lead to an appropriate response. The Charter called for cooperation and military preparedness among the 12 signatories. After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb and the Korean War started, NATO pushed ahead with the development of a common military command structure with General Eisenhower as the first “Supreme Allied Commander.”

After the founding of NATO and its establishment as a military arm of the West, the Truman administration adopted the policy recommendations in National Security Council Document 68 (NSC 68) in 1950 which declared that military spending for the indefinite future would be the number one priority of every presidential administration. As Western European economies reconstructed, Marshall Plan aid programs were shut down and military assistance to Europe was launched. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, and fueling the flames of Cold War, West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955. (This stimulated the Soviet Union to construct its own alliance system, the Warsaw Pact, with countries from Eastern Europe).

During the Cold War NATO continued as the only unified Western military command structure against the “Soviet threat.” While forces and funds only represented a portion of the U.S. global military presence, the alliance constituted a “trip wire” signifying to the Soviets that any attack on targets in Western Europe would set off World War III. NATO thus provided the deterrent threat of “massive retaliation” in the face of first-strike attack.

With the collapse of the former Warsaw Pact regimes between 1989 and 1991, the tearing down of the symbolic Berlin Wall in 1989, and finally the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the purpose for maintaining a NATO alliance presumably had passed. However, this was not to be.

In the next twenty years after the Soviet collapse, membership in the alliance doubled. New members included most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The functions and activities of NATO were redefined. NATO programs included air surveillance during the crises accompanying the Gulf War and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. In 1995, NATO sent 60,000 troops to Bosnia and in 1999 it carried out brutal bombing campaigns in Serbia with 38,000 sorties. NATO forces became part of the U.S. led military coalition that launched the war on Afghanistan in 2001. In 2011 a massive NATO air war on Libya played a critical role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

An official history of NATO described the changes in its mission: “In 1991 as in 1949, NATO was to be the foundation stone for a larger, pan-European security architecture.” The post-Cold War mission of NATO combines “military might, diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization.”

The NATO history boldly concludes that the alliance was founded on defense in the 1950s and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. With the collapse of Communism in the 1990s it became a “tool for the stabilization of Eastern Europe and Central Asia through incorporation of new Partners and Allies.” The 21st century vision of NATO has expanded further: “extending peace through the strategic projection of security.” This new mission, the history said, was forced upon NATO because of the failure of nation-states and extremism.

Reviewing this brief history of NATO, observers can reasonably draw different conclusions about NATO’s role in the world than from those who celebrate its world role. First, NATO’s mission to defend Europe from aggression against “International Communism” was completed with the “fall of Communism.” Second, the alliance was regional, that is pertaining to Europe and North America, and now it is global. Third, NATO was about security and defense. Now it is about global transformation. Fourth, as its biggest supporter in terms of troops, supplies and budget (22-25%), NATO is an instrument of United States foreign policy. Fifth, as a creation of Europe and North America, it has become an enforcer of the interests of member countries against, what Vijay Prashad calls, the “darker nations” of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Sixth, NATO has become the 21st century military instrumentality of global imperialism. And finally, there is growing evidence that larger and larger portions of the world’s people have begun to stand up against NATO.

 

 

ON UKRAINE AND THE DANGER OF PERPETUAL AND ESCALATING WAR

Friends,

See below an array of articles, past and current, on Ukraine. The most interesting for me are the statements by the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN on empires and FAIR’s critique of corporate media coverage.

In my opinion while the Russian attack on Ukraine should be condemned, we need to recognize it as part of an ongoing war that has its roots, perhaps, in the era of formal empires of past centuries, or the Western reaction to the Russian Revolution, or the rise of fascism and World War 2, or the construction of NATO and the US drive for global hegemony from World War 2 to the present, or the promises made by George Herbert Walker Bush not to expand NATO and its subsequent expansion eastward in the Clinton era, or NATOs taking on a worldwide role in imposing western dominance (Bosnia, Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan for example), or the 2014 coup supported by the US against a flawed but elected government in Kiev, or full incorporation of the neo-fascist elements of that coup in the Ukraine military, or the possibilities of a Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and/or the refusal of the US to make a modest but significant promise not to expand NATO to include Ukraine.

The list goes on but a “theory of the new war” needs to incorporate most or all of these elements, even while we condemn the Russian assault on Ukraine today.

I think our peace and justice movements, including those who are doing important election work, have to reflect on how the global agenda, imperialism, war, and militarism relate to all of our work.

