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The Kennedy Doctrines & US Relations BY Shaconda Peterson POL 300 Instructor Dr. Angela Agboli-Esedebe Date: September 3, 2011

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The Kennedy Doctrine refers to foreign policy initiatives of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, towards Latin America during his term in office between 1961 and 1963. Kennedy voiced support for the containment of Communism and the reversal of Communist progress in the Western Hemisphere. The Kennedy Doctrine was essentially an expansion of the foreign policy prerogatives of the previous administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman. The foreign policies of these presidents all revolved around the threat of communism and the means by which the United States would attempt to contain the spread of it. The Truman Doctrine focused on the containment of communism by providing assistance to countries resisting communism in Europe while the Eisenhower Doctrine was focused upon providing both military and economic assistance to nations resisting communism in the Middle East and by increasing the flow of trade from the United States into Latin America. The Kennedy Doctrine was based on these same objectives but was more concerned with the spread of communism and Soviet influence in Latin America following the Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power under Eisenhower during the 1950s. Some of the most notable events that stemmed from tenets of JFKs foreign policy initiatives in regard to Latin America and the spread of communism were: The Bay of Pigs Invasion, April 17, 1961, Increase of U.S. involvement in Vietnam War, 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis, October, 1962, and Ratification of Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, July, 1963. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three

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months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United States. The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the invading combatants within three days. The main invasion landing took place at a beach named Playa Girn, located at the mouth of the bay. The invasion is named after the Bay of Pigs, although that is only a modern translation of the Spanish Baha de Cochinos. In Latin America, the conflict is often known as La Batalla de Girn, or just Playa Girn (John F. Kennedy). In 1962, the Soviet Union was desperately behind the United States in the arms race. Soviet missiles were only powerful enough to be launched against Europe but U.S. missiles were capable of striking the entire Soviet Union. In late April 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range missiles in Cuba. A deployment in Cuba would double the Soviet strategic arsenal and provide a real deterrent to a potential U.S. attack against the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was looking for a way to defend his island nation from an attack by the U.S. Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961; Castro felt a second attack was inevitable. Consequently, he approved of Khrushchev's plan to place missiles on the island. In the summer of 1962 the Soviet Union worked quickly and secretly to build its missile installations in Cuba. For the United States, the crisis began on October 15, 1962 when reconnaissance photographs revealed Soviet missiles under construction in Cuba. Early the next day, President John Kennedy was informed of the missile installations. Kennedy immediately organized the EX-COMM, a group of his twelve most important advisors to handle the crisis. After seven days of guarded and intense debate within the upper echelons of government, Kennedy concluded to impose a naval quarantine around Cuba. He wished to prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island. On October 22, Kennedy announced the discovery of the missile installations to the public and his decision to quarantine the island. He

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also proclaimed that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba. Tensions finally began to ease on October 28 when Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the installations and return the missiles to the Soviet Union, expressing his trust that the United States would not invade Cuba. Further negotiations were held to implement the October 28 agreement, including a United States demand that Soviet light bombers be removed from Cuba, and specifying the exact form and conditions of United States assurances not to invade Cuba (The Cuban Missile Crisis, 2010). It was here where Kennedy developed his program of flexible response. This entailed the end of all out nuclear confrontation in the method espoused by deterrence and rather reliance on gradual missile proliferation supplemented by conventional force build up. This also entailed an increase in covert operations as well. Flexible response also provided for the Rearmament of Western Germany and the construction of a figurative trip wire euphemistically referred to as check point Charlie, a force of US - 30,000 soldiers between the two fortresses of communism and capitalism. In sum Kennedy's policy of flexible response kept the soviets out of the reconstruction of the western European economy. (Wheat) The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. Although the chief military forces never engaged in a major battle with each other, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

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After the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, the USSR and the US saw each other as profound enemies of their basic ways of life. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (19551991). The US financed the recovery of Western Europe and forged NATO, a military alliance using containment of communism as a main strategy (Truman Doctrine). The US funded the Marshall Plan to effectuate a more rapid post-War recovery of Europe, while the Soviet Union would not let most Eastern Bloc members participate. Elsewhere, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. Among the countries that the USSR supported in pro-communist revolt was Cuba, led by Fidel Castro. The proximity of communist Cuba to the United States proved to be a center point of the Cold War; the USSR placed multiple nuclear missiles in Cuba, sparking heated tension with the Americans and leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Cold War featured periods of relative calm and of international high tension the Berlin Blockade (19481949), the Korean War (19501953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (19591975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (19791989), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides sought dtente to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack, which would probably guarantee their mutual assured destruction with nuclear weapons.

