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>> Jim Lindsay: Imagine: You’re president of the United States. Your advisers come to
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you with a plan to overthrow a hostile government that threatens American security. The plan
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would solve a major problem if it worked, but you worry that it won’t. What do you
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do?
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I’m Jim Lindsay, and this is Lessons Learned. Our topic today is the Bay of Pigs invasion,
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which began on April 17, 1961.
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The road to the Bay of Pigs began two years earlier when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba’s
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U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Relations between the two countries quickly
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soured. Castro denounced decades of U.S. political and economic domination of Cuba. He called
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for revolutions throughout Latin America and he seized properties that US firms owned in
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Cuba.
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What especially worried Washington, though, was Castro’s growing ties to Moscow. It
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was the height of the Cold War and the Soviet Union looked to be on the march around the
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globe. So President Dwight Eisenhower and his advisors looked at Castro and feared that
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the Soviets would soon have a beachhead less than 100 miles off America’s shores.
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By March 1960, Eisenhower had had enough. He authorized a CIA plan to train Cuban exiles
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to overthrow Castro. The plan, eventually code named “Bumpy Road,” rested on the
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premise that the attack by Cuban exiles would trigger a popular uprising in Cuba that would
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overthrow Castro. Eisenhower had reason to be confident the plan would work. Six years
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earlier the Central Intelligence Agency had engineered the ouster of a leftist government
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in Guatemala.
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Operation Bumpy Road could not be executed before Eisenhower left office. The decision
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on whether to proceed was left to his successor, John F. Kennedy.
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JFK had doubts about the wisdom of Operation Bumpy Road. He knew that a decision to intervene
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overtly in Cuba would be criticized at home and especially abroad. But he also knew that
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ousting Castro would fulfill his campaign promise of a tougher foreign policy and strengthen
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his hand in dealing with the Soviets. And he saw real political costs to killing the
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operation. Some of the hundreds of Cuban exiles, and probably a few U.S. government officials
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as well, would complain to the press that he had walked away from the plan that would
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have toppled Castro. That would have exposed JFK to damaging charges that he was soft on
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communism.
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So JFK gave a green light to Operation Bumpy Road. But in doing so he made two critical
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decisions. First, because he wanted to minimize overt U.S. involvement, he severely limited
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the U.S. air support for the mission. CIA and U.S. Air Force officials went along with
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the restriction because they assumed he would change his mind if the operation ran into
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trouble. Second, he chose a more remote landing site for the operation, the Bahía de Cochinos—the
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Bay of Pigs. Unfortunately, it was a lousy spot for an amphibious landing.
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The invasion force of 1,511 exiles, known as Brigade 2506, landed at the Bay of Pigs
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on April 17, 1961. The operation was a disaster from the start. Castro’s army wasn’t surprised.
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Ordinary Cubans did not rise in revolt. And JFK refused to send the U.S. military to save
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the Cuban exiles pinned down on the beaches. On April 19, Brigade 2506 surrendered. The
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three days of fighting had left 140 exiles dead and nearly 1,200 captured.
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>> President John F. Kennedy: On that unhappy island, as in so many other arenas of the
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contest for freedom, the news has grown worse instead of better. I have emphasized before
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that this was a struggle of Cuban patriots against a Cuban dictator. While we could not
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be expected to hide our sympathies, we made it repeatedly clear that the armed forces
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of this country would not intervene in any way.
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>> Jim Lindsay: The Bay of Pigs was is of the of the biggest U.S. foreign policy fiascoes
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of the twentieth century. There were many reasons it failed besides JFK’s refusal
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to authorize air support. The underlying premise that ordinary Cubans would come to the invasion’s
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aid was flatly wrong. The invasion was poorly organized and managed. It also wasn’t much
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of a secret, or a surprise to Castro. The New York Times ran two separate stories on
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its front-page about the U.S. efforts to train a Cuban army in exile.
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What is the lesson of the Bay of Pigs? Just this: Be prepared for failure and plan accordingly.
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JFK had doubts about the wisdom of the CIA’s plan, and he knew that he would not order
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a direct U.S. military intervention. So he put all of his eggs on hoping that Operation
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Bumpy Road would work. It didn’t. Had JFK thought through the possibilities of failure
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he might have canceled the operation or fundamentally reshaped it. As it was, he was left to lament:
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“How could I have been so stupid to let them go ahead?”
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Presidents don’t want to find themselves asking JFK’s question about their own decisions.
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So recognizing the potential for failure—and taking steps to minimize it—is a fundamental
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challenge for all types of foreign policymaking. But it is especially important when talking
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about decisions to use military force.
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To take just one example, it is fine to discuss how military strikes might blunt Iran’s
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nuclear ambitions. But that analysis is incomplete unless it also grapples with how a military
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strike might fail, or create an entirely new problems to handle.
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So here’s a question to consider: What steps should presidents take to make sure that they
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are thinking through how their policies might fail rather than simply engaging in wishful
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thinking about how they will succeed?
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I encourage you to weigh in with your answers on my blog, The Water’s Edge. You can find
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it at CFR.org.
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I’m Jim Lindsay. Thank you for watching this installment of Lessons Learned.