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.

The fact remains, however, that even if Blum is correct and America's fears were unjustified, they were still very real. Just as an animal that feels cornered will be more likely to bite, fear in the Kennedy Administration made its members more open to considering force as an option.

We must take into account more than the simple argument that fear of communist expansion was a driving force in American policy, however, to understand why the invasion was ordered. The Administration had alternative options available to it. Fear might just as easily have motivated the American leadership to open a channel with the Cubans or the Soviets and pursue a policy of reconciliation, with the aim of curtailing the spread of communism through negotiation. The Kennedy Administration did not consider these options to be viable, however, largely because of the moral framework under which it operated. To Kennedy and his peers, America held the moral high ground. Accusing Castro of an “alliance with international communism” at a time when communism was virtually synonymous with immorality in American parlance, the State Department's document of April 3rd seriously criticized the morality of Castro's regime, not to mention that of the Soviet Union.

Further, the State Department argued that the leaders of the infant Cuban regime had “betrayed their own revolution,” failing to deliver on their promises of freedom of information, individual and political rights, and general elections.

In contrast, the State Department championed the Organization of American States' “collective purpose…to work together for democracy, economic development, and peace,” and, importantly, its respect for individual rights and “the principles of universal morality.”

Binding democracy to universal morality and simultaneously arguing that Castro's regime was fundamentally undemocratic, the State Department's implication is unavoidable: Castro's regime was morally inferior.

Precisely because they conceived of their country's enemies as morally inferior, Kennedy and his advisors were unlikely to see debate and diplomacy as a useful option. There were few advantages in talking to an adversary who did not share their moral framework. The Administration saw the application of force, by contrast, as a considerably more effective policy. Holland argues that Kennedy was “highly impressed with the CIA's ability to bend events in Third World countries” and that these types of operations were consistent with the “action-oriented pursuit of the Cold War he intended.” The Bay of Pigs invasion was ordered not only out of fear of the enemy, then, but also because the sense of moral superiority prevalent in the Kennedy Administration led its members to devalue the softer method of diplomacy in favour of a harsher response.

Though we have established the Administration's general preference for using force, we have not yet accounted for why it was chosen for this particular instance. With hindsight, of course, the invasion was a spectacular failure, and yet no one within the Administration indicated that it might be an unwise choice of action. Indeed, McNamara points out that “every one of [Kennedy's] senior advisors in the Administration” unanimously supported the decision to invade. In light of such powerful unanimity of support, we might be tempted to argue that those in the Administration could not have known that the invasion would result in failure. However, even McNamara implies that he and his peers should have known better.

In alignment with general historical consensus, historian Crane Brinton argues that there were compelling reasons for pulling the plug on the operation well before it began. Referring to numerous examples of attempts by states to impose counter-revolution on another state, he suggests that had the Kennedy Administration paid more attention to the lessons of history it “would have had to conclude that the proposed expedition was a very risky one indeed.” To contain a movement - such as the Cuban revolution - that had the support of important elements of the population, appealed to loyalties of nation and class, and was led by resolute actors would require the direct military occupation of a stronger power.

If we accept this analysis, the Administration's decision to go ahead with a half-hearted operation that made use of exiled Cubans instead of American troops seems like an uncalculated gamble.

Given the convincing arguments against the CIA's proposed operation, we might describe the lack of dissent in the Administration as the result of simple naïveté. To be sure, Kennedy and his advisors had only been in office for seventy days when they agreed to the plan. The CIA had a much more impressive history, with roots in the Second World War. However, newness to the office need not mean automatic, undue deference to the CIA. If naïveté played a role in the Administration's choices, it was not the sole factor. Many of the Kennedy Administration's actions are also interpretable as resulting from fear of its own weakness.

During his 1960 campaign for election, Kennedy repeatedly accused Eisenhower of weakness, suggesting that America had lost Cuba due to its decline under Eisenhower, and also blaming the President for allowing a missile gap to materialize.

Winning the election seemed not to dispel but may have actually even deepened Kennedy's fear of weakness; acutely aware of their government's infant status, the new President and his advisors sought to counter this weakness with tough action. K. A. Cuordileone, for example, argues that a “premium placed on courage and hardness” in the White House may have rendered the Bay of Pigs invasion an imperative.

