The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy - Research Paper Example

? The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy Following the ending of the World War II, two superpowers surfaced in a tight bipolar clash: the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1947, the Cold War began when the U.S. overtly stated its resistance to Soviet expansion (Roskin, 2012). Nonetheless, as the 1960s drew near, it became obvious that the impacts of these truly extraordinary powers were diminishing. Kennedy’s doctrine could not have appeared at a more suitable time, with his focus on the significance of flexibility, essentially averting a nuclear World War III. During 1959, Fidel Castro headed a guerrilla war in Cuba against the Batista regime while clamping down his own dictatorship and turning to the Soviet Union not only for arms but also for financial aid. After the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which was a U.S. attempt of invading Cuba and overthrowing Castro, Castro had a perception that a second attack was unavoidable. Consequently, he accepted the Khrushchev's proposal of installing missiles in the island; therefore, in the summer of 1962 the Soviet Union started building its missile installations within Cuba. Throughout the peak of the Cold War, which was in October of 1962, a U2 camera plane took photographs of nuclear missile sites under construction in Cuba (Roskin, 2012). The U.S. got a wind of this, and the Soviets asserted that they were just providing Cuba with weapons for defending themselves in case the U.S. attacks them in the future. However, Kennedy made it apparent that the United States would have to strike back with nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union in the event that Cuban missiles were utilized against the U.S. These occurrences effectively resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Roskin (2012) asserts that the Kennedy’s doctrine was for responding flexibly to communist expansion, particularly to guerrilla warfare. Initially, the Kennedy counterinsurgency program succeeded in overturning the foreign policy establishment in a bout of seminars, uptight formulation of strange policy, counterinsurgency courses and bureaucratic upheavals. Nonetheless, this counterinsurgency orientation has not been executed at the detriment of its hitherto extremely prominent twin, which was the offensive unconventional warfare. Apparently, the Kennedy administration became practically instigated with the landing craft designated for Cuba, which started in April 1961 with efforts of meddling with existing governments there and in Congo; this was a lasting feature of those three brief years. However, it was a set of initiatives to develop an extensive counterinsurgency policy that controlled the years of Kennedy, with a doctrine, infrastructure, and a program of counterinsurgency being developed nearly overnight. This counterinsurgency era regarding the military and the intelligence establishments started with Kennedy and thereafter faded away with the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam. This program drew partly from the same resources built up for unconventional warfare, and offered a new and integrated tactic to a deserted Cold War’s theater (Ucko, 2009). Kennedy's involvement in confronting the guerrilla warfare has in most cases been seen as a reaction to the back-up of wars of liberation by Nikita Khrushchev. There are perceptions that the speech by Khrushchev in January 1961, following Kennedy's inauguration, is particularly significant in electrifying the new president to a program of action. Nonetheless, Khrushchev's rhetoric was possibly rather less significant compared to the troubles with communists present in Vietnam and Laos, ideological doubts concerning African decolonization, and the unfinished business within Cuba; however, efforts were in progress for slapping down the first unbeaten communist revolution within the America's backyard (Ucko, 2009). According to the accounts of meeting by National Security Council regarding Kennedy's initial months in office, much of his thinking, and that of his group, had previously been crystallized with the help of the Defense Department led by Eisenhower doing much of the foundation work; he devised detailed proposals which Kennedy would then adapt for the upsurge of the Special Forces. On 1 February 1961, ten days after the inauguration of Kennedy, NSC held a meeting where they discussed a report, still classified, by Limited War Task Force, which provided a foundation for immediate action. Measures for a key Eisenhower exercise, the Bay of Pigs invasion, continued gathering steam, with the Kennedy government following through against its judgment. Several recommendations found in the report by the Task Force supporting the expansion of the guerrilla program were not only adopted but also incorporated within a National Security Action Memorandum, which included the budgetary provisions for adding about 3,000 men to the existing army's Special Forces, and a budget increase of $19 million (Peterson, 