WI: Nixon POTUS in Cuban Missle Crisis

So- does the world get blown up? Or does Nixon manage to settle the crisis peacefully? Keep in mind re any settlement Nixon might have reached- Nixon, being a Republican, was immune - un-
like JFK- to criticism from conservatives that he had "sold the US down the river." How would this
fact of political life have influenced Nixon's conduct?
 
The Cuban Missile Crisis likely doesn't happen. Krushchev didn't respect Kennedy like Nixon; he likely doesn't place the missiles in Cuba
 
The Cuban Missile Crisis likely doesn't happen. Krushchev didn't respect Kennedy like Nixon; he likely doesn't place the missiles in Cuba

Perhaps. But one reason Khrushchev put the missles in in the first place was because he thought- &
correctly too- that JFK was trying to overthrow Castro, an event Khrushchev felt he simply could not allow to happen. As Castro later put it: "If the United States had not been bent on liq-
uidating the Cuban revolution, there would not have been an October crisis."* A President Nixon in 1961-1962 would have also have been trying to get rid of Castro. I can say this with confidence by looking @ the record. In 1960, while still VP, he had strongly urged Eisenhower to support CIA plans to invade Cuba &, of course, get rid of Fidel. Later, in April 1961 after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK called Nixon in to get his advice. Said advice was: "I would find a proper legal cover and go in
--- I believe that the most important thing at this point is that we do whatever is necessary to get Castro and communism out of Cuba."**

It thus might not have mattered if NK respected Nixon more than JFK.

*- Quoted in Robert J McMahon, THE COLD WAR: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION(2003), p. 90. A
book in the "Very Short Introduction" series.

**- Quoted in Stephen E Ambrose, NIXON: THE EDUCATION OF A POLITICIAN 1913-1962, p. 632 of the 1988, Touchstone paperback edition.
 
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The Cuban Missile Crisis likely doesn't happen. Krushchev didn't respect Kennedy like Nixon; he likely doesn't place the missiles in Cuba

No, that is not the reason there would be no Cuban missile crisis under Nixon. The reason is that Nixon would have used US troops rather than see the Bay of Pigs invasion fail. (As I note at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-successful-bay-of-pigs.431042/#post-16069574 air support would not have been enough.) I am not saying that this would be a good idea--it would have many negatives, which I go into at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...how-does-history-change.401299/#post-13416467 but at least it would mean there would be no occasion for a Cuban Missile Crisis.
 
Part of me thinks he would have lit up Moscow during the Berlin Wall crisis. So between Khrushchev's relative opinion of him, Bay of Pigs and Berlin (however it plays out), it probably never comes to CMC. But if it does, I am pretty sure he goes in.
 
"when President Kennedy became convinced that the Soviets had indeed installed offensive missiles in Cuba, he was privately furious"

https://books.google.com/books?id=u...es in Cuba, he was privately furious"&f=false

Now, just because Kennedy perceived disrespect does not mean that was Khrushchev’s world view. There’s a case to be made that Khrushchev simply viewed it as a cheap, readily available way to reach approximate nuclear parity. That if we the U.S. had missiles in Germany and Turkey with short flight times to Moscow, then the Soviets wanted missiles with the same short flight time to Washington.
 

This is the point that really needs to be made. Nixon was one of our most intelligent presidents and a genuine genius on military and foreign policy, whatever else can be said about him. He either wouldn’t do Bay of Pigs at all or would do it fully.
 
This is the point that really needs to be made. Nixon was one of our most intelligent presidents and a genuine genius on military and foreign policy, whatever else can be said about him. He either wouldn’t do Bay of Pigs at all or would do it fully.

There are also a number of stories, perhaps apocryphal, of him telling Ike they should nuke the Soviets.

In the navy he was known as a phenomenal poker player. Less genius in strategy and more genius in opportunistic gambling.
 