When combined with a sense of moral superiority and fear of communism, this fear of weakness became even more relevant to the Administration's decision to go ahead with the invasion.

The operation was a catastrophe. Air operations for the invasion commenced on April 15th, 1961, ground forces landed on April 17th, and by April 21st the fighting had ended. The hoped-for popular uprising, which fit so seamlessly in the Administration's mindset of moral superiority, simply did not occur. More than 100 exiles were killed, and twelve times that number taken prisoner. Historian Saul Cohen refers to the failed invasion as a “comic opera” on the geopolitical scene.

Overwhelmingly, officers in the American military and CIA assign the blame to Kennedy and his Administration. Colonel Wendell E. Little of the US Air Force, who served for more than two decades in the CIA before his retirement, argues in no uncertain terms that “[t]he primary fault must lie with a young, inexperienced president who … withdrew vital air support that was part of the approved plan and a key to its chance for success.”

Jack Hawkins, a US Marine Corps Colonel with experience in amphibious operations and guerrilla warfare who worked under the CIA during the invasion, agrees. He refers to a memorandum in early 1961 in which “I stated flatly that if Castro's aircraft were not all destroyed before the troop transports arrived at the landing beaches, a military disaster would occur.” Hawkins also finds fault with Kennedy's requirements for a landing site.To the military and CIA, the Kennedy Administration was squarely to blame. Hawkins' direct superior, US Marine Corps Commander General David M. Shoup, concurred that the landing site was inappropriate and that “without air support the whole operation was doomed,” but was powerless to change the situation because all authority on this matter was delegated to higher authorities.

Importantly, Kennedy did not challenge this assessment. He took full public blame, and admitted his responsibility in private to McNamara. To understand why these baffling mistakes were made, we must again appeal to the fear-of-weakness mentality. Though this fear helped to push the Kennedy towards the invasion, it paradoxically also led him to render it ineffective. Kennedy needed to ensure that he could not be linked to the invasion, since it would weaken his image as a defender of freedom. Hawkins' argument supports this proposition. He asserts that Kennedy and his advisors placed “'plausible deniability' ahead of military viability,” that in essence Kennedy was more worried about how he would look the world than he was about the operation's success. Fear was thus not only a factor in green-lighting the invasion, but also a key component in its prompt failure.

Given the invasion's devastating lack of success and Kennedy's profession of responsibility for it, it would seem prudent to examine its effects upon him and his Administration. Historians agree that the Administration was left, in Blum's words, “acutely embarrassed” by the fiasco.Remarkably, however, the Bay of Pigs did not shake Kennedy's confidence in the utility of force nor cause his advisors to question their own moral superiority. When later asked whether the disaster affected Kennedy's perception of how to deal with Cuba, McNamara responded in the negative. Indeed, Holland points out that instead of examining what led them to unquestioningly accept the reports of the CIA, Kennedy ordered his trusted brother to conduct an investigation of the Agency. Holland writes that, unsurprisingly, Robert Kennedy emerged as its “most ardent champion,” and the Kennedy Administration became “more determined than ever” to topple Castro's regime. Proving that their outlook remained unchanged, Kennedy and his Administration re-initiated its campaign of smaller-scale attacks against Cuba almost immediately, codenamed Operation Mongoose. This operation entailed assassinations of Cuban militia members, further attempts on Castro's life, pirate attacks on Cuban ships, CIA-sponsored air and sea commando raids against economic targets, and even attacks on Russian military personnel, including an assault on a Soviet army camp where twelve Russian soldiers were wounded. Though Kennedy and his advisors learned to be more cautious, they did not reconsider the fundamental nature of their policy towards Cuba.

