WI: Nixon Wins in 1960

What if Richard Nixon became President of the United States in 1960 instead of Kennedy?

My predictions are that the Bay of Pigs still takes place in early 1961 and provided air support. The Castro government is eliminated and a counter revolution takes place. Nixon does not increase the number of military advisers in Vietnam nor authorize the assassination of Diem. There is no civil rights legislation, none of the policies the Democrats, wanted the Soviets make it to the moon first, but a much more peaceful decade.
 
1. There are already timelines on this site about a Nixon victory in 1960.

2. Nixon supported civil rights, in fact more than Kennedy did, and the civil rights legislation would have passed anyway.

3. America would still get active in the space race. Eisenhower had created NASA and his successor had no intention of letting the soviets stay ahead.

4. Nixon would definitely be more involved in Cuba.
 
Vietnam is an open question but Nixon did go to China OTL so while I don't know if he knew the region well beforehand he would probably have not have continuously fucked up in Asia if things were clearly going wrong.


Cuba even if Bay of Pigs doesn't work probably never becomes the great flashpoint as OTL given the Soviets new Nixon and when OTL the Israelis were getting their asses handed to them they expected Nixon to nuke them over it after he started beating the war drums. They would never risk placing offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba with a Nixon Whitehouse on the grounds it would see Moscow obliterated.
 
What if Richard Nixon became President of the United States in 1960 instead of Kennedy?

My predictions are that the Bay of Pigs still takes place in early 1961 and provided air support. The Castro government is eliminated and a counter revolution takes place.

Air support would not have been enough to save the invasion. As Jeffrey Record writes in *The Wrong War, Why We Lost in Vietnam* (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1998), p. 171:

"It was clear at the time that the invasion could not possibly have succeeded without American air support. But it was no less clear to many at the time, as has been the judgment of almost every retrospective analysis, that the invasion would have failed even with that support. The argument over Kennedy's decsion is irrelevant because the premises and planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion were so faulty that no amount of air support would have made a decisive difference. Aside from the invasion's fatal lack of secrecy and violation of every principle of amphibious assault, it was ludicrous to expect a force of fourteen hundred to hold its own against the twenty thousand Cuban army regulars and local militia that Castro could--and did--assemble to lock the invaders down on their beachhead. But an invasion of ten times as many exiles would also have beeen dooomed from the start because of the CIA's disastrous assumption that Operation Zapata would spark a mass popular uprising against the Castro government; the CIA apparently assumed that Castro was as unpopular at home as he was in the Cuban exile community in the United States. In fact, in 1961 the Cuban Revolution and Castro were still immensely popular on the island. Cuban communism's appeal...rested first and foremost on its nationalist credentials, and Castro was swift to exploit the Bay of Pigs as yet another Yankee bid to reenslave Cuba to American capitalism. In the final analysis, it made no difference in April 1961 what the USS *Essex* did not do off Cuba's shores."
http://books.google.com/books?id=VRekjjSA5uIC&pg=PA171

Even if one thinks that Record is exaggerating Castro's support in Cuba in 1961 and instead attributes the lack of a popular rebellion to the efficiency of Castro's security police, the result is the same. Of course, if the exiles had not just air support but the support of US ground troops as well, the result would have been different, but in that event, why start with an exile invasion to begin with? And it is arguable that even a "successful" invasion would be a bad thing for the US: see my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/DQFyp4RcAUQ/ErKyse2Ms3MJ
 
What if Richard Nixon became President of the United States in 1960 instead of Kennedy?

My predictions are that the Bay of Pigs still takes place in early 1961 and provided air support. The Castro government is eliminated and a counter revolution takes place. Nixon does not increase the number of military advisers in Vietnam nor authorize the assassination of Diem. There is no civil rights legislation, none of the policies the Democrats, wanted the Soviets make it to the moon first, but a much more peaceful decade.

