Ambrose 10 – Kennedy and the New Frontiers

Not the “New Frontier” they intended.  Those circles on the map are the estimated boundaries the missiles in Cuba could have hit.  Central Indiana, where my family lived at the time is right on the outer limits of the medium range missiles which were armed (though we didn’t know it) at the time, according to McNamara according to Castro.  Washington DC, St Louis, Dallas, all well within range. Had JFK taken the advice of going in on an airstrike we might not be here today.  Unknown until 1992 Castro had already weaponized some of the nukes that had gotten in before the blockade and had given orders to use them if attacked!  That of course doesn’t mean a few nukes would be lobbed at the US it would have likely meant a full scale retaliatory strike against the USSR who would have replied in kind.  Though millions would have died, some would survive though the earth may have fallen into what they called a “nuclear winter” for 100s of years.  All over a matter of human prestige.  Nuts.

JFK was no dove.  He was no peacenik.  On This latest read he sounded positively Trumpian!  Freedom is under attack!  If the US fails freedom fails!  “I think its time America started moving Again!”  (instead of MAGA it was TASMA).  The legacy of his administration is greatly muddled in the public mind I think, by his tragic assassination.  It was JFK and “Mac” the knife, who ushered in “the greatest arms race in history” according to Ambrose.

Really?  The nuclear weapons race between the USSR and the USA?  It wasn’t the Republicans?  It wasn’t Nixon or Reagan, or affable old Ike?  Nope.  Not according to Ambrose.  The arms race, which produced the ability to destroy our world many times over, though maybe exacerbated by Nixon and Reagan, started with Kennedy.

I don’t know if you noticed but there is TOK all over this chapter.  “The CIA had been wrong in predicting an uprising against Castro, but the prediction was exactly what Kennedy wanted to hear.”

Do you see a rabbit or a duck?  Which one do you want to see?  If you have a certain paradigm, a certain way of seeing the world, you may only see ducks.  There are a variety of interpretations of what might have been going on in Cuba in 59-61 but JFK believed there was a liberal alternative to Castro in Cuba and so he saw it.  Remember, seeing isn’t believing… believing is seeing.

And then there’s the missiles in Cuba.  Doesn’t change balance of power at all yet it appeared to to the public and thus “such appearances contribute to reality.” Wow.  “The world came close to TOTAL destruction over a matter of PRESTIGE.” (emphasis added) ATA.  Is that crazy or what?  Events took place that almost led to the deaths of millions of people and it was over over looks.  Over appearances.  Sometimes I really worry about us.

Sleep well.

The Revolution in Power 61-68

Angela Davis was so popular during her visit to Cuba and the mob who came to greet her was so enthusiastic she could hardly speak.  That said there seems to be little evidence according to Gott of Cuba participating in the Civil Rights movement in the US, or in the Caribbean,  beyond mere rhetoric ,despite many of its leaders visiting Cuba in the time period.

What is striking to me on re-reading this chapter is Castro’s attempts to export the revolution.  Argentina, Venezuela, Columbia, Guatemala, Peru, Congo, Algeria and even the USA where Che called for”many Vietnams” were all though rather unsuccessful.  A different story will emerge later though vis-a-vis South Africa.

Failure to communicate in Africa, failure to be supported by any other communist group in Latin America, and failure to understand, according to Stokley Charmichael, the nature of the struggle in the USA along with pressure from Russia to chill out because of their efforts with the USA of “peaceful coexistence” lead all of these efforts to be seriously curtailed by the late 1960s.

Please don’t worry about all of the African names.  Suffice it to know that Castro turned his attention to Latin America and then to Africa and back to Latin America while all along supporting what revolutionary activities might be taking in the United States.  Concurrent with this is the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States, via dangerous small boats, “freedom flights” and later large very fast speedboats.  Clinton was mentioned here.  He changed the law so that Cubans picked up in the water were returned to Cuba.  Only if they made it to the US shore could they apply for refugee status.  We are getting you kids into the 90s!  Woo hoo!

Of course all of this was only possible because the revolution survived the Bay of Pigs and humanity survived the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Though according to Gott according to Khrushchev the warheads were never armed.  According to McNamara in our film, according to Castro they were.  Wonder who is right there.

The Bay of Pigs given good treatment here but the CMC seems a little short.  Maybe our author thought, as he even said, that has been given such full treatment in other areas it wasn’t necessary to go over again in great detail.  Of significant importance is the return to a mono-economy.  Che and others had wanted a diversified healthy economy but Russia pressured Castro to remain focused on sugar.  This move will be part of the pain in the 90s when the USSR collapses 30 years later but of course no one could see that coming.

