raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
We’ve all seen what Arthur Schlesinger has said; in a nutshell, at home, peaceful implementation of civil rights laws prevent the urban race riots of 65 to 68, and abroad, JFK’s deft diplomacy and attentive management of foreign affairs would have prevented the Sino-Soviet nuclear war of the winter of 65 -66 that set back China a century, Russia and the surrounding Asian countries a decade, and now we think, raised cancer rates globally.
While Schlesinger derides LBJ as a closet isolationist and uninspiring heir to Kennedy he does concede he was better than Goldwater, who most likely would have jumped right into the Sino-Soviet nuclear fray out of anticommunist zealotry and a desire for marginal geopolitical gains in places like the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.
Schlesinger and his acolytes obviously are to some extent indulging in wish fulfillment fantasy, but critics who claim a total continuity between JFK and LBJ’s policies are missing the mark also.
Documentary and other primary evidence does demonstrate that JFK was more attentive than Johnson to a variety of situations in the developing world. JFK paid more attention, for instance, to South Asia, and especially India, when compared to either Eisenhower before or LBJ after. He probably would have had the influence to tamp down on the Indo-Pakistani war of August 1965 before it broadened in a little over a week into all-out Chinese-Soviet warfare.
Schlesinger is probably correct also that given JFK’s firsthand experience with nuclear brinkmanship during the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy could have more effectively reassured Premier Khrushchev and given the Soviet leader a chance to pause before launching the pre-emptive strike on China. We know now for instance, that JFK deftly turned aside suggestions from Khrushchev in 1963 for a joint US-Soviet strike against the developing Chinese atom bomb program. In retrospect for instance, it appears that US intelligence at the time had indications that Chinese military demonstrations near the disputed territory in northeast India, and the line-of-control in Kashmir, were not supported by logistics needed for a serious attempt to grab new territory or engage a high proportion of Indian forces.
Still, one cannot say Kennedy’s involvement would have made avoiding the Sino-Soviet war a sure thing. After all, the Soviets may not have been willing to tolerate the development of a substantial Chinese nuclear delivery capability in any event, regardless of alliance politics in South Asia. The Chinese atomic program was making Khrushchev positively apoplectic, and it should not be forgotten that even for an atheist faith like communism, the heretic is twice as bad as the infidel.
There is also reason to think, even if the Sino-Soviet war were averted, that JFK’s immersion in the issues of the developing world would not have been entirely a good thing. Kennedy for instance ordered ongoing attempts to destabilize Castro and escalated US involvement in Vietnam. It’s certainly fashionable to regard the Johnson-Castro modus vivendi as inevitable, given Cuba’s natural economic needs and proximity to the United States, but Castro was prone to emotionalism and might have chosen to remain defiant in reaction to JFK’s destabilization program. This is doubly so if the Sino-Soviet war had been averted. As we know, Castro was critical of the communist bloc fratricide that war represented, and the Soviets were generally pulling in their horns from an unappreciative third world after the bombing of China. In Vietnam, JFK was eager to defeat Khrushchev’s declared, “Wars of National Liberationâ€, and this situation was a second bloody Korean stalemate waiting to happen. While LBJ was relatively content with the Diem regime , and Johnson did not seek his own “Eisenhower Doctrine†resolution on Southeast Asia until May 1965 , Kennedy was actively intriguing with younger officers who wanted to overthrow Diem to pursue the war against the Viet Cong more energetically with US support. There’s a significant chance the US would have been involved in tropical version of Korea by the end of ’64 if JFK had not been assassinated.
While Schlesinger derides LBJ as a closet isolationist and uninspiring heir to Kennedy he does concede he was better than Goldwater, who most likely would have jumped right into the Sino-Soviet nuclear fray out of anticommunist zealotry and a desire for marginal geopolitical gains in places like the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.
Schlesinger and his acolytes obviously are to some extent indulging in wish fulfillment fantasy, but critics who claim a total continuity between JFK and LBJ’s policies are missing the mark also.
Documentary and other primary evidence does demonstrate that JFK was more attentive than Johnson to a variety of situations in the developing world. JFK paid more attention, for instance, to South Asia, and especially India, when compared to either Eisenhower before or LBJ after. He probably would have had the influence to tamp down on the Indo-Pakistani war of August 1965 before it broadened in a little over a week into all-out Chinese-Soviet warfare.
Schlesinger is probably correct also that given JFK’s firsthand experience with nuclear brinkmanship during the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy could have more effectively reassured Premier Khrushchev and given the Soviet leader a chance to pause before launching the pre-emptive strike on China. We know now for instance, that JFK deftly turned aside suggestions from Khrushchev in 1963 for a joint US-Soviet strike against the developing Chinese atom bomb program. In retrospect for instance, it appears that US intelligence at the time had indications that Chinese military demonstrations near the disputed territory in northeast India, and the line-of-control in Kashmir, were not supported by logistics needed for a serious attempt to grab new territory or engage a high proportion of Indian forces.
Still, one cannot say Kennedy’s involvement would have made avoiding the Sino-Soviet war a sure thing. After all, the Soviets may not have been willing to tolerate the development of a substantial Chinese nuclear delivery capability in any event, regardless of alliance politics in South Asia. The Chinese atomic program was making Khrushchev positively apoplectic, and it should not be forgotten that even for an atheist faith like communism, the heretic is twice as bad as the infidel.
There is also reason to think, even if the Sino-Soviet war were averted, that JFK’s immersion in the issues of the developing world would not have been entirely a good thing. Kennedy for instance ordered ongoing attempts to destabilize Castro and escalated US involvement in Vietnam. It’s certainly fashionable to regard the Johnson-Castro modus vivendi as inevitable, given Cuba’s natural economic needs and proximity to the United States, but Castro was prone to emotionalism and might have chosen to remain defiant in reaction to JFK’s destabilization program. This is doubly so if the Sino-Soviet war had been averted. As we know, Castro was critical of the communist bloc fratricide that war represented, and the Soviets were generally pulling in their horns from an unappreciative third world after the bombing of China. In Vietnam, JFK was eager to defeat Khrushchev’s declared, “Wars of National Liberationâ€, and this situation was a second bloody Korean stalemate waiting to happen. While LBJ was relatively content with the Diem regime , and Johnson did not seek his own “Eisenhower Doctrine†resolution on Southeast Asia until May 1965 , Kennedy was actively intriguing with younger officers who wanted to overthrow Diem to pursue the war against the Viet Cong more energetically with US support. There’s a significant chance the US would have been involved in tropical version of Korea by the end of ’64 if JFK had not been assassinated.
and possibly the best explanation I've ever heard for the 2nd gunman