Its possible the BOP might have been more successful with air support, but it would have taken a heck of a lot more than that for the coup to have been successful.
Nixon was a hawk, there is no doubt Vietnam would have escalated under him just as it did under Johnson.
Nixon was if anything a more determined proponent of civil rights than Kennedy, in fact had he pushed through some form of civil rights legislation in 63/64 it could well have split the Democratic Party, with someone like Wallace running third party in '64.
Nixon probably wouldn't have been a great space programme enthusiast, and I cant see him being prepared to spend billions to put a man on the moon.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Air support would not have been enough to save the invasion. As Jeffrey Record writes in *The Wrong War, Why We Lost in Vietnam* (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1998), p. 171:

"It was clear at the time that the invasion could not possibly have succeeded without American air support. But it was no less clear to many at the time, as has been the judgment of almost every retrospective analysis, that the invasion would have failed even with that support. The argument over Kennedy's decsion is irrelevant because the premises and planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion were so faulty that no amount of air support would have made a decisive difference. Aside from the invasion's fatal lack of secrecy and violation of every principle of amphibious assault, it was ludicrous to expect a force of fourteen hundred to hold its own against the twenty thousand Cuban army regulars and local militia that Castro could--and did--assemble to lock the invaders down on their beachhead. But an invasion of ten times as many exiles would also have beeen dooomed from the start because of the CIA's disastrous assumption that Operation Zapata would spark a mass popular uprising against the Castro government; the CIA apparently assumed that Castro was as unpopular at home as he was in the Cuban exile community in the United States. In fact, in 1961 the Cuban Revolution and Castro were still immensely popular on the island. Cuban communism's appeal...rested first and foremost on its nationalist credentials, and Castro was swift to exploit the Bay of Pigs as yet another Yankee bid to reenslave Cuba to American capitalism. In the final analysis, it made no difference in April 1961 what the USS *Essex* did not do off Cuba's shores."
http://books.google.com/books?id=VRekjjSA5uIC&pg=PA171

Even if one thinks that Record is exaggerating Castro's support in Cuba in 1961 and instead attributes the lack of a popular rebellion to the efficiency of Castro's security police, the result is the same. Of course, if the exiles had not just air support but the support of US ground troops as well, the result would have been different, but in that event, why start with an exile invasion to begin with? And it is arguable that even a "successful" invasion would be a bad thing for the US: see my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/DQFyp4RcAUQ/ErKyse2Ms3MJ

Cuba is an island nation. It's very difficult to maintain a resistance when your enemy has control of the seas and air around and above the entire island.
 
Cuba is an island nation. It's very difficult to maintain a resistance when your enemy has control of the seas and air around and above the entire island.

There have been plenty of examples of guerrilla warfare on islands, including Cuba itself (both against the Spanish in the late nineteenth century and against Batista in the 1950's) and for example the Huk rebellion in the Philippines.

Of course if the US puts in sufficient troops it can prevent the guerrillas from winning, and can prop up whatever government it chooses to establish. But that is something different from saying that just providing air support would be enough.
 
Instead of Vietnam

Assuming a full-bore invasion using the Cuban exiles as an excuse (hey, we were just helping them -- with ten times their number...) the war would replace Vietnam. The Americans would have an island 90 miles offshore sucking them dry. Antiwar movement comes a bit earlier. Lee Harvey Oswald is watched closely (due to his "Fair Play for Cuba" thingy).

Rather than getting credit for aiding Hispanics, Uncle Sam is excoriated for invading a Hispanic country. Assuming Nixon would beat back a challenge in 1964, it would be only a good assumption the Republicans would lose heavily in 1968.

Collateral damage would be the repudiation of any conservative or neo-conservative anti-communist military push. (If Conservatism makes it past 1970, it would be a miracle.) OTOH, a great many, including Democrats, are soured on the notion of government competency. So, no form of a "Great Society".
 
Assuming a full-bore invasion using the Cuban exiles as an excuse (hey, we were just helping them -- with ten times their number...) the war would replace Vietnam. The Americans would have an island 90 miles offshore sucking them dry. Antiwar movement comes a bit earlier. Lee Harvey Oswald is watched closely (due to his "Fair Play for Cuba" thingy).

Rather than getting credit for aiding Hispanics, Uncle Sam is excoriated for invading a Hispanic country. Assuming Nixon would beat back a challenge in 1964, it would be only a good assumption the Republicans would lose heavily in 1968.

Collateral damage would be the repudiation of any conservative or neo-conservative anti-communist military push. (If Conservatism makes it past 1970, it would be a miracle.) OTOH, a great many, including Democrats, are soured on the notion of government competency. So, no form of a "Great Society".

I would expect it to be a conflict with a size in between Vietnam and Iraq.
 
Actually, the flash-point in Indochina was Laos around 1960. ARVN was getting effective enough to make crossing the DMZ unreliable, and focus on the Ho Chi Minh Trail began. Kennedy solved it by neutralizing Laos, which in effect did nothing.

Oddly enough, intervention in Vietnam may mean troops in Laos more than South Vietnam.
 
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