A New Day for Cuba
President John F. Kennedy, alongside world leaders from Latin America, Canada and Britain, arrived in Havana for an internationally broadcast event symbolising Free Cuban victory in the Cuban Civil War.
These world leaders met with members of the Free Cuban Army and the country’s fledging political leadership.
Noticeably, French leader Charles de Gaulle refused to attend the event.
The Interim President, José Miró Cardona, was previously the Prime Minister of Cuba in 1959 and Ambassador to Spain under Castro, before defecting to the United States in late 1960.
He was the natural choice to lead the new Cuban government until an election could be called. His constitutional program, developed before the invasion, would form the basis for the Free Cuban Constitution.
A ceremony was undertaken to unveil the new national flag, for the Free Republic of Cuba:
It was designed to be similar enough to the previous flag to offer a sense of familiarity for the Cuban people, but different enough to be distinct and signify a new era for the troubled island nation.
In a speech before the Cuban public, John F. Kennedy announced his intention to institute a phased withdrawal of American forces in Cuba, leaving only a cursory force to train Free Cuban soldiers to deal with the tattered remains of Castro’s loyalist army.
He also spoke about the
Free Cuba International Aid and Assistance Act of 1962 and how the US would assist in the rebuilding effort.
However, most importantly, he stressed the sovereignty and independence of the Cuban people:
“When the United States answered the call of the Cuban people to assist in the overthrow of the Castro regime, we did so while publicly affirming we would not impose ourselves on this new government. We made clear we would only support an ally willing to stand for themselves, fight and commit to the work of building a better society by their own toil.
Today, before the world, the Cuban people have affirmed that they are such an ally. By your tenacity and commitment to freedom, you have prevailed in overthrowing a tyrant. By your vision and work, you will build a better life for yourselves and your children.
The United States will do what it can in our capacity as a friendly, allied nation to assist in the cause of that effort, but the drivers of change in Cuba are ultimately the Cuban people. And we know you would not want it any other way.”
-- John F. Kennedy’s televised address to the Cuban people, March 19th, 1962.
The Interim President spoke last, setting an election date exactly 18 months from the present date.
Kennedy then traveled to Guantanamo Bay to meet with veterans of the Cuban War. He personally awarded many with various commendations and military decorations.
Kennedy thanked them for their efforts and made clear that they would soon be home:
“The bravery and dedication you have shown on the battlefields of Cuba reflect the highest traditions of the American fighting man. In liberating this island from a dictator, history will recount your heroic deeds in the same breath as the battles of the American Revolution, Korea and Second World War. On behalf of a grateful nation, as commander-in-chief, I thank all of you for the sacrifices you have made in service to the United States, and to liberty-loving people everywhere.”
-- President Kennedy’s Guantanamo Address, March 19th, 1962.
The President also visited the holding facility of Fidel Castro. A photo was taken of Kennedy staring through the bars, stone faced at Castro, as the former communist leader, now disheveled and gaunt, stared back defiantly. Not a word was spoken between the two men, but the photo would become one of the enduring images of the Cuban Civil War.
John F. Kennedy would return to the United States the next day, having covered an entire continent and by all accounts, successfully reassured the nations of Latin America that the US was still a good neighbor.
The Vice President in Vietnam
While the President was returning from Cuba, his Vice President, Stuart Symington, was making an equally important overseas visit.
Symington had become the administration’s unofficial point man on Vietnam, with Kennedy and others mostly focused on Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. Kennedy had trusted Symington to monitor the situation and keep abreast of relevant issues.
Symington had previously visited South Vietnam prior to the deployment of 400 US Special Forces to train ARVN soldiers and he had personally met with Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon.
His initial impression of Diem was not a favorable one and further meetings between the two men only served further soured the Vice President to the South Vietnamese leader, and vice versa.
Symington would later profess to Kennedy that he viewed Diem as a fundamentally corrupt, inept leader who relied far too much on his immediate family and lacked the ability to guide South Vietnam’s survival. Even promising ideas, like the Strategic Hamlet Program, were headed up by Ngô Đình Nhu, whom Symington had no confidence in.
Inversely, Diem viewed Symington as overly skeptical, disrespectful, and ignorant of the intricacies of South Vietnam.
The mutual contempt the two men shared would inform the growing rift between South Vietnam under Diem and the United States.
Symington did not paint a positive picture of the Vietnam situation, once he returned to the United States and met the President in the White House on March 21st, 1962.
VICE PRESIDENT SYMINGTON: I don’t think Diem has a chance to hold [South] Vietnam.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: One has to wonder if we even need Vietnam. We have Cuba and that’s in our backyard. Vietnam could fall tomorrow, and we’d still be able to use Cuba in ‘64. We don’t have anything to prove to Kruschev.
VICE PRESIDENT SYMINGTON: How much more fighting will the public stand for, in any case?
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: I’m not against sending aid and advisors – we can’t be seen to do nothing. But no chance am I letting them rope us into another jungle war. MacArthur warned us against a land war in Asia.
