Bay of Pigs Invasion - Rancocas Valley Regional High School



Bay of Pigs Invasion

Also known as: Bahía de los Cochinos  

Date: 1961

From: Encyclopedia of American History: Postwar United States, 1946 to 1968, vol. 9.

Located on the southern coast of Cuba, the Bay of Pigs marks the site of a failed invasion of Cuban exile forces trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in April 1961. The operation was designed to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro, considered a dangerous communist by the American government.

By the late 1950s, North Americans owned most of the mines, cattle ranches, and sugar plantations in Cuba and the U.S. government propped up the corrupt and dictatorial regime of General Fulgencio Batista. After a three-year campaign, a group of revolutionaries and peasants led by Fidel Castro marched into Havana and overthrew the Batista government on New Year's Day, 1959. Castro had received little help from the Cuban Communist Party during his struggle, although he soon took control of it. He launched his own brand of reform program that involved massive land redistribution, seizure of U.S.-owned oil companies, and confiscation of other privately owned firms. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower halted American imports of Cuban sugar and cut off all trade to Cuba except for medicine and some food staples. Castro turned to Premier Nikita Khrushchev for economic assistance, and the Soviets bought increasing amounts of Cuban sugar. Convinced that Castro was a puppet of the Soviets and that this invasion was the first step toward communist control of the Caribbean, the Eisenhower administration prepared plans to overthrow the new Cuban leader.

CIA chief Allen Dulles dispatched agents to Guatemala to train a group of Cuban exiles to invade their homeland. The CIA believed that a small invasion force would trigger a large internal uprising, but it underestimated the depth of the Cuban public's support for Castro.

When John F. Kennedy became president and learned of the operation, he agreed to support it. He had made Cuba a major issue in the 1960 campaign by criticizing the Eisenhower administration for "losing" a country in America's backyard to the communists. Kennedy had promised to take action against Castro and believed that his political credibility was at stake. Like Eisenhower, Kennedy also subscribed to the domino theory and argued that if Castro was not defeated, he would launch a series of leftist revolutions culminating in the communization of Latin America. He overestimated the degree of Cuban interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors, at least at that time. Because he viewed communism as a monolithic movement, Kennedy thought of Cuba as a Soviet satellite, a picture that was not entirely accurate. Castro approved all Soviet decisions about economic or military aid to Cuba. Kennedy's view of Castro contributed to his decision to approve the invasion, named Operation Zapata.

Concerned about American prestige, Kennedy wanted to hide U.S. involvement as much as possible. Less than a month before the invasion, he revised the plan so that the landing site was more isolated and the landing would occur at night. He also inserted a stipulation that there would be no direct U.S. military participation, including air cover. These changes proved to be disastrous.

The invasion began on April 17, 1961, and in less than two days it was over. Of the more than 1,450 men, 114 died and the rest were captured and imprisoned. Because the Bay of Pigs is a swampy area, easily cut off from the rest of the island, Castro's army quickly surrounded the invasion force and sank the ship transporting the reserve ammunition. Even if the commandos had somehow managed to evade Castro's forces, they would have had to cross the wetlands to reach the Escambray Mountains where they were supposed to meet up with internal anti-Castro allies, recoup their losses, and launch guerrilla operations from the mountainsides. More critical, the expedition failed to trigger an internal uprising. The exile army's fate was sealed when Kennedy canceled a planned second strike by American planes. Eventually, Kennedy authorized a payment of $53 million in pharmaceuticals and food to the Cuban government in exchange for the release of the surviving prisoners.

The CIA's role in the operation soon became public knowledge and the United States suffered international condemnation. Although Kennedy publicly accepted sole responsibility for the invasion, he privately believed that his advisers had failed him and that the CIA and the military had misled him. He shook up the CIA, replacing Dulles with John McCone, and rearranged the national security bureaucracy to have more authority in the White House. The Kennedy administration also intensified its campaign against the Cuban government by tightening the economic blockade and instituting Operation Mongoose, an interagency task force designed to overthrow the Castro regime by fomenting discord, sabotaging economic targets in Cuba, and, if necessary, assassinating Castro himself. These covert operations led Castro to seek military assistance from the Soviet Union, precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

Also known as: Bahía de los Cochinos  

Date: 1961

From: Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History.

On April 17, 1961, a brigade of 1,500 Cuban exiles trained by the United States's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, expecting to ignite a revolution that would topple Fidel Castro's Communist government. The brigade soon faced several thousand Cuban soldiers and Castro's weakened but still functional air force. The exile brigade appealed to the United States for additional air support, but President John F. Kennedy refused. At the end of two days of fighting, its numbers cut in half and low on ammunition, the exile force surrendered. More than 100 exiles lay dead, along with an estimated 150 to 2,000 Cubans, and 1,189 exiles were taken prisoner. The mission's humiliating and very public failure generated political and diplomatic shock waves throughout the Western Hemisphere and the world.