BTW, a commonly held notion--that Khrushchev took JFK's measure in Vienna and found him to be weak, and that this is why Khrushchev thought he could get away with putting missiles in Cuba--is IMO a myth. From an old soc.history.what-if post of mine (apologies for any links that may no longer work):

***

IMO this is a myth. As Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein wrote in *We All Lost the Cold War*:

"The widely credited story that Khrushchev took Kennedy's measure in Vienna and found him wanting originated with James Reston of the *New York Times.* Three-and-a-half years after the summit, he proposed it as an explanation for the Soviet decision to send missiles to Cuba. Reston was careful to point out that his hypothesis was speculative and based on the president's somber mood following his meeting with Khrushchev. [Elie] Abel and others treated the proposition as an incontrovertible fact.

"All eyewitness accounts of the summit report plain speaking between the two leaders with neither man giving ground. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., described the conversations as 'civil but tough.' He insists that there is no truth to 'the legend that Khrushchev browbeat and bullied Kennedy at Vienna.' Kenneth O'Donnell, a political and personal confidant of the president, tells the same story, as do Dean Rusk and knowledgeable Soviet officials like Ambassador Georgiy M. Kornienko, who ridicules the notion of Kennedy as a weak president. That 'doesn't fit at all with my impression of how Khrushchev perceived Kennedy.'

"Khrushchev told reporters that Kennedy was tough, especially on the question of Berlin. He confided to Kornienko that he had been right in his assessment of Kennedy as a 'really intelligent, extraordinary politician.' According to Sergei Khrushchev, 'Father returned to Moscow after the summit with a very high opinion of Kennedy. He saw him as a worthy partner and strong statesman, as well as a simple, charming man to whom he took a real liking.' Speaking of the summit in his memoirs, Khrushchev remembered Kennedy as a refreshing change from Eisenhower because of his thorough preparation, frankness, and the verve with which he argued his case. 'This was to his credit and he rose in my estimation at once. . . . He was, so to speak, both my partner and my adversary.'"
http://books.google.com/books?id=Eaws3G98Ji0C&pg=PA71 (One thing that impressed Khrushchev: Kennedy never consulted Rusk during the meetings as Ike had consulted Dulles.)

(Lebow and Stein also argue that Khrushchev's decision to send missiles to Cuba was "not the result of his low estimate of Kennedy's resolve; rather, he decided to deploy them secretly out of respect for that resolve." http://books.google.com/books?id=Eaws3G98Ji0C&pg=PA5 )

Likewise, Anna Tusa in *The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 1945-1989* after noting Khrushchev's tribute to Kennedy's "precisely formulated opinion on every subject," observes that "On reflection, Khrushchev can hardly have been entirely pleased with the results of their meeting, however enjoyable it might have been to score off the President for a couple of days. His adversary had shown no signs of sympathy for his own version of peaceful coexistence and no desire to turn Cold War swords into ploughshares to aid Soviet technology and trade. He had failed to lure Kennedy into negotiations over Berlin, by which he could have caused ructions in the western alliance and weakened the allied position in the city. He had issued a new ultimatum and, since his threats were beginning to sound unconvincing to many friends and foes alike, he might have to act on it and take major political and military risks. And it is probably true to say that Khrushchev had made a serious miscalculation at Vienna. He had made Kennedy's blood run cold, but after the initial shock the President rallied and resolved to confront Khrushchev in Berlin..." http://books.google.com/books?id=hlGVrPoOnRkC&pg=PA243

As Tusa notes, there is a curious divergence between the fact that Khrushchev seems to have been impressed by Kennedy, and Kennedy's own perception of the meeting. Kennedy was--even reading the transcripts weeks after returning to Washington--"still shocked by Khrushchev's brutality, though if he had compared his own experience with those of other victims, he might have drawn the conclusion that Khrushchev had been almost temperate by Kremlin stndards..."