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In the 1980s, under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the nation was already suffering economic stagnation. In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika and glasnost. The Cold War ended after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power. The Cold War and its events have had a significant impact on the world today, and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially films and novels about spies. Established in 1912, the early years of the Republic of China were characterized by the domination of warlords and foreign incursions. When World War I broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied side and seized the German possessions in Shandong. The Japanese set before the Beiyang government in Beijing the Twenty-One Demands. The Beijing government rejected some of these demands but yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping the Shandong territory already in its possession. Between 1901 and 1937, the United States military maintained a strong presence in China to maintain Far East trade interests and to pursue a permanent alliance with the Republic of China, after long diplomatic difficulties with the Chinese Empire. The relationship between the U.S. and China was mostly on-again off-again, with periods of both cordial diplomatic relations accompanied by times of severed relations and violent anti-U.S. protests. The United States military in China was slowly withdrawn to protect other U.S. interests in the Pacific with the approach of World War II. The consolidation of alliances between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) and between the US and Japan, as well as the strengthening of ties between Japan and the ROK in recent years, has further intensified tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the world's only

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region that has remnants of the Cold War, and made it an urgent task to promote denuclearization on the peninsula and maintain its peace and stability. In late 2010 and early 2011, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the US, two key rivals in the region, had some engagements under the brokering of China, which to some extent eased tensions on the peninsula. In the meantime, the DPRK embraced a restrained attitude toward the joint military exercises conducted between the US and the ROK and expressed its willingness for engagement with Washington and Seoul and the unconditional resumption of the stalled Six-Party Talks. It even said it would agree to discuss its uranium enrichment plan during talks. In response, the US put forward a plan for three-stage talks, with talks between the two Koreas first and then consultations between itself and Pyongyang. Only after that, it said, would the six-way talks be resumed. At the same time, warmer ties between China and the US, Japan and the ROK since the start of this year, together with its improving ties with the DPRK, have brought some positive effects to the evolution of the Korean Peninsula situations (Tuosheng, 2011). The foreign policy of the United States is the policy for which the United States interacts with foreign nations and sets standards of interaction for its organizations, corporations and individual citizens. In the 21st century, U.S. influence remains strong but, in relative terms, is declining in terms of economic output compared to rising nations such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, and the newly consolidated European Union. Substantial problems remain, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the specter of nuclear terrorism. Foreign policy analyst suggest that all six powers have similar vested interests in stability and terrorism prevention and

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trade; if they can find common ground, then the next decades may be marked by peaceful growth and prosperity. In conclusion, it is difficult to know for certain what effect Kennedy's programs would have had on Vietnam or in the Third World in total entirety. What is known though is that the Kennedy Doctrine emphasized the importance of the domino theory in the Third World in traditional notions of geopolitical interests being firmly locked and geared towards geoeconomics interests. Historian, William S. Borden maintains that Kennedy's commitment to the Third World, "...was to launch an aggressive but ultimately futile defense of American hegemony." (Hogan, America in the World, 356) The Vietnam War was doomed to happen with or without Kennedy's approval. Next the US has come a long way with regard to foreign policies with China & the USSR, but is it far enough? In my opinion I do not think so. The USSR, I believe still has some negative tensions toward the US and if they were a stronger military power I feel that we should be nervous. We have a huge trade base with China and because of that I feel that we are on stable ground. Even though with the economy today, China is not pleased with how our markets are looking. Realizing that the US market has an effect on the world markets is cause for them to be concerned.

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References

Bibliography
The Cuban Missile Crisis. (2010). Retrieved July 30, 2011, from Library of Think Quest: http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/days/index.html Givan, T. (2007). Cold War. Retrieved Aug 31, 2011, from GPWEB.US: http://gpweb.us/VLColdWarIndex.htm Hogan, M. (1995). America in the World. Retrieved July 30, 2011, from http://www.amazon.com/America-World-Historiography-ForeignRelations/dp/0521498074#reader_0521498074 John F. Kennedy. (n.d.). Retrieved July 30, 2011, from John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum: http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/The-Bay-of-Pigs.aspx Roskin, M. &. (2010). IR: The New World OF International Business Relations. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions. Tuosheng, Z. (2011, June 16). Making Peace with the Past. Retrieved August 31, 2011, from China.ORG: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2011-06/16/content_22796848.htm Wheat, T. (n.d.). A State of Clear and Present Danger: A history of american foreign policy during the cold war. Retrieved July 30, 2011, from Kennedy LBJ Vietanam: www.oocities.org