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The Bay of Pigs (Pivotal Moments in American History)

by: Howard Jones
en | Oxford University Press, USA

019517383X  9780195173833  9780199721306 

The Bay of Pigs (Pivotal Moments in American History)
By Howard Jones




Product Description:

In January 1959, as Fidel Castro entered Havana in triumph, Americans hailed the revolutionary as a hero. Then came Castro's increasingly anti-American talk, the rise in his regime of the openly Marxist Che Guevara and Raul Castro, and seizures of American-owned assets. In little more than a year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded that Castro must go.
In The Bay of Pigs, Howard Jones provides a concise, incisive, and dramatic account of the disastrous attempt to overthrow Castro. He deftly examines the train of missteps and self-deceptions that led to the invasion of U. S.-trained exiles at the Bay of Pigs. Ignoring warnings from the ambassador to Cuba, the Eisenhower administration put in motion an operation that proved nearly unstoppable even after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. The CIA and Pentagon, meanwhile, both voiced confidence in the outcome of the invasion, especially after coordinating previous successful coups in Guatemala and Iran. As a vital part of the Cuban effort, the CIA sought to incite a popular insurrection by recruiting the Mafia's help in engineering Castro's assassination on the eve of the invasion. And so the Kennedy administration launched the exile force toward its doom in Cochinos Bay on April 17, 1961. Jones gives a riveting account of the battle--and the confusion in the White House--before moving on to explore its implications. The Bay of Pigs, he writes, set the course of Kennedy's foreign policy. It was a humiliation for the administration that fueled fears of Communist domination and pushed Kennedy toward a hardline cold warrior stance. But at the same time, the failed attack left him deeply skeptical of CIA and military advisers and influenced his later actions during the Cuban missile crisis.
Richly researched, vividly written, The Bay of Pigs offers an engaging and thoughtful account of the turning point in Kennedy's foreign policy and indeed in foreign policy for decades to come.




Summary: Would have been better as a long Wikipedia entry.
Rating: 3

The detailed review of what happened is great, but the book is not terribly well written/edited. The book continually repeats itself, even using the exact same phrases several times. I think it could be greatly condensed and still convey all the information and viewpoints in fewer pages. Perhaps the topic is not worthy of an entire book, but something more like a long Wikipedia entry?



Summary: An extremely important addition to the historical record.
Rating: 4

"(They had a) good plan, poorly executed." Such was the rather generous assessment of Cuban President Fidel Castro in the aftermath of the U.S. government's covert attempt to overthrow him in mid-April 1961. The fact of the matter is that with the benefit of hindsight most historians and military analysts agree that the Bay of Pigs was an unmitigated disaster. Author Howard Jones revisits this shameful episode in American history with his new book "The Bay of Pigs". If you have not studied this operation in detail before than you will find this one to be a real eye-opener.
On January 1, 1959, revolutionary forces led by a young, charismatic Fidel Castro finally succeeded in toppling the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro's increasingly anti-American stances quickly became a source of concern for the Eisenhower administration. President Eisenhower finally concluded that for national security reasons Castro would have to be eliminated. The covert plan being drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and the CIA called for the simultaneous elimination of Castro by assassination and the invasion of the island nation by U.S. trained Cuban exiles to establish a provisional government. The idea was to encourage a popular insurrection in Cuba that would legitimate the entire operation. Time ran out on the Eisenhower administration and so when John F. Kennedy took office in January of 1961 he inherited the problem. President Kennedy had already become convinced of the wisdom of overthrowing Fidel Castro.
Events were moving rather quickly now and Castro seemed to be rapidly aligning himself with the Soviet Union. Time was of the essence as the preponderance of evidence indicated that the U.S.S.R. was beginning to ship all kinds of military hardware to Castro. It became abundantly clear that the longer the U.S. waited the more difficult the task at hand would be. The operation was finally set for April 17, 1961. "The Bay of Pigs" chronicles in great detail how the actual plan was devised and who the key players were. Howard Jones also discusses at great length the reasons why President Kennedy seemed so reluctant to approve any direct involvement of U.S. armed forces in the actual invasion of Cuba. For the President, the idea of "plausible deniability" was an overriding concern and was ultimately the reason the operation was moved from Trinidad to the Zapata Peninsula. It was also the reason why the President made the decision to cancel the air support that for all intents and purposes doomed the operation.
I was just 10 years at the time of the Bay of Pigs operation. Over the years I have read any number of references to just how bitter the Cuban-American community was at President Kennedy for the way he mishandled the invasion and abandoned the ground forces who were left to fend for themselves without any of the promised air support. Some have even suggested that disgruntled Cuban exiles may have played a role in his assassination. But I had never come across a great many details surrounding this debacle. After reading "The Bay of Pigs" this has all come into focus for me and I realize that those who were abandoned on the beaches at Zapata had every right to be livid at the way the situation was handled by the Commander-in Chief. The noted author and head of Cuban Studies at the University of Miami Brian Latell has opined that "The Bay of Pigs" is "more thoroughly researched than any previous work on the subject, it is also succinct, nuanced and exquisitely balanced in its treatment of the president and the CIA." I would concur. There are lessons to be learned from the entire Bay of Pigs affair. Our participation in such activities only serve to reduce America's standing in the rest of the world. It is a lesson our leaders never seem to learn. History buffs and general readers alike will appreciate "The Bay of Pigs". This is a well written and carefully documented book. Recommended!