If one chooses to disbelieve all these accounts rejecting the notion that Khrushchev thought that JFK was weak, couldn't stand up to a confrontation, etc., there is one other obvious argument against the idea: after Vienna, Khrushchev once again did not follow through with his threat to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. Instead, he built the Wall--obviously an affront to the West (and to ordinary human decency) but nevertheless in Khrushchev's view the least he could do to assure the preservation of the GDR, and less likely than a separate treaty (which would end the West's transit rights to Berlin) to provoke a war-threatening crisis.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/ldbkcVUC8wM/HCiEOFH6aTcJ
 
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There are also a number of stories, perhaps apocryphal, of him telling Ike they should nuke the Soviets.

In the navy he was known as a phenomenal poker player. Less genius in strategy and more genius in opportunistic gambling.

There are a lot of stories saying a lot of things about a lot of people. Looking at the fact that he was really the first POTUS to go, "not all Communist governments in the world are actually in league with each other, and there are divisions we can exploit," and that he pursued detente with the Soviets, I think my original judgement of him is still correct.
 
The Main question is would be a Cuban Missile Crisis happen under POTUS Nixon ?

I mean that were two very decisive action before October 1962 that butterfly CMC away
one was Operation Pluto the Invasion of Cuba and overthrow of Castro Government
That started already in Eisenhower Administration under Richard Nixon (then JFK took operation Pluto over and modified it what let to total disaster)
There is realistic chance that original Operation Pluto could be successful in some way and Khrushchev never get chance to install MRBM on Cuba

Two was Berlin Wall crisis in August - October 1961 were East Germany close the Border and erected wall in middle of Berlin !
At 25 October 1961 stand US Troops and Red Army, face to face with Tanks at Check points in Berlin.
Here Nixon and Khrushchev could have come to agreement to defuse situation, likely then Khrushchev never need to install MRBM on Cuba

Had here things went worst in Berlin Wall crisis, it could have ended World War III and USSR & Cuba would be radioactive waste land.
 
"when President Kennedy became convinced that the Soviets had indeed installed offensive missiles in Cuba, he was privately furious"


Now, just because Kennedy perceived disrespect does not mean that was Khrushchev’s world view. There’s a case to be made that Khrushchev simply viewed it as a cheap, readily available way to reach approximate nuclear parity. That if we the U.S. had missiles in Germany and Turkey with short flight times to Moscow, then the Soviets wanted missiles with the same short flight time to Washington.
Actually it was pretty complicated. Certainly the USA was hellbent on overthrowing Castro for one thing, and certainly a major purpose in putting missiles in Cuba was to demonstrate that the Soviet tripwire protecting Cuba was no empty rhetoric--it would be clear to Americans that invading Cuba when operational Soviet missiles manned by Soviet officers were placed there would very likely trigger a general Soviet nuclear response.

But emotion definitely came into it--on both sides. The fact is, the Jupiter missile deployment to Turkey (and Italy) did somewhat erode the Soviet security situation, but not to any existential degree--it's not like the USSR would surely survive and win without the Jupiters threatening them and would surely collapse and lose with them. The Jupiters were pretty marginal, basically second or third string and obsolete; a USAF officer testified they "could be taken out by one guy with a rifle." The purpose the Kennedy Administration had in supplying them to these allied states was not to gain a a great strategic advantage, but the political purpose of reassuring the governments of Italy and Turkey that the USA was deeply committed to their defense. In fact exactly the same reason that was one of several the Soviets had for putting missiles in Cuba!

But when Khrushchev was informed of this American action in Turkey, he just happened to be vacationing on the Black Sea at the time. Those missiles were literally aimed to kill him, was his emotional reaction. Khr. was quite an emotional creature-for that very reason I am sure cold reason was always also present in his decisions and he understood that the personal aspect was accidental--but still, he felt the move as both a personal threat and an insult to himself and the dignity of the USSR, and this red hot emotion had a lot to do with is resolve to pay back the Americans in exact kind.

