Grand Illusion

Men rarely give up their illusions, even when those illusions are scraped away by the sharp edges of reality. For John F. Kennedy, that process has been going on painfully since Inauguration Day. Last week, when a U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba went catastrophically awry, the young President got a lesson about the peril of holding onto his illusions.

Despite the tone of somber realism in his campaign speeches and his inaugural address, President Kennedy came into office cherishing some naive notions about the possibilities of easing cold-war tensions through rational negotiation--and about the extent to which the shrewd tactics that had carried him so far in U.S. politics would serve him in trying to cope with Communism. "Let us never negotiate out of fear," Kennedy said in his inaugural address, "but let us never fear to negotiate." But what had sabotaged negotiations during the Eisenhower Administration was not fear of negotiation; it was the Communists' underlying hostility to the West, and relentless dedication to ultimate world domination.

John F. Kennedy has spent his first 100 presidential days in learning such facts of cold war life. Instead of granting the six month lull that Kennedy had asked for, Nikita Khrushchev intensified the cold war, with guerrilla warfare in Laos, subversion in South Viet Nam, and increased arms shipments to Cuba-Propaganda Windfall. When the President tried to halt the Communist thrust in Laos by proposing a cease-fire and a neutral status, with official hints of a U.S. "response" if the Communists did not accept his plan, his countrymen gave him plaudits for his coolness and courage. But in stark fact, Kennedy's move failed to achieve anything against the cunning and purposefulness of Nikita Khrushchev. The Russians have simply stalled on a ceasefire, and meanwhile the buildup of Communist arms in Laos has continued. The tuition fee for Kennedy's foreign-policy education in Laos may be the loss of that country to Communism.

The lessons of Cuba, in contrast, came with jolting swiftness. Again, Kennedy underestimated his adversary and overestimated the realism of his own expectations. In backing the invasion of Cuba by a force of U.S.-trained Cuban exiles, Kennedy hoped to bring down Fidel Castro's Communist regime in Cuba without stirring too many international accusations of "imperialism" and "colonialism" against the U.S. But the bungled invasion ended in a massacre. And the onlooking nations blamed the U.S. for the invasion almost as shrilly as if Kennedy had sent in the Marines. Seizing the propaganda windfall, Khrushchev sanctimoniously denounced the invasion as "a crime which has revolted the entire world."

Double Scar. Great nations are always criticized when they appear aggressive. They are despised when they seem weak. By backing an inadequate and mismanaged invasion attempt, President Kennedy achieved the unhappy feat of making the U.S. seem both aggressive and weak at the same time. Victory would have brought outcries against "imperialism." but at least it would have been victory. Said a Latin American diplomat to a U.S. diplomat at the U.N.: "You succeeded in Guatemala, and that left a scar. You failed in Cuba, and that will leave a double scar."

Coming so soon after the Russian man-in-space triumph, the Cuba fiasco seriously damaged U.S. prestige--a subject on which Kennedy had orated too glibly during the campaign. The country's prestige would rise again, and in his actions since the debacle, the President indicated by his sobering talk that he had learned some valuable lessons.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.