What can you see coming?  A quick return to Ambrose.  Chapter 10 for Friday/Monday before returning to Gott 7,8 to finish unit up.

Gott Chapter 5 – Castro’s Revolution

What if I told you you’ve met the man who identified Che Guevara’s body?  Well if you’ve started the chapter you have.  So who is this Richard Gott?  A few words from Wikipedia;

Richard Willoughby Gott (born 28 October 1938, Aston Tirrold, England) is a British journalist and historian. A former Latin America correspondent and features editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, he is known for his radical politics and a connection to Che Guevara. He resigned from The Guardian in 1994 after claims that he had been a Soviet ‘agent of influence’, a tag Gott denied.^[1]

And more;

In November 1963, working as a freelance journalist for The Guardian in Cuba, Gott was invited to a celebration of the revolution party at the Soviet Union embassy in Havana. During the evening, a group of invited journalists who were chatting in the garden were joined by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara for a few hours, who answered their questions.

In Bolivia in 1967, Gott identified Guevara’s dead body after the failure of Guevara’s Bolivian campaign. He was the only one in the country who had met Guevara.

Batista “ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 25 years” according to another source.  He stages a coup (he had been in power before this) , upsets Castro’s political career and Fidel resorts to armed insurrection.

Things you should look up or know.

The barracks at Moncado

The July 26th movement

Jose Marti

the Granma

Herbert Matthews

Fangio (kidding, but it is interesting)

Nixon

the hotel in NYC

Find all of those references in the reading and you should be set for the quiz!

What I find most interesting here is Gott’s perspective on the relationship between Fidel and communism.  Hope you enjoy it!

Gott Chapter 4

So what do you know or think you know about the Cuban Revolution?

Well for one thing you might know that the US has a long history of “Intervention” in the Caribbean, including Cuba, as exemplified by the event above from 1965 which may have led LBJ to believe he could do the same thing in Vietnam with similar, quick. results.  He couldn’t.  Your author, Gott, notes decades long interventions in the early 20th century in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and of course Cuba.

I find astonishing that my grandfather died almost 100 years ago.  That’s him with my infant mother at the sanitarium where he was confined after his diagnosis with tuberculosis.  He would die in 1922 shortly after this was taken.  (She was born in ’21) He was one of the Marines mentioned in this reading that went to guard the sugar cane fields in 1917 (not to fight for the government as the author maintains) .  He must have been part of the original 2000 the author notes but not the 1600 that remained as those letters I shared with you were from France.

The story of the Marines in Cuba is not incidental to the larger story of Cuba here.  In the “War” act drafted by Congress in 1898 the “Teller” Amendment was added stipulating that the United States would never annex Cuba.  The Platt Amendment though, issued after the war, basically made the new Cuban Republic so dependent on the United States as to effectively be a colony.  Though those in power were OK with this relationship many who fought in the successful revolution over Spain certainly were not.  Every time there was an election that favored those in power there was an uprising and the Marines would be called in.

PLease don’t get lost in all of the details of this opening chapter.  Keep an eye on terms, ABC, Teddy R. etc.  Know what those things are will be you in a good spot for quiz.  I’m looking for broad understanding here of the bigger patterns of immigration, control, the economy etc.

The story of “Race” is also very interesting here as it is in so many of the revolutions we have studied.  The 1912 revolt is literally referred to as a “Race war” yet today Cuba markets itself as a land full of diversity.  When did that switch take up?  Also what was that event?  Some call it an out and out attack on the black population and others argue it was a response to an open rebellion.

I know when Malcolm X meets Fidel around 1960 he’ll call him the “Blackest man in the Caribbean”. Batista, the brutal dictator that immediately precedes Fidel  is described here as a “mulatto”, a person of mixed race background, but appears to do little to advance interracial relations.  Fidel, the son of a Spanish immigrant, would seem an odd choice as a champion of the significant black population.  We shall see.

Be ready to answer that question after our quiz.  WDYKOTYK?

 

 

IAs

IAs are now in grade book. Out of 200 points.  I will release comments on “turn it in” very soon.  There you will see breakdown of each section.

Part A – Evaluation of sources.  6 possible points

Part B – The Investigation.  15 points

Part C – Reflection.  4.