Now it is also a fact that the missiles the Russians moved into Cuba were top of the line--not their biggest, but not as quaintly obsolescent as the Jupiters were, and that unlike the Jupiters they did greatly change the strategic threat to the USA--without the Cuban missiles, Soviet ICBMs based in the USSR were both few in number, generally long in response time (most being their first wave R-7 rockets, the same rocket that launched Sputink, Vostok, and to this day launches Soyuz spacecraft, which used liquid oxygen and therefore could not be kept ready to launch on standby but had to be fueled over half an hour or more, and were like the Jupiters kept exposed and vulnerable on launching pads and not sheltered in hardened silos--this meant that a successful American penetration of Soviet air defenses could take them out on their pads before they could be launched--like the Jupiters!) and of dubious reliability and accuracy. Thus, considering that Soviet airborne bombers were also quite unlikely to penetrate US air defenses and had limited range, the ability of the USSR to credibly threaten major devastation to the USA was low, whereas American nuclear assets, including superior ICBMs in greater numbers, were pretty likely to ruin the Soviet Union. Had the Cuban missiles all been made operational and left that way, the immediate threat to the USA would have been far higher, and in particular they would fill a gap that had been especially safe from anything but submarine launched missiles. So objectively speaking it was, discounting the political risks involved, a good strategic chess move to make--but one of limited duration, for the Soviets were arming themselves with superior ICBMs, less vulnerable, more powerful and most of all in much greater numbers, and pretty soon the Cuban based threat would be superfluous, as far as strategic balance considerations mattered.

Whereas, getting them into Cuba and keeping them there would most definitely improve the odds that Americans would be deterred from invading, and that permanently. This is why I think that in terms of rationally calculated strategic considerations, the Cuban missiles would mainly serve to protect Cuba by tripwire deterrence, and the strategic benefit to the USSR itself would be temporary. Of course one can argue "temporary" was important enough in the context of two superpowers who each believe the other is liable to wish to start WWIII any day.

It remains historically true though that if we can document JFK reacting emotionally, so is Khrushchev documented to have initiated this plan of his for emotional reasons. Protecting the Cuban comrades was his first proclaimed priority, in internal Kremlin arguments, and buffering Soviet security another, but he was pretty open too that actually this was tit for tat, that Cuba was a response to the Jupiters in Turkey--and that since the Americans had done what they did in Turkey, the world community would hardly condemn the Soviets for doing an exactly parallel thing in Cuba.

However he did understand the Americans would not consider themselves bound by abstract rules of fair play, and therefore they would act to preempt his move if he announced it, so it had be accomplished in secret and presented to the world as a fait accompli.

Now we come to the ATL question--if it were Nixon instead of Kennedy in the White House, how would things be different?

1) Will Khrushchev feel the same provocations? I daresay the Jupiter program was not a pure Kennedy initiative, that Nixon too would have regarded the same offer of IRBMs to such peripheral allies to reassure them.

2) Will a Castroite Cuba still exist to propose to defend? I am not so sure that, fully informed of the facts of Bay of Pigs plans, Nixon would have acted much differently than Kennedy did. If anything his greater possible engagement with the planners might have given him colder feet, and instead of a botched operation as OTL or the more "all in" and undeniable full scale overt US invasion people assume, he might instead have done the opposite--pulled in our horns and backed off trying to overthrow Cuba, or anyway sticking as Kennedy, Johnson and their successors did to deniable and limited if relentless attempts to screw them up. Kennedy's problem was that he let a half baked plan cooked up in the Eisenhower years go forward without taking a close look at it first--had he paid real attention he'd more likely have realized this had evolved to an untenable scheme falling between stools, and that the USA would have to go big or go home.

Or perhaps not. I think US leadership, bipartisan, badly underestimated how much support Castro enjoyed. They may have sincerely and with overwhelming consensus believed that the level of deniable force the planned operation involved would be sufficient to get a snowball of anti-Castro insurrection going, and that once that progressed enough the USA could then be called in by the invading "government in exile" to help openly. Thus Nixon the same as Kennedy might have committed the same blunder.

