In this essay I address the causes, immediate results, and longer-term consequences of the American-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April of 1961, seeking to link these three aspects together by appealing to several recurrent themes in the Kennedy Administration's rationale for action. I posit the predominance of a particular, mixed mentality in the Administration to account for its crucial endorsement of the invasion plan: fear of communist aggression, fear of personal weakness, and a powerful sense of moral superiority, all combining to produce a disregard for history and an absence of debate that facilitated the use force to tackle the Cuban problem. These same elements, I argue, also influenced the invasion's failure: its sense of moral superiority led the Administration to count on a popular uprising which failed to materialize, and fear of weakness influenced the President's crippling requirement of “plausible deniability.”
In the aftermath of the invasion I once again find evidence of this mindset in the American executive; its spectacular failure shook neither the Kennedy Administration's faith in the applicability of force, which it continued to apply against Fidel Castro without success, nor its sense of moral superiority, which helped to shape John F. Kennedy's choices during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. If my analysis is valid, then understanding the nature of these three mentalities - fear of the enemy, fear of weakness, and moral superiority - is key to any comprehension of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Before considering the prevalent frame of mind in the Kennedy Administration, however, we must first assess the Administration's role as a causal agent in the invasion. Importantly, some historians suggest that it was not the key actor, emphasizing instead the impact of the Central Intelligence Agency on the initiation and development of invasion planning. Of the Agency's involvement, there is no question. It planned and organized the operation, and when it began, four American pilots lost their lives flying for the Agency.
Historian Garry Clifford places much of the blame on CIA officials, pointing out that they sold the operation as a fail-safe version of the 1954 Guatemalan intervention.” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara concurs with this fact, but does not blame the CIA. Instead, he places much of the responsibility on the shoulders of the Kennedy Administration, including his own. McNamara recognizes that ultimate authority lay with the President, and appreciates the fact that the President's decisions relied strongly upon the judgements of his senior advisors.
The Administration - with Kennedy at its head - had the final say, not the CIA. It was the essential condition; the CIA may have been the instigators driving the invasion, but it never would have happened without the Administration's go-ahead. Thus, it is crucial to examine why Kennedy and his advisors permitted the CIA to continue planning the operation, and why they gave the final green light.
The most obvious reason why those in the Kennedy Administration considered using force is also the simplest: they were terrified of communist aggression. Though the recently successful revolutionary leader Fidel Castro continually insisted before the invasion that his government had merely been “painted red,” he nonetheless acknowledged his country's newly established ties with the Soviet Union. As early as October of 1960, Castro even praised Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's declaration that the USSR would defend his country with rockets. At this stage, Castro did not seem particularly concerned about alienating or alarming his already-concerned American neighbours.
Of course, this merely served to worry them more. Historian Max Holland points out the obvious when he states that a “major operational base in America's backyard was Washington's worst nightmare.”6 To Kennedy and his advisors this nightmare seemed to have become a reality in Cuba. In a document released on April 3rd, 1961, two weeks before the invasion, the U.S. State Department noted the “ever-rising flood” of arms and advisers from the Soviet Union, characterized Cuba as a communist “bridgehead into the Americas,” and labeled the situation in Cuba “a grave and urgent challenge.”
With this document the Kennedy Administration announced to the world in no uncertain terms that it saw Cuba as nothing less than a Soviet military base.
Historians such as William Blum have heavily criticized the State Department's arguments in this document and questioned the legitimacy of the attitudes behind it. Blum notes the close proximity of anti-communist American allies to the Soviet Union, such as Pakistan and Turkey, and argues that the Kennedy Administration's stance towards Cuba was hypocritical: though these countries were host to American bomber bases and nuclear missiles throughout the period, the Soviets had not seen the need to undertake or support military action against them.