25=100% ( no one got that)

20=90%

15=80

10=70  You can figure the rest out from there I think.

You now have three options.

1 – do nothing.  Keep your grade as is

2 – revise by Friday (see my comments on TII) for revised semester grade and IB grade.

3 – Revise by next Friday for revised IB grade.

Come see me if you have questions.  I will put a “Revised IA” hand in chute on TII .com.

 

Kissinger 23 – Khrushchev’s Ultimatum: Berlin crisis 1958-1963

I’ve got several books in my headI’d like to write one day. One is the summer of 1961.  Its the summer of the Freedom Riders, the first summer of Kennedy’s presidency and of course when the wall went up in Berlin.

The casual student of history will often equate the end of WWII with the start of the Cold war and the construction of the wall.  You, of course will know that the wall was 15 years after the start of the Cold war, almost 10 years after the death of Stalin, and just before a series of events that will lead to the fall of Khrushchev and a stormy chill in the Cold war.

Near the end now of our studies of the “post-WWII revolutions”  we must allude to the era to come.  As one of you commented in your IA the baby boomers of the coming 1960s will have a decidedly different relationship with their government, their world and one another.

JFK is our first president born in the 20th century.  He comes in as a hard liner, believing Eisenhower has been weak on communism.  Why he may have believed this is the real undercurrent of this chapter which of course culminates in not just the erection of the wall in Berlin, but the closest we ever got to nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Kissinger’s assessment of Eisenhower and Khrushchev here is most interesting.  The “Spirit of Camp David” , Khrushchev’s blustering and of course Sputnik left the American people feeling a little weak in the knees but Eisenhower and JFK know the truth, that in the event of a nuclear war they have more to worry about from their own nuclear fallout than from a Soviet nuclear attack.

I think I was most struck by Khrushchev’s recklessness in this most recent read.  Reminds me a bit of current events.  also the word “detente” jumped out at me.  I had never noticed it before.  It means a “relaxation of tensions” and is almost exclusively associated with the 1970s and Nixon.  I had never seen the idea floated so early.

What you need to know basically is that Berlin was a unique spot, Khrushchev tried to take advantage, Eisenhower kept his cool, so they built a wall.  Oh, and you have a test coming up on Friday/Tuesday and your IA is due!

Happy near end of first semester!

Ambrose 9 – Hungary to Suez to Berlin & Cuba

Who was this year’s “Person of the year?”  in 1957 it was the Hungarian Freedom Fighter.  This year it was the Greta Thunberg.  Who else has it been?  Has it been accurate, valuable?  In the historical perspective have those chosen really been the most significant?

“The overwhelming first impression of American foreign policy from 1956 to 1961 was one of unrelieved failure”  I have been waiting 10 years for a student to use that damning quote effectively in an essay.  Maybe you will be the first.

So what were the failures?   The revolution in Hungary, as you will read or have read, as far as it has anything to do with America and USFP, was a travesty (some would say).  It laid bare the naked truth that the US would not confront the Soviets directly and the promises of liberation were empty.

Some might counter (Ambrose does) with the assertion though that possibly in the most dangerous of times Eisenhower succeeded.  If we had confronted the Soviets in Hungary, as we will confront them five years hence in Cuba, would we have unleashed nuclear war?  Maybe Eisenhower and his advisors knew that the cost of that even mere possibility was too great.  It has long been said that no one hates war more than a member of the military.  No one else sees the cost of war so thoroughly.  Eisenhower had seen plenty of war.  Maybe that “first impression” of failure in Hungary, in Cuba, in the Suez Canal crisis gives way to a more complete realization that there was some success.  We avoided war in a time when war had become more dangerous than ever, when decisions made by just a few men (men) could have kept you and I from being here and could have plummeted humanity into some dark Cormac McCarthy book.  Maybe we did succeed after all, if at least for that moment.

Ambrose 8 – Eisenhower

“I Like Ike” so the famous button goes. Just a reminder, take a glance at books by Ambrose in the opening pages of your book. How many are about, or include a great deal about, Eisenhower? I count 10. That’s a lot! He’s clearly got a lot to say, and a lot of interest in Eisenhower. With 10 books under his belt he has a lot to pull from so the little anecdotes he does include, like Ike being unable to suppress his grin in the photo shoot at Geneva, he obviously thinks are important.