More evidence of this mentality can be found in Kennedy's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. In his memoirs, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker contended that Kennedy was “still smarting over the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco,” and that he “thought he had something to prove in his personal dealings with Khrushchev.” The theme of personal weakness is clear in this argument. Further, Diefenbaker thought Kennedy “perfectly capable of taking the world to the brink of thermonuclear destruction to prove himself the man for our times, a courageous champion of Western democracy.” Diefenbaker's warning clearly indicates the hazards of maintaining a sense of moral superiority in such times of crisis

In seeking to explain the causes of the Bay of Pigs fiasco I have focussed primarily upon the Kennedy Administration as a sine qua non, the essential ingredient without whose support the operation could not have materialized. I have put forward a mental framework with which to interpret the Administration's decisions, hoping to explain its amenability to the CIA's proposal to invade: its fear of the enemy, fear of internal weakness, and a distinct feeling of moral superiority are integral to the Administration's willingness to use force, both in general and in this particular instance. Furthermore, I have argued that the Administration's actions both during and after the events of April, 1961, may be explained with reference to this mental condition; significantly, the mindset emergedessentially unaltered from the conflict.

I have referred to the Soviets, the Cubans, and the CIA sufficiently to outline their respective roles in the conflict, of course, but I made a conscious choice not to delve more deeply into their actions and motivations, for I believe that in this case we may learn most by focussing on the Kennedy Administration and the fascinating mindset which allowed, undermined, and ultimately, as it demonstrated later during the Cuban Missile Crisis, failed to adequately learn the lessons of the Bay of Pigs invasion. New to the White House, these men were in a unique position to quite literally redefine America's position in the Cold War. That they chose not to speaks volumes towards understanding the nature of the conflict that occupied the world's centre-stage for the better part of a half-century.

On Secondary Sources

Much of the historical discussion referring to the Bay of Pigs invasion mentions it somewhat in passing, as evidence for other, larger arguments about the Kennedy Administration. Comparatively fewer secondary sources are found to examine the topic per se. This raises a crucial issue. My sources might, for this reason, reflect a superficial viewpoint on the invasion, one which does not take into account a deeper historical debate on the subject. Bluntly put, this would lead my essay to examine only the orthodox line of thought and miss the revisionist interpretation. However, I have reason to believe this is not the case. Much of the Bay of Pigs' relevance actually is its use as an indicator of a particular mentality in the Administration. This essay is not as concerned with the invasion itself as it is with what it can show us about the thinking of the men who ordered it. In this respect, sources that use the Bay of Pigs as an example for a wider claim are distinctly valuable; they help set the invasion in a greater context of preceding and following Cold War decisions, and they frequently comment upon the nature of the men who made them. Following is a short description of the wider arguments made by several of my more heavily-cited secondary sources.

William Blum's four-hundred page volume detailing American military and CIA interventions in foreign nations from the Second World War to 1992 is highly critical of American administrations and agencies, especially the Intelligence community. It makes use of an impressive volume of primary and secondary sources to argue for the presence of great hypocrisy in American leadership and suggests that Washington should be judged by its actions and not its words.

Max Holland's article Making Sense of the Assassination suggests that much of the historiography surrounding the Kennedy Administration's actions prior the President's death is poorly researched. Further, he argues that the assassination points to the dangers associated with ideologically-driven foreign policies and decisions made by comparatively small organizations of men.

K. A. Cuordileone examines sociologist Daniel Bell's dualistic interpretation of the American mindset, suggesting that the soft-versus-hard dichotomy he posits can be interpreted in a gender-oriented framework. She refers to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s 1958 article, “The Crisis of American Masculinity,” making a broad argument about American culture to find a source for the Kennedy Administration's emphasis on “hard” rhetoric and action over “soft” diplomacy and dialogue.

Colonel Jack Hawkins of the US Marine Corps (Ret.) presents newly declassified information in his 1996 article, Classified Disaster, based solely on his personal experience working under Mr. Jacob Esterline as a military attaché to the CIA. He argues that all American attempts to overthrow Castro's regime failed due to serious misjudgments that stemmed from Kennedy's concern with plausible deniability over military success.

Robert S. McNamara, American Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 under Kennedy and Johnson, advocates in Blundering into Disaster a program of long-term objectives to limit both nuclear and conventional military forces of the US and USSR. He bases much of his case upon his own experience, arguing that American decision-making suffered due to a lack of self-reflexive thought and because it failed to pursue any long-term strategy. In the interview cited in this essay, McNamara speaks further of flaws in Washington's decision-making process and states that its mindset was not significantly altered by Bay of Pigs fiasco.