VICE PRESIDENT SYMINGTON: Right. Still, our troops have experience in jungle fighting now that could prove useful to apply to Vietnam.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: I’ll bring up someone with experience in Cuba to oversee our involvement.
-- A conversation between President Kennedy and Vice President Symington on the situation on Vietnam, 21st of March, 1962.
President Kennedy ignored the opinion of military advisors such as General Paul D. Harkins, who sought to appoint General Maxwell Taylor to the position of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. Taylor did not directly participate in the conflict and Kennedy wanted someone with firsthand experience overseeing guerrilla combat in harsh jungle tertian.
He believed he found a candidate.
Creighton Abrams had served as chief-of-staff to General Herbert B. Powell during the Cuban War. He had seen the failures and successes of the American approach to guerrilla warfare and had been instrumental in developing strategies to counter the tactics used by Castro’s loyalists as the war dragged on.
With Powell retiring, Abrams was the perfect person to apply the lessons in Cuba to the situation in Vietnam.
As such, Kennedy made the decision to appoint General Taylor to head up US forces in Cuba as they underwent a phased withdrawal. The fighting in Cuba was all but over and Kennedy felt this was a compromise so as not to further offend his military advisors, such as General Harkins.
Meanwhile, Creighton Abrams, who Kennedy intended to promote to the rank of General, would lead the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam.
It was a complex shuffle of the deck, but Kennedy believed it was doable.
Bobby Kennedy’s fight for civil rights
Due to events in Cuba and around the world, public interest had shifted away from the Civil Rights Movement since the high point of Montgomery, the previous year.
Still, the movement had seen a number of quiet victories – a number of schools had been desegrated in Kennedy’s term and recent Supreme Court decisions deeming segregation in transportation facilities is unconstitutional.
In truth, the Kennedy administration favored actions by the courts to engage in desegregation efforts, as any effort to do this through Congress would see massive resistance from the powerful southern bloc and hamper Kennedy’s ability to pass anything else.
Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had emerged as one of the leading voices of civil rights inside the administration, alongside Vice President Symington.
Bobby had overseen new hiring practices inside the federal government, demanding they hire as many black and ethnic minority workers as was realistically possible.
The Attorney General’s experiences in his role had offered insight into the horrors of segregation that began to inform his world view. It was becoming apparent that even more than crime, civil rights was becoming Bobby Kennedy’s chief focus.
Kennedy’s participation in the commission on civil rights had only served to accelerate his conversion into a fighter for civil rights. It was he who insisted that his brother include references to civil rights in his 1962 State of the Union Address.
Kennedy had tried in vain to prevent J Edgar Hoover from conducting surveillance on Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference organisation. Kennedy had allowed them "on a trial basis, for a month or so" to engage in wiretapping and other surveillance activities, but Hoover continued these activities even after the one-month cut-off date.
Likewise, Stuart Symington had contained close ties with Martin Luther King after visiting him in hospital, following the violence Montgomery, Alabama.
The two men sought to increase momentum for the Civil Rights Movement, in the face of adversity from those who opposed their administration and even some inside of it.
After cajoling the President, they had the perfect opportunity – President Kennedy had agreed to host a meeting with King and other civil rights leaders in Washington, DC.
American Ambassadors to Cuba and Vietnam
The appointment of Ambassadors had rarely been as critical as those of South Vietnam and the Free Republic of Cuba.
In the case of South Vietnam, it was the case that the Ambassador’s role was to oversee the head of Military Assistance Command. Kennedy did not want any military man in Vietnam, even one he respected like Abrams, to try and depart from the course of pacification that he had decided on as Commander-in-Chief.
As such, Kennedy appointed Roger Hilsman to become the new Ambassador to South Vietnam, replacing Frederick Nolting.
Hilsman had previously been a guerrilla leader in the China-Burma-India Theater during the Second World War, before serving in academia and later being tapped to serve in the White House in 1961. Up until this point had been the 2nd Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the Kennedy administration.
He had been an early advocate of counter-guerrilla strategy in South Vietnam, and Kennedy trusted him to report honestly on the situation, while ensuring that military strategy remained focused on combating the insurgency, rather than on traditional infantry tactics.
When the two men met, Kennedy half-jokingly asserted that it was Hilsman’s job to “keep South Vietnam going until it becomes a Republican [President’s] problem”, yet that was closer to the truth than anyone was willing to admit publicly.
The Ambassador to the Free Republic of Cuba had a very different role. The fighting had almost completely subsided, and the goal now was to build a stable Cuban nation.
Thomas C. Mann was the logical choice to oversee US involvement in rebuilding Cuba. He had long been viewed as an authority on Latin American issues, particularly when it came to political and economic influence.
His focus on promoting business interests and firm opposition to communism did much to quiet the concerns of many Cuban exile leaders who believed that Cardona’s constitution was “too communistic”.
With these two men overseeing their respective roles in two important Cold War hot zones, Kennedy was hopeful that this positive momentum in favour of the US would continue.