Cuba had been heavily influenced by the United States since the Spanish-American War ended in 1898. While Cuba was nominally independent, Americans controlled the island's political and economic fate. Fulgencio Batista, the military dictator of Cuba from 1934 to 1959, catered to American businessmen and the island's wealthy plantation owners while neglecting the impoverished masses. In 1959, a young revolutionary nationalist named Fidel Castro led a successful coup against the Batista government in the name of the people. U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the new government just six days after its formation but quickly turned on Castro when the Cuban leader announced he was a Marxist-Leninist and aligned with the Soviet Union.

Emboldened by an insurgency the CIA had successfully launched in Guatemala in 1954, Eisenhower authorized the Bay of Pigs operation as a means of removing Castro and the Communist regime. President John F. Kennedy, elected in November 1960, inherited the plan from Eisenhower. Having criticized Eisenhower for being soft on Castro and convinced by the CIA that the brigade attack would be supported by a popular anti-Castro uprising, Kennedy pressed ahead with the plan despite warnings from presidential adviser Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright that it could prove disastrous. Kennedy, in just the third month of his presidency, demanded only one condition from the operation planners: that there be no overt participation by the U.S. armed forces.

Kennedy learned of the Bay of Pigs failure at a white tie dinner in Washington on the evening of April 18. There he rejected further U.S. air cover on the grounds that such overt aggression by the United States against Cuba would undermine goodwill in the region and escalate the conflict to the point that the Soviet Union might decide to intervene. Kennedy was ultimately forced to accept public responsibility for the fiasco anyway when U.S. direct participation became public.

The political backlash in the United States was tremendous. Liberals complained that Kennedy had turned American foreign policy over to the CIA. Conservatives lamented the fact that a Communist government continued to exist just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The regional fallout was bleak as well. Despite increases in Alliance for Progress aid money for Latin America, U.S. prestige in the Western Hemisphere suffered. Most important was the damage done to U.S.-Soviet relations. It forced both superpowers to harden their diplomatic and military positions and contributed to the general tensions that would play a part in a number of global showdowns, including the building of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War.

Political aspects of the Bay of Pigs Invasion

From: Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba generally is viewed as one of the most significant American foreign blunders of the cold war. Its roots lay in cold war hubris regarding the scope of American power, stereotyping of the enemy, and pathologies associated with small-group decision making. Because the locale was the same and the policy makers in the United States largely were the same, the Bay of Pigs invasion is also linked with one of the major American foreign-policy successes of the cold war: the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Although carried out by the Kennedy administration, planning for the Bay of Pigs dates back to the Eisenhower administration. Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, overthrowing longtime pro-American dictator Fulgencio Batista, whose rule had grown increasingly corrupt and repressive. Upon seizing power Castro quickly moved to initiate a series of economic and social reforms designed to lessen America's economic dominance of the Cuban economy. Among the actions he took was confiscating American sugar mills and other property without compensation. He also turned to Russia for economic aid and, by so doing, declared that the Monroe Doctrine was dead. Gradually Castro's rhetoric, which was always nationalistic and anti-American, took on a harsh Marxist-Leninist tone.

Dating back at least to the Platt Amendment, the United States had always viewed Cuba as an integral element in its hemispheric national security system. The Eisenhower administration shared this view and, in March 1960, it ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to organize Castro's removal from power. The vehicle was to be a band of Cuban exiles organized and trained by the CIA in Guatemala. Just before leaving the presidency Eisenhower cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Foreign policy was a major issue in the presidential race between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. Kennedy hit hard at the Eisenhower administration's permitting a "communist satellite" to be established in Cuba. As he would in Berlin, President Kennedy came to define Cuba as a test of wills with the Soviet Union. Kennedy gave the go-ahead to the CIA's plan on the condition that the United States would not be associated with the operation. Such assurances were given and accepted in spite of the fact that the upcoming invasion was openly talked about in Washington and the press.

In April 1961 the 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exile guerrilla force landed in Cuba. Within two days the operation was in shambles. Stiffer resistance than expected was encountered, the invasion force and its air support was less effective than expected, and no uprising took place. The approximately 1,000 surviving members of the invasion force surrendered and were sent to prisoner-of-war camps. They would later be exchanged for food and medicine. There was no denying America's involvement, and condemnation from even America's staunchest allies was quick in coming.

President Kennedy took full responsibility for the failed invasion and instituted a study to determine what went wrong. Among its major conclusions was the danger incurred by new administrations in undertaking major foreign-policy initiatives when high-ranking personnel did not know each other's strengths and weaknesses and when inherent tensions existed between "new" political leaders and "old" bureaucratic interests and ways of doing business.

Others acknowledge the importance of these points but place greater emphasis on a general failure of American policy makers to understand the limits of their own power and the true character of their opponents. Still others point to a phenomenon known as groupthink in which policy makers participating in a small group, such as those who approved and oversaw the Bay of Pigs invasion, lose contact with reality and make poor quality decisions.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download