Eisenhower and JF Dulles (say “dull -less”) call containment weak.  They promise liberation of enslaved masses.  What do they end up doing?  Pretty much the same as Truman. Containment prevails.  What they don’t do though is also very important IMHO.  They don’t get us into war. Three times we get to the “brink”.  In Korea, where there is a war but Ike and Dulles push it to the  brink of nuclear war, in Vietnam, where we fail, and in China where Chiang is “unleahsed” (oh the images that brings up) the US gets right to edge of open conflict with China and/or the USSR in an attempt to get its way.  We “win” twice and lose once.  The loss though, will leave JFK and then LBJ with the quagmire of Vietnam that will go on to define a generation.

The promises of liberation, with curtailed military spending are a difficult mix.  One new way to play is the CIA.

I know its hard to think of the CIA as new, but it was.  Like its KGB counter-part much of the actions of the CIA remain top secret.  Because of our relative freedom of speech though (a freedom which here means freedom to access information) there are some things we do know.   We know the CIA helped overthrow popularly elected leaders in Iran, Guatamala, later and not as directly maybe, in Chile and also in Laos one of the three new states to emerge from the French colony of Indochina along with Cambodia and Vietnam.  The extent to which these actions were known by the American people at the time I do not know, but I do know the 1979 Iranian revolution and much anti-American sentiment stems directly from the CIA’s actions in the early 1950s.

So Eisenhower successfully flirts with but avoids nuclear war.  The “spirit of Geneva” leads in to his second term where more international crises will blow up, in Hungary and in the Suez crisis, and again he will avoid war.  Concurrently of course is the emerging Civil Rights movement which we will read about in our next unit and which will greatly complicate everything.  The biggest crisis will face his successor, JFK in Cuba in 1962 and there we will get so close to the brink of war that frankly we are all very lucky the nukes didn’t fly and that we are all here to have these lovely conversations.

Enjoy your time Thursday/Friday with Mrs. Taylor working on IA and/or studying for Gov Exam. Here is a link to Gov standards.

Kissinger 19 – Korea

So what was MASH about?  There was a 1971 movie, in the waning days of the American war with Vietnam that was good, with Elliot Gould, but then the TV show in the late 1970s – 80s was simply great.  It was about Korea, nominally, but it was also very much about Vietnam and the futility of war.  Kissinger is doing something similar here.  He’s writing about Korea, but he’s saying a lot about Vietnam.

He brings up Saddam Hussein of course and this is a reference to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, wherein the US “kicked the Vietnam Syndrome” according to President GHW Bush, and Kissinger is comparing N. Korea and Iraq’s surprise at the US reaction. Neither believed the US would act if they invaded.

They shouldn’t have been surprised though.  In 1946 Truman wrote a letter asserting we needed to make a strong government in Korea.  Though in 1950 American planners (like German and Russian planners we saw earlier) were only really planning on the possibility of a general war and a general war in Europe no less.   That they were able to keep Korea from going general was of course a great thing.  Despite claims that our line of defense did not include the Korean peninsula (look at a map) that was only in relation to a general war, but in this now limited war, the US and the UN would and do respond.

A wider war in China of course according to General Bradley would be “the wrong war with the wrong enemy at the wrong time”.  It was MacArthur’s landing at Inchon behind enemy lines which turned the tide of the war so definitively but it was also his insubordination in wishing to advance the escalation of he war which leads to his being relieved of command.

Another interesting question is the use (or not) of the bomb.  Why didn’t we use it?  The USSR had way fewer and no real means of delivery.

One curiosity, and almost oversight (dare I say)(or does it just not fit with Kissinger’s narrative of Truman) is an absence of a discussion of Eisenhower.  Truman doesn’t run in ’52, partly due to frustration with the continuing war in Korea and its under Eisenhower’s watch in the summer of 1953 that the war is wrapped up.

The struggle between Truman and MacArthur, China and Taiwan, N Korea and Stalin and the USSR all bear some consideration.  Any reference to Indochina/Vietnam should also be noted.  You also know, that N Korea is very much in the news today.  Getting a sense of the origins of the conflict over 60 years ago I hope gives some insight to the situation today.

There never was a peace signed in Korea.  It is still a hostile border.  Looking back at my blog from eight years ago year I was pointing to the then current event of N Korea shelling S Korea and killing four persons.  Today with Trump and his twitter rants and the recent test of a North Korean missile that could potentially hit any point in the USA and the effort by the current administration to reach out to North Korea means our understanding of the history of Korea is of the utmost importance.  Enjoy.