Summary: A much needed account
Rating: 5

The Bay of Pigs operation has gone down in history as one of the pivotal acts of the Cold War. It was a military disaster and an embarrasment. It angered a generation of Cuban-Americans. It, apparently, made Castro more paranoid than he already was. It helped to engender the Cuban Missle Crises and it marked the high water mark of CIA sponsored swashbuckling. It has forever frustrated Kennedy lovers into finding ways to claim that the new president had no idea about it and that it was foisted upon him by Eisenhower's men, so that JFK's legacy would not be tarnisher either by failure or by the kind of reckless pre-emption that those who love Kennedy so often condemn in other Presidents.

But for all the words spilled over the Bay of Pigs it has rarely been given a fare shake or a full accounting. Most of the books on the operation either examine one part of it or are old and dated.

This book provides a full background of the invasion, its planning and its aftermath and meaning. It provides an inside look at the Kennedy administration and the decisions not to provide air support and the subsequent failure of the invasion. It gives a very fair account of what happaned and is not bogged down by rhetoric or politics. This is an important and timely contribution to the stroy of the Bay of Pigs, America and the Cold War.

Seth J. Frantzman



Summary: The Bay of Pigs
Rating: 4

On April 17, 1961, approximately 1500 Cuban exiles trained and supported by the United States launched an ill-fated invasion against Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs in southwest Cuba. The Bay of Pigs invasion occurred early in the presidency of John F. Kennedy and constituted one of the great foreign policy missteps of the United States during the Cold War. In his new book in the "Pivotal Moments in American History" series of Oxford University Press, Howard Jones offers a succinct and sobering account of the Bay of Pigs and its aftermath. Written with quiet restraint, Jones's book has much to teach about American interventionist tendencies in Cuba and elswhere. Howard Jones is University Research Professor of History at the University of Alabama. He has written extensively on American history.

Jones shows the many tangled threads in the Bay of Pigs story. Following Castro's ascension to power in Cuba and his increasing hostility to the United States, the Eisenhower Administration authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to plan and conduct what became the Bay of Pigs invasion. With the momentum the plan had gathered, the new president, Kennedy, allowed the proposed overthrow of Castro to continue. Kennedy was indeed an active participant and changed the original plan in several respects. In addition to the invasion by the Cuban exiles, the plan had several components that Jones documents well in his study. The CIA engaged in dealings with the Mafia in a plan to assassinate Castro before the invasion. The invasion also relied popular insurrection in Cuba to displace the Castro regime after the exile force had established a beachhead. In the event the initial landing did not immediately succeed, the plan was for the invading force to assume guerilla tactics by joining with local fighters in the Escambray Mountains of Cuba.

Jones details how and why the plan failed at every level. He is critical of the plan at the outset for its interference with the internal affairs of a foreign nation, including the assassination of its leader, which had not committed acts of war against the United States. He also shows well how various parts of the Executive Branch, from the President and his immediate advisors, to the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the State Department tended to work against each other and to avoid responsibility for the unfortunate events that occurred in Cuba in April, 1961. The United States badly underestimated the resolve of the Castro regime, overestimated the likelihood of a popular uprising, and did not know the strength of Castro's air force.

Beyond these concerns, Jones points to other factors which doomed the invasion from the outset. The primarily failing was the confusion between political and military goals in the invasion. Eisenhower had entrusted planning to the CIA rather than to the military in an attempt to minimize the public exposure of the United States. Through Kennedy, the policy was one of "plausible deniablity" of the United States's activites. This "plausible deniability" proved impossible to maintain for an operation of the scope of the Bay of Pigs. Furthermore, political considerations irreparably compromised the military aspects of the plan. The invasion site was moved to the Bay of Pigs from a site about 100 miles east in the interest of secrecy. With its coral reefs, swamps, and lack of access to the mountains, the Bay of Pigs proved a poor alternative site. Probably more importantly, President Kennedy called off and limited supportive United States air strikes which were designed to neutralize Castro's air force. Castro's planes performed well during the invasion. Without air support, the amphibious landing, difficult at best, was doomed. Without support from the United States, the Cuban invasion quickly failed.

Jones also describes the aftermath of the failed invasion, with further attempts by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to assassinate Castro and to mount a direct United States military attack on Cuba. The Bay of Pigs invasion led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the autumn of 1962, which came perilously close to nuclear confrontation between the United States and the USSR. In 1975, following the investigations of a Senate Committee, President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order forbidding at last the use of assassination as a political weapon of the United States. Jones sees parallels between the Bay of Pigs invasion and subsequent attempts by the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of nations unfriendly to the United States. He writes at the conclusion of his study (p. 174):

"[A]s history has repeatedly shown, intervention is far more complicated than it appears at the outset. The United States in April 1961 had embarked on the slippery slope toward a high-risk policy of forceful regime change that did not work in Cuba, nor in Vietnam, nor in Iraq, and remains shaky in Afghanistan."

Jones has written a thoughtful detailed study of the Bay of Pigs that will be of interest to readers who wish to reflect upon and understand the foreign policy of the United States.

Robin Friedman