 ************************************************

An important speech by the Kenyan Ambassador at the UN, Martin Kimani, that condemns all countries who have engaged in or aspire to empire.

https://theintercept.com/2022/02/22/ukraine-vladimir-putin-martin-kimani-speech/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

FAIR on media coverage of Ukraine:

https://fair.org/home/western-media-fall-in-lockstep-for-neo-nazi-publicity-stunt-in-ukraine/

Jack Matlock former US diplomat:

https://usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoint-jack-f-matlock-jr-todays-crisis-over-ukraine/

 

Thomas Friedman:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html

 

Reuters: On the incorporation of neo-Nazis into Ukraine military

 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary/commentary-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem-idUSKBN1GV2TY

On Stephen Cohen who spoke with sensitivity about Russia and the former Soviet Union (it may be difficult to access Stephen Cohen's articles in The Nation but there are a number of You Tube interviews available with this now deceased distinguished scholar of the former Soviet Union and Russia)

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/stephen-cohen-ukraine/

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

 

 

 

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE 21ST CENTURY UKRAINIAN CRISIS; SIMILARITIES AND DANGERS

Harry Targ

Revisiting the Cuban Missile Crisis might provide some lessons and warnings for 21^st century peace activists as we reflect on the current drama in Ukraine. The essay attached below includes descriptions of two competing evaluations of Kennedy Administration policies during the 1962 crisis. Whatever the assessment, it was clear that United States policies contributed to a heightened risk of nuclear war.

The most popular view which has been advanced by historians and journalists is that the careful modulation of US policies during the crisis demonstrated the wisdom and skill of the Kennedy Administration. These included, the narrative suggests, the careful and appropriate use of American power, including boarding Soviet naval vessels, flying US aircraft over Soviet territory, and implicitly threatening nuclear retaliation against the Soviet Union if they did not remove their missiles from the island of Cuba.

A second less popular view is that the United States and the Soviet Union acted recklessly such that the possibility of nuclear war was dramatically increased. This view suggests that issues of “security,” “spheres of influence,” “appearing strong and tough,” and “challenging the spread of communism” were used to justify the President’s willingness to go to the brink of war. Some, for example the journalist I. F. Stone, suggested that while the Soviets were reckless in placing their missiles on Cuban soil, it was they who ended the crisis by withdrawing their missiles and thus avoiding a nuclear war.

Baring in mind the competing views, the Cuban Missile Crisis may provide lessons for assessing the Ukraine crisis today. First, former Soviet, now Russian behavior, played a major role in stimulating in the short run heightened danger of a war, possibly including nuclear weapons.

Second, the Cuban Missile Crisis was part of a long-standing dispute between the United States, the unquestioned global hegemonic power, and a perceived challenger, the then Soviet Union. In 1962, as today, the United States sought/seeks to rekindle or maintain its global dominance in a complicated world, one in which the pursuit of great power dominance is dangerous and wasteful to all.

Third, crises, such as those involving Cuba and Ukraine, give justification for military/industrial complexes in both countries to lobby for more and more of societal resources.

Fourth, crises give legitimacy to cultures of “great power chauvinism:” in the US case “American exceptionalism,” defender of “democracy,” the voice of the “free world,” “the last remaining super-power,” and/or “the indispensable nation.”

Finally, as to domestic politics, international crises are used to “bail-out” politicians whose power and legitimacy are being threatened. President Kennedy had been judged weak after his Vienna meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, the German/Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall, Soviet support for anti-colonial movements, and the continuation of the Cuban Revolution.

At home in the fall of 1962 Democrats feared that they would lose control of the House of Representatives in upcoming elections. Pundits speculated that JFK’s image at home was of youth, inexperience, and lack of resolve. The handling and resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis changed all that.

And today, President Biden’s approval ratings are low. His legislative victories are overshadowed by the image of his failure to achieve his Bring Back Better program, and the much-publicized conflicts within his own party.

And, it should be noted, his major bipartisan legislative achievement is the passage of a $778 billion military budget which is of particular benefit to the sectors of the military/industrial complex which feed off crises like Ukraine. (After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and the Soviet Union did begin to dialogue about tension reduction but US military budgets continued their significant increase, justified by the Vietnam adventure. The US/Soviet competition would be fought out by an arms race and battles in independent nations-places like Vietnam then and Ukraine now).

And as I wrote in the essay below, citing I.F. Stone, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ended with the Soviet withdrawal of missiles. One hopes that the current leadership in Russia will take the initiative and reduce tensions that it initiated because the US record historically has been to exacerbate tensions not reduce them.

“As I.F. Stone suggested shortly after the crisis, nuclear war was avoided because the Soviet Union chose to withdraw from the tense conflict rather than to engage in it further.”

**********************************************************

Harry Targ wrote In October 8, 2012 about the Cuban Missile Crisis:

THE CUBA STORY: THE BAY OF PIGS TO THE MISSILE CRISIS

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-cuba-story-bay-of-pits-to-missile.html

https://theragblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/harry-targ-from-bay-of-pigs-to-missile_17.html?m=0

 

“In the missile crisis the Kennedys played their dangerous game skillfully….But all their skill would have been to no avail if in the end Khrushchev had preferred his prestige, as they preferred theirs, to the danger of a world war. In this respect we are all indebted to Khrushchev. (I.F. Stone, “What If Khrushchev Hadn’t Backed Down?” in In a Time of Torment, Vintage, 1967).