Then there is the question of, if the planned Bay of Pigs invasion did meet the same debacle as OTL, would Nixon unlike Kennedy double down on a developing mess by overtly tipping the US hand and bringing large numbers of US forces to bear on breaking Castroite resistance to allow the invaders to prevail? As in Vietnam, Americans might assume it was just a matter of bringing a large enough fraction of our forces to the task, with a breaking point favoring our side being inevitable. I think it is equally sure though that while that finite force required might be easily attained with spare US forces while maintaining full vigilance in Europe and other Cold War fronts, we would initially underestimate it and find our forces along with the Cuban counterrevolutionaries decimated until we escalated to a degree no one anticipated. Then indeed Castroite resistance might collapse and the swift occupation of the island nation follow--but after that, if we were to leave too soon, it would break out again, and in the interim for at least a time asymmetrical resistance to the American occupation would be bitter and costly. We might indeed, perhaps, break it and a sullen pro-capitalist, if not actually pro-Yankee, regime take over. I would predict it would be generations if ever before Cuba would have meaningful democracy; the immediate regime would be some handpicked dictator running a police state. So there wouldn't be any honest political barometer to gauge whether the Castroite dream is dead or not--and the people who supported Castro OTL would have no way of knowing whether they were better off or worse off. Pro-Yankee factions would assume they'd be worse off if Castro had remained, anti-American factions that they would have been far better off so regardless of whether ATL Cuba was richer or poorer, revolutionary sentiment, reinforced by patriotism, would simmer for generations to come. This would mean American masterminds would be reluctant to see the regime loosen up and ready to excuse any excesses or blatant corruption however plain--"remember Castro!" they'd say just as often as the Castroite underground.

But none of this contradicts the argument of "no Caribbean Crisis" because the Russians would lose their opportunity--unless either Nixon like Kennedy would think twice about escalating the invasion when rosy scenario predictions went sour, or after some higher level engagement with limited US force he foresaw the deep costs of following through and backed out. Conceivably there would be a truce at some front and there would subsequently be an "East Cuba" and "West Cuba" along the same lines as Korea and Vietnam. In any of those cases, Khrushchev would have as much or more reason to think he could get away with sneaking missiles into whatever part of Cuba the Castroites still hold--on one hand Yankee surveillance is higher, on the other the polarized situation makes for tight control of information on both sides--on the gripping hand, each side is full of natural spies for the other to be sure.

But if the Americans resolve to follow through even if the interim before Yankee conquest is complete is quite long, a matter of years, the writing will be on the wall and K would not dare risk planting Soviet missiles in territory that could be overrun any day and will be exposed to constant bombing and surveillance flights all the time.

Now we have to factor in calculations on both sides that might cause this Cuban crisis, the crisis caused by Nixon doubling down and insisting on a victorious invasion whatever it costs, to itself trigger Armageddon. It probably won't because Khrushchev and other insiders in the Kremlin would know US nuclear forces would destroy the USSR while all the Soviets could count on would be to kill a certain fraction of Americans-10, if they got real lucky maybe 20 percent. Europe would be an apocalyptic mess as would be Japan and South Korea--with American screening forces destroyed or deployed elsewhere Taiwan might be conquered by the PRC, and perhaps the North Vietnamese Army would go for broke and find the Saigon government helpless with US logistics cut off. But when the dust of the Exchange settles, the USA will still be in being though Washington DC is likely gone the way of the dodo along with NYC and a couple dozen other important cities. Fallout will lead to hungry years (along with a certain number of people being majorly poisoned by contaminated food they eat out of desperation, seriously shortening their life spans) and probable police state aspects of life in America, but it will be paradise compared to most of the rest of the former developed world, and well able to support a massive military establishment that simultaneously polices the home front and runs roughshod over the more desirable parts of the rest of the world.

