Camelot’s Strategist

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-136
Author(s):  
Ingo Trauschweizer
Keyword(s):  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Air Power ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
Bay Of Pigs

In Chapter 4 I assess Taylor’s influence in the Kennedy administration and his contribution to the lack of trust by civilian leaders in the JCS after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I also discuss Taylor’s advice on crises ranging from Laos and Vietnam to Berlin and Cuba. Taylor emerged as counterinsurgency coordinator in Washington, drafted a doctrinal framework, and oversaw American efforts in Vietnam and half a dozen other countries. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Taylor had just been installed as JCS chairman. He was a hawk on Cuba, but even though he advised air strikes against missile bases, he backed Kennedy’s naval quarantine against the opposition of the service chiefs. In Vietnam, too, Taylor was a hawk who pushed for the use of air power.

scholarly journals TURKEY & ISRAEL BRINKMANSHIP & THE GRAND STRATEGY OF THE ERDOGAN GOVERNMENT

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Ben Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
High Tension

Brinkmanship occurs when a state threatens to use force to pressure an adversary to offer concessions that it would otherwise be unwilling to make save under threat of war. As such, it is an intrinsically dangerous form of statecraft, for it depends upon very clear and easily comprehended signalling so that an opponent can both appreciate what is being demanded and the possible consequences of non-compliance. Brinkmanship also requires a very steady hand in its implementation for the potential for escalation is ever-present, and can be triggered by poor communications, unexpected mishaps, or misunderstandings by both the instigator and the object of its policy. Perhaps the best known example of this type of mailed fist diplomacy occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the Kennedy Administration declared a blockade on Cuba and threatened to use force to maintain it. The crisis came to a close when Moscow withdrew its missiles from Cuba in return for private assurances that US missiles in Turkey would be dismantled. Before that happened, there were many moments of high tension as Soviet-flagged ships approached US naval vessels tasked to enforce the quarantine zone. The possibility of war was real even if, as we now know, neither leader wanted it to occur.  

US-Iraq campaign against ISG will strain ties

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Air Power ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
The Media

Significance The day prior, President Barack Obama met with his military and civilian leaders at the Pentagon and offered an upbeat assessment to the media regarding progress to date, despite ISG advances in Iraq's Anbar and Syria's Palmyra. Impacts The July 13 delivery of F-16 fighter jets will boost Iraqi Air Force capacity. It will not change the balance of power in the campaign, as coalition air power vastly outweighs the eventual 36 Iraqi F-16s. However, UK plans to deploy special operators to Iraq and Syria could signal greater Western comfort with increased combat engagement.

The CIA and Cuba: The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-126
Author(s):  
Huw Dylan ◽  
David V. Gioe ◽  
Michael S. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Cuban Exiles ◽  
Bay Of Pigs ◽  
Do So

This chapter is concerned with the some of the CIA’s operations against Cuba. It examines the ill-fated invasion at the Bay of Pigs by CIA backed and trained Cuban exiles, and how the failure impacted the agency. President Kennedy chose to fire the Head of the CIA and his deputy Allen Dulles and Charles Cabell. This occurred a short while before another, far more serious, crisis. In October 1962 reconnaissance aircraft provided evidence of a Soviet missile base on Cuba. This prompted the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the crisis the CIA was called on to provide intelligence on matters of the highest significance, and to do so it used the material provided by a Soviet source, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. Documents: Report on the Cuban Operation; The Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation; Oleg V. Penkovskiy.

14. The Cuban Missile Crisis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Allison
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
Ballistic Missiles ◽  
Mission Operation

This chapter examines the significance of the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of foreign policy. It begins with a discussion of the Soviets’ deployment of ballistic missiles in Cuba under the covert mission Operation Anadyr and the four principal hypotheses advanced by the Kennedy administration to explain such a move: the Cuban defence hypothesis, Cold War politics, missile power hypothesis, and the Berlin hypothesis. It then analyses President John F. Kennedy’s declaration of a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba and the reasons for the Soviets’ decision to withdraw their missiles from Cuba. It also considers three conceptual frameworks for analysing foreign policy in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Missiles of November, December, January, February…: The Problem of Acceptable Risk in the Cuban Missile Crisis Settlement

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Short Range ◽  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Acceptable Risk ◽  
Fundamental Factor ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Crisis Negotiations