The Kennedy Administration Goes to the Brink of Nuclear War

The period between the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the announcement of the Alliance of Progress economic assistance program, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was one of escalating hostilities. Fidel Castro declared Cuba a Socialist state. The United States pressured members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to expel Cuba. The CIA began campaigns to assassinate the Cuban leader and President Kennedy initiated the complete economic blockade that exists until today. In addition, Castro warned that the U.S. was continuing to plan for another invasion. The Soviet Union began providing more economic and military support to the Cubans, including anti-aircraft missiles and jet aircraft.

In October, 1962, U.S. spy planes sighted the construction of Soviet surface-to-air missile installations and the presence of Soviet medium-range bombers on Cuban soil. These sightings were made after Republican leaders had begun to attack Kennedy for allowing a Soviet military presence on the island. Kennedy had warned the Soviets in September not to install “offensive” military capabilities in Cuba. However, photos indicated that the Soviets had also begun to build ground-to-ground missile installations on the island, which Kennedy defined as “offensive” and a threat to national security.

After securing the photographs Kennedy assembled a special team of advisors, known as EXCOM, to discuss various responses the United States might make. He excluded any strategy that prioritized taking the issue to the United Nations for resolution.

After much deliberation EXCOM focused on two policy responses: a strategic air strike against Soviet targets in Cuba or a blockade of incoming Soviet ships coupled with threats of further action if the Soviet missiles were not withdrawn. Both options had a high probability of escalating to nuclear war if the Soviet Union refused to back down.

High drama, much of it televised, followed the initiation of a naval blockade of Soviet ships heading across the Atlantic to Cuba. Fortunately, the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, sent notes to the President that led to a tacit agreement between the two leaders whereby Soviet missiles would be withdrawn from Cuba and the United States would promise not to invade Cuba to overthrow the Castro government. In addition, the President indicated that obsolete U.S. missiles in Turkey would be disassembled over time.

Most scholars argue that the missile crisis constituted Kennedy’s finest hour as statesman and diplomat. They agree with the administration view that the missiles constituted a threat to U.S. security, despite Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s claim in EXCOM meetings that the missiles did not change the strategic balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Most of these scholars have agreed that the symbolic value of the installation of Soviet missiles could have had grave consequences for U.S. “credibility.”

Given the importance of the missiles, leading social scientists have written that the Kennedy team carefully considered a multitude of policy responses. EXCOM did not ignore competing analyses, as had been done in the decisional process prior to the Bay of Pigs. The blockade policy that was adopted, experts believe, constituted a rational application of force that it was hoped would lead to de-escalation of tensions. All observers agreed that the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to the brink of nuclear war. Even the President estimated that there was a fifty percent probability of full-scale nuclear war.

In the end the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Analysts said the Soviet Union suffered a propaganda defeat for putting the missiles on Cuban soil in the first place and then withdrawing them after U.S. threats. Khrushchev was criticized by the Chinese government and within a year he was ousted from leadership in the Soviet Union.

In the light of this U.S. “victory,” Kennedy has been defined as courageous and rational. The real meaning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, is different, even fifty years after the event. The crisis actually suggests that the United States quest to maintain and enhance its empire would lead it to go to any extreme, even nuclear war, to defend the interests of capitalism. To avoid serious losses, whether symbolic or material, for capitalism, any policy was justified.

Further, in terms of U.S. politics, Kennedy was calculating the effects of the missiles on the chances for his party to retain control of Congress in 1962. A second “defeat” over Cuba (the Bay of Pigs was the first) would have heightened the opposition’s criticisms of his foreign policy.

Finally, in personal terms, Kennedy was driven by the need to establish a public image as courageous and powerful in confronting the Soviets. Khrushchev had spoken harshly to him at a summit meeting in Vienna in 1961 and Castro had been victorious at the Bay of Pigs. The President’s own “credibility” had been damaged and a show of force in October, 1962, was necessary for his career.

Because of imperialism, politics, and personal political fortunes, the world almost went to nuclear war fifty years ago. As I.F. Stone suggested shortly after the crisis, nuclear war was avoided because the Soviet Union chose to withdraw from the tense conflict rather than to engage in it further.

National Security Archives files referred to in an earlier blog suggest, “the historical record shows that the decisions leading to the crisis which almost brought nuclear war have been repeated over and over again since the early 1960s”  ( www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/). The danger of the unabashed and irresponsible use of force and the legitimation of the idea that diplomacy can be conducted using nuclear weapons and other devastating weapons systems still represents a threat to human survival.

These comments were adapted from Harry Targ, Strategy of an Empire in Decline: Cold War II, 1986. It is the third essay in a series on “The Cuba Story” available at www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com.”