Or, after some bluster and maybe some calculated loss in limited war, the Soviets back down and Nixon is left in relative peace to mire the USA in the conquest and occupation of Cuba. Just as the Soviets could afford to be second in the Space Race they can afford to be driven out of the running in some spot in the Third World, pointing to the massive efforts the Americans have to make and making the most they can politically over deplorable acts of American repression, painting the Yankees in the same light the world left regarded Franco--and his Nazi and Fascist patrons.

So, no Cuban missile crisis, instead the 1960s are defined by the conventional Cuban Crisis. The Soviets will win diplomatic brownie points for withdrawing and sparing the world nuclear Ragnarok, all the while steadily building up the missile forces at home that can deliver a truly comprehensive Ragnarok within half a decade. Khrushchev might have greater conviction of Nixon's resolve than Kennedy's, but he will not surrender control of East Berlin or any of East Germany. The Vietnamese will face a USA that is heavily engaged in Cuba. To be sure Nixon in these circumstances might crack down on the counterculture and New Left, and bully liberals in both mainstream party into signing off on major police state powers, and with the nation in the hand of sophisticated spinmeisters from Madison avenue a spirit of gung ho patriotism might be cultivated that makes the Americans ruthless and aggressive in Vietnam to the point that something like the aggression in Cuba is extended to South Vietnam and eventually invasion of the North--as in Korea though the closer they get to the PRC the more worried American commanders and especially diplomats will be that China might suddenly go all in on the North's ostensible behalf. So, no actual conquest of Hanoi and taking on de-Communifying a second Third World do it yourself Leninist regime--perhaps Annam would be annexed to the South in full and turned into a giant DMZ; I imagine Cambodia's neutrality would go to the dogs with a coup by some pre-incarnation of Lon Nol and the exile or death of Prince Sihanouk. Because of censorship and spin control at home, the anti-war movement against the Vietnam intervention would not be allowed to grow, but service in Vietnam and probably Cambodia would have a hidden demoralizing effect on the US military, the Army suffering especially--and perhaps with notoriety of the war suppressed, it would spread to all deployments everywhere and go unchecked, reinforced by similar if less severe traumas in Cuba. Perhaps in Cuba there would be more cultural contact between occupiers and occupied; the regime controllers, American and Cuban, would try to steer US service member fraternization to vetted "good Cubans," but the controls might be more permeable than the spymasters believe and a certain number of US troops could be propagandized to leftist radicalism, along with people who arrive at such conclusions by sheer deduction. An American counterculture would be repressed and limited but become a hothouse of consensus radical leftism and this would propagate in particular in the military. It probably would be mainly concentrated in the Army to be sure.

With no Caribbean Crisis to discredit him, Khrushchev might last longer, meaning a serious effort at gaming out a detailed ATL would be needed to predict what happens to the Soviet Union when he eventually is out. Odds are he will undermine himself in other ways and be ousted not too long after he was OTL, and it seems a solid bet something like the Brezhnev period will follow--if one calls it Stalinist, definitely still Stalinist Lite, but less buoyant with optimism and more conventional and complacent than under the mercurial Khrushchev. He died in the early '70s so even if he learns to avoid alienating all his allies his personal writ is limited. I would imagine the Berlin Crisis would be much as OTL with the Berlin Wall being the eventual solution.
 
...(then JFK took operation Pluto over and modified it what let to total disaster)...

Respectfully disagree, Michel. It is my impression that the essential thing about "Pluto" was that it would be plausibly deniable, which meant US intervention would be limited until the invaders had managed to secure enough territory to make a plausible claim to be the legitimate government, after which US resources would be more forthcoming. The decision was between no intervention at all, a covert intervention as described, getting the foot in the door before the Yankees could openly pull it wide open, or biting the bullet with an overt all in US invasion committed to drive Castro out quickly. (And I predict even that would not be as quick and be far more bloody than any American planner estimated). Since leaving Castro alone was off the table as far as all mainstream factions of the US establishment were concerned it boiled down to choosing between covert and overt, knowing the latter would surely incite Soviet bluffs and bluster that might turn real, thus triggering WWIII. For that matter a covert effort might conceivably have the same effect. I've already speculated the Soviets would not go over the brink for Cuba in 1961 or even '62--we have excellent evidence of that from the OTL Crisis itself, when Castro was gung-ho for war and scared the hell out of his Russian patrons.

