democrats of having ‘lost’ Vietnam as they had ‘lost’ Cuba and China”. 32 As Freedman points out “Democracy thus affects crisis management in a basic way, mismanagement will lose votes”. 33 Despite these claims, it is entirely feasible that President Kennedy would have de-escalated the war in Vietnam. A major factor towards this was JFK’s military experience, stemming from his experiences during WW2. These experiences had given him a negative view of military leadership. His failed mission during his captaining of PT-109 and the absolute failure of the Bay of Pigs in 1962, these experiences caused him to distrust his military advisors and be cautious to their suggestions. 34 When consulting advisors on the American attempt to overthrow the Diem regime, which Kennedy viewed with extreme scepticism, he said to them “I know from experience that failure is more destructive than the appearance of indecision”. 35 This experience was from the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs invasion, where the CIA and Joint Chiefs had made many mistakes in their attempted coup of Castro, which Kennedy had to take 32 Geoffrey, Warner, ‘Review Article the United States and Vietnam: From Kennedy to Johnson’, International Affairs, 73 (1997), pp. 333-349. <http://web.b.ebscohost.com.openathens- proxy.swan.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=b8992a01-4b68- 40a9-ad94-a66a9d6536ed%40sessionmgr101> [accessed 5 November 2017] (p. 346). 33 Lawrence, Freedman, ‘Kennedy, Bush and Crisis Management’, Cold War History, 2 (2002), pp. 1-14. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713999964> [accessed 5 November 2017] (p. 7). 34 James N., Giglio, ‘The Third World’, in The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 1991), pp. 237-270. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt1f5g4vd.15.pdf> [accessed 5 November 2017] (p. 269). 35 Giglio, p. 265.
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