Joe Garcia Quotes

This quotation was used by the Goldwater campaign in 1964 to make the point that Fidel Castro was an evil and that the Democrats had not done anything about him. Four decades later Castro was still in place but neither party would chastise the other on this issue since both had their chance and neither succeeded.

The immediate crisis had been averted and no more nuclear missiles would enter Cuba. But we had no leverage to get the few that were already there removed and it would be politically very difficult for the Kennedy administration to get the public to accept ANY nuclear missiles in Cuba. Hence, Stevenson’s statement. See {634554}. Neither side had great intercontinental ballistic missile capability at the time, and we had placed a large battery of missiles in Turkey very close to the Russian border. This gave the U. S. a major military advantage. We could deliver many more nuclear warheads to Russia than they could to the United States. The Russians with this proposal hoped to even the capability. The military advisers and the security and State Department advisors all thought that the U. S. should not give up its nuclear superiority. However, we had no international legal basis for denying the Cubans the right to locate any weapons on their soil, so to prevent the Communists from having nuclear missiles in Cuba we would have to use force which could easily escalate into a nuclear war. Kennedy and McCone both thought that since we had intercontinental ballistic missiles in production and coming on line and would not need the Turkey Missiles to strike all over Russia. So giving up our missile advantage for a short time would not expose us to any undue risk. The other advisors worried that the production of the ICBMs could be delayed—weapons systems were (and are) notoriously longer in production than estimated or planned. They also thought that the morale of the military and civilian population would suffer when they learned that we had given away our military advantage. There was a macho element in their thinking in that we would be giving in to intimidation and look like we were afraid to fight. Last, the political advisors thought that the right wing hawks would pillory the administration for its cowardice in allowing itself to be intimidated by the Russians. Their doctrine was that when faced with force, the Communists will always back down. In the final deal we agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey in 6 months and this would be done in complete secrecy and the Russians would keep the deal secret. That way, Kennedy got 6 more months of production which turned out to have been enough. The public would never know till years later and the Conservatives would not be able to publicly castigate Kennedy. Meanwhile, the conservatives would continue to believe that the Russians backed down in the face of force—the naval blockade as this was ‘proved’ their doctrine when the Russians had not backed down at all. The strategy and tactics of the Kennedy administration are still analyzed and argued about today with many Americans just realizing that we did not intimidate the Russians with force or the threat of force to remove their Cuban missiles.

The Cold War was ended and we were at peace with Russia and many people think the continuing hostility is counter-productive.

Comment to President Teddy Roosevelt as while he, as US Secretary of State, dealt extensively with a deceitful Russia as they attempted to expand into Chinese Manchuria which eventually led to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.