This article examines how the Kennedy administration assessed the risk posed by Soviet short-range missiles in Cuba and the associated combat troops, particularly in the months after the peak of the Cuban missile crisis. The issue had a strong domestic political subtext that played out for months. Missiles in Cuba had been a topic of discussion well before the dramatic events of October 1962, and the dispute about them dragged on well past the famous “thirteen days.” Many studies assume a final resolution to the crisis that did not actually exist. The evidence from this period indicates that domestic political considerations were a fundamental factor in Kennedy's decision-making and apparently induced him to take a slightly harder line in the post-crisis negotiations with the Soviet Union than he otherwise might have. But the evidence also suggests that Kennedy was more willing than some of his advisers and many Congressional critics to accept a degree of permanent military risk in Cuba.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Sean J. McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
The United States ◽  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
White House ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Planning Culture

At the end of January 1963, France’s long-tenured ambassador to the United States, Hervé Alphand, reported back to Paris on a top secret American exercise at Camp David that laid bare many of the stark differences between the two NATO allies. As Alphand noted to French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville, his old colleague from the Free French days of World War II, the Kennedy administration had decided the previous October (either before, during, or after the Cuban Missile Crisis—he does not specify) to include representatives from Britain, France, and West Germany in a three-day series of politico-military simulations of potential conflict scenarios in divided Berlin. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, French president Charles de Gaulle had barely concealed his frustration from former Secretary of State Dean Acheson when he discovered that the Kennedy administration had no intention of coordinating strategy with the NATO allies it could have plunged into nuclear war. This may have convinced the White House to pull back the veil and show Washington’s closest allies how its planning culture operated....

A Reputation for Irresolute Action

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-140
Author(s):  
Danielle L. Lupton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Negative Perception ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Berlin Crisis ◽  
Nikita Khrushchev ◽  
Bay Of Pigs ◽  
Strategic Interest

This chapter studies how Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev viewed the resolve of President John F. Kennedy, looking at Khrushchev's decision making surrounding the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. According to evidence made available from declassified and translated Soviet archives, as well as information drawn from additional sources, Kennedy quickly formed a reputation for irresolute action largely because of his repeated failure to back up his strong rhetoric with firm action and his wavering support of the Bay of Pigs invasion early during his tenure. While Kennedy rather quickly established a poor reputation for resolve, it was difficult for him to alter this reputation. Throughout the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and during the early stages of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev continued to doubt Kennedy's firmness and determination, despite the president's repeated attempts to signal his resolve. Declassified Soviet documents further indicate that Kennedy was able to change this negative perception of his resolve during the Cuban Missile Crisis only by presenting a consistently resolute position and altering his signals of strategic interest. Thus, it was Kennedy's communication of high strategic interest in Cuba combined with his resolute behavior during the missile crisis that enabled him to alter his poor reputation.

A Luce Connection: Senator Keating, William Pawley, and the Cuban Missile Crisis

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 139-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Holland
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
New Evidence

Documentation from unexpected sources sheds new light on a question that had seemed unresolvable: how Senator Kenneth Keating learned about the emplacement of Soviet missiles in Cuba well before the Kennedy administration did. The new evidence not only reveals the intricacies of this longstanding mystery, but also provides valuable insights about U.S. intelligence operations, the making of U.S. foreign policy, and the rich opportunities for research about the Cold War in the four million pages of documents gathered under the Kennedy Records Collection Act of 1992.

The Bay of Pigs Fiasco and the Kennedy Administration's Off-the-Record Briefings for Journalists

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
David M. Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Kennedy Administration ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
Senior Administration ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Bay Of Pigs ◽  
Source Materials

After the failure of the April 1961 Bay of Pigs intervention in Cuba, senior officials from the Kennedy administration, including the president, devoted two days to off-the-record briefings for more than 200 journalists. Although President John F. Kennedy refused to assign blame, other officials were less circumspect, disagreeing about whether the Central Intelligence Agency or another part of the government was responsible for the failure. The most notable aspect of this episode is not that senior administration personnel discussed a covert action in the presence of journalists but that the briefings subsequently remained unknown. Some newspapers briefly mentioned them, but no book on the Bay of Pigs—from the 1960s through today—has mentioned that such briefings happened or described their content. Using primary-source materials (including fragments of the briefings’ transcript) plus some newspaper accounts, this article describes the conflicting opinions voiced at the briefings and explores why and how the Kennedy administration succeeded in keeping the encounters mostly unknown.

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