2011). Consequently, the Special Forces undertook its role of leading an offensive unconventional warfare and performing the latest explicit counterinsurgency task to use in circumstances short of limited war like subbelligerency and overt insurgency, in addition to limited war situations. Robert S. McNamara, who was the secretary of defense, later received directions of reallocating of $100 million from the current defense programs to allow for the expansion and reorientation of existing forces for sub-limited or even unconventional wars, which would require, for instance, guerrilla fighters with specialized skills and foreign language fluency. Furthermore, on the political front, the supremacy of counterinsurgency within foreign policy had specifications in the command by the president in May 1961 to American ambassadors overseas; it was told that they were living in a crucial moment in history. Presently, there are powerful, destructive forces, which are challenging the global values that have been inspiring men all over the world for centuries (Robbins, 2010). While there was no spelling out of universal values in question, the president was specific in decreeing the law concerning the civil-military pecking command in the counterinsurgency campaign. On the other hand, ambassadors received directions that their power extended to controlling all American programs within their assigned countries with exception of this one, which involvedU.S. military forces functioning under the rule of the area military commander of the United States. At the start of his governance, Eisenhower, in the same directive, excused the CIA from the authority of the ambassadors. The administration progressed rapidly to ensure political and budgetary aid for a counterinsurgency program while expanding the limited ability for unconventional warfare that later underwent testing at the Bay of Pigs. On March 28, the president gave his seminal statement to Congress on counterinsurgency, thus establishing his policy’s political and military terms while discussing guerrilla warfare within the superior milieu of limited wars. According to Kennedy, it was the duty of America to go beyond containment, considering that since 1945 both the non-nuclear wars and guerrilla warfare had succeeded in representing the most active and constant threat to the world’s freedom and security (Michael & Nicholas, 2005). Although Kennedy admitted that there was a need for radical burden of the local defense, overt attack, subversion, and guerrilla warfare to rest on both local populace and forces, he maintained that America had an obligation of contributing through strong, extremely mobile forces trained within this warfare. Kennedy acknowledged the limitations of the encounters of the armed forces with guerrilla warfare, that is, a military fixation with guerrilla partisans in conventional warfare. According to him, much of America’s effort of creating guerrilla and anti-guerrilla capabilities had at one time been directed at general war; therefore, America should now be ready to deal with any extent of force, involving small externally-aided bands of men by helping to make regional forces similarly effective (Peterson, 2011). As a result, the counterinsurgency theme was developed further, with the policy receiving vigorous back-up. On 25 May 1961, Kennedy gave a speech before an exclusive joint session, requesting an extra $1.9 billion; out of this amount, $535 million went to foreign aid given to perimeter countries that faced a direct threat of overt invasion; approximately half a billion went to strengthening the army and marines; and the balance was used for the space program. The push for a strengthened activist duty in the Cold War by President Kennedy prompted an instantaneous response from Congress. In 1961, the Foreign Assistance Act has been enacted, promoting the foreign policy, security, and general interests of the United States through assisting people all over the world in their efforts of economic development and internal and external security amongst other purposes (Michael & Nicholas, 2005). According to the section 501 of the same act, the aim of this foreign assistance was to improve the capabilities of friendly countries and international organizations for deterring or, if necessary, overcoming Communist or Communist-aided aggression; this assistance added arrangements for both individual and collective security, helped friendly countries sustain internal security and stability. References Michael R., Nicholas. O. (2005). IR: the new world of international relations. Chicago: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Peterson, R. E. (2011). Fight of the Phoenix: Order of the Delta Dragon. California: AuthorHouse. Robbins, J. S. (2010). This time we win: Revisiting the tet offensive. New York: Encounter Books. Roskin, M. G. (2012). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture. Chicago: Pearson Education, Limited. Ucko, D. H. (2009). The new counterinsurgency era: Transforming the U.S. military for modern wars. London: Georgetown University Press. Read More