As I understand it, Kennedy did little or nothing to modify this Dulles brainchild. His mistake was to let it ride with only minor tweaking and slide on through as pretty much a done deal inherited from Ike. The premise of success was that the level of the ostensibly wildcat and 100 percent Cuban invasion would be sufficient to trigger hope in the presumed sullenly anti-Castro majority who would rally to the invaders, and then overt US aid could seal the victory. But in fact the invasion was a wet squib from the moment they landed; essentially none of the mass uprising against Castro expected happened. To the contrary the countryside proved quite hostile to the invaders and the whole pretext of US intervention, the request for aid by a beleaguered and noble uprising of freedom fighters with credibility as a rival government to Castro's was completely deflated. For the USA to follow through in the circumstances would be a blatant act of conquest.

So, if Nixon were in charge, he surely would have been just as complacent, if not more so, than Kennedy--after all the scheme arose from the same Administration Nixon had just been a member of. Had Pluto gone ahead exactly as Eisenhower left it, it would meet the same debacle and force Nixon to make the same choice--follow through and eliminate Castro by an act of sheer aggressive and hostile invasion and take the diplomatic (and perhaps unforeseen domestic, as the occupation stretched into decades) consequences, in theory risking the destruction of Europe in WWIII, or back off and disavow it--or as Kennedy did, take blame for it openly. If the planners had more accurate intelligence, or the will to pay heed to it, of the attitude of the Cuban countryside to a choice between "The Beard" and El Norte again, they would know the veneer of a populist rising to nobly aid was not to be had and come back to the harder choice--either accept that Castro was master in Cuba, or recognize that the only way to change that would be to overthrow him with overt US force. Perhaps instead of plotting this invasion, Allen Dulles might have sought to orchestrate some sort of diplomatic or military crisis, say involving the Guantanamo enclave, to excuse an American DOW.

This would make Ike look like a hypocrite of the first water after his chastising Britain, France and Israel for their recourse to military action instead of taking Nasser to task in the UN in the Suez affair not so many years before, particularly as he threatened both European powers and supposed allies with cutting them off from oil credits badly needed in the winter to compel them to come to heel. Supposedly the age of war was over and the UN existed to resolve matters peacefully. Of course anyone seeing through the transparently "covert" actions in Guatemala and Iran just a couple years before that could see Ike for the double standards he held, but an open DOW would be the last nail in the coffin of his "Take it to the UN" doctrine. Far better if the actual crisis waited to break in the subsequent administration, at least for Eisenhower's reputation.

Even with a new deal of the cards under a new President, the USA would look bad declaring war on tiny Cuba. Thus they grasped at the straw of a Cuban uprising to invite the USA in, perhaps even via an appeal to a compliant Organization of American States. Planning on open, overt war would be a bitter pill even disregarding possible Soviet precipitate reactions and being blissfully unforesightful of what a bitter slog the war would be and how painfully drawn out the eternal and somewhat bloody occupation, possibly devastating consequences to US domestic society.

But these were the new President of 1961's options--take the painful step of letting Castro alone; the bogus, self-deluded hope of engineering a plausibly domestic rising against Castro, or the painful step of unilaterally aggressive invasion and conquest. Neither candidate would be particularly likely to recognize the fallacy of their "ideal" middle option; forced to face it both would turn to invasion eventually I suppose, were it not for the Crisis. Assuming Nixon would do anything radically different from Kennedy seems unwarranted.
 
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