Wed 15 May 2024

Eisenhower - Summary

● Republicans
○ Military General
● Military Focused - invested heavily
● Invented the Nuclear bomb
○ More nuclear weapons = less war (no one will use them)
○ Military-industrial complex
■ Links between business and the military were too close
■ Spending money on weapons that they didn’t need
■ Military spending should be reasonably small
■ Spending less money on the army
● Fewer soldiers
● More Nukes
● CIA
● Cuban Missile Crisis 52-60

Kennedy - 1960s

● Idealist
● Creates alliances with Latin America - “Alliance for Progress” (Foreign Policy)
○ This was done to reinforce democracy in Latin American countries (Republican)
○ Loan money to South American countries
■ More than 20 billion dollars
○ American businesses invest - money does not end up going to reduce inequality
○ Counterinsurgency programs - to stop communism (some of the money)
○ Tries to promote equality democratically
○ Giving equipment to the Latin American countries
○ Money went to the Elite
● Speech (January 20, 1961) - does not talk from a place of power
○ Talk to them as equals
● Punta del Este - August 1961(Uruguay)
○ Meeting - announcing “Alliance for Progress”
○ Tour across Latin America - all Latin American Presidents
● Limitations to the “Alliance for Progress”
○ This alliance was never able to overcome its identification with “Yankee
imperialism”
○ Presidents after Kennedy were less supportive of the program
○ The early 1970s this programme was considered a failure
○ 1973 the committee was disbanded
 ○ Did not achieve all its goals
○ Problems and prospects JSTOR
● Flexible response - Kennedy’s overall Foreign Policy

Successes Failures

● Promoting Democracy ● Reinforced imperialism - problem

● Limiting the spread of communism
● Spoke with equality
● 20 billion US dollars
○ Development in infrastructure -
roads, schools and hospitals
● Investments in education and
healthcare
○ Improvement in literacy rates
long-term
○ Benefits Communists - take
advantage of them imposing
this ideology
● Made Latin American countries reliant
on the U.S
○ Bay of Pigs
● Money was spent on fighting
counterinsurgency
● Money did not ultimately help reduce
equality
● Money mismanaged by corrupt
officials
● benefits of the program were not
evenly distributed across different
social classes.
● Only 2 per cent of economic growth in
the 1960s benefitted the poor
● General deterioration of U.S. - Latin
American relations by the end of the
1960s

Historians

● ‘Between 1945 and 1960, countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg
had received more aid than all of Latin America combined’- Stephen Rabe

● ‘America saw themselves as the model for all Third World countries’- Nils Gilman
(meaning that Kennedy thought that trying to make them more like the USA would make
them successful)

● Political need trumped idealism. ‘The military became the modernizing solution for Latin
American troubles. A total of 16 coups took place during the 8 years of ALPRO’- Bevan
Sewell

Eisenhower vs Kennedy Foreign Policy

Eisenhower's policy:
● “New Look” → balance the resources
● Develop more nuclear weapons (massive nuclear arsenal) → Countries would back
down from war due to the nuclear arsenal.
○ Brinkmanship → Communist countries would not risk war bringing them to the
brink of war
○ Prevent Massive retaliation
● Use the CIA:
○ Used to overthrow government that did not have american interests at heart
■ Guatemala 1950’s
■ Overthrow of Iran’s government 1953 → CIA overthrew the government
and implemented a new leader that would want to work with the british
and american and not limit oil control in Iran
● Asia & Middle east
○ Military industrial complex 1960
■ Need to make sure military and defence did not become the sole priority
of the United States
○ Communism → containment in asia and the middle east

Kennedy’s policy during the cold war:

● Mutual assured destruction → If we have the same or similar nuclear arsenals, we won’t
use them against each other
○ more spending on conventional forces. The military budget was increased by
fifteen per cent in 1961
○ enlarging the nuclear arsenal
○ creating a counter-insurgency force, the Green Berets, who were trained to fight
against guerilla style attacks
● continuing with CIA covert work e.g. in the Congo, Patrice Lamumba who had become
the Premier of the Congo when the Belgians left, was murdered with CIA support
because he had approached the Soviet
○ Union for aid. The CIA also interfered in Brazil organising opposition to the
election of the President Joao Goulart, who had land reform policies, which
affected US companies. In 1964 they encouraged a successful military coup
against him
● Flexible response = Will not always use military → He will use other aspects to get his
point across
○ Economic sanctions
○ Diplomacy → continuing negotiations with the Soviet Union
○ “Negotiation before action” → me hace acordar a churchill
● Setting up a programme for Latin America called Alliance for Progress. This involved
giving them food, medicine and education with the hope that this would help them to
resist communism
○ Cuba fell to communism → Fidel Castro became outspoken leader of Cuba
(ummm what)
Compare contrast table:
Differences

Eisenhower Kenny

- Intervencionista → ready to go all the - Indirectly aggressive

way → nuclear arsenal - Flexible response = Will not always
- All for military coup (Guatemala, Iran use military → He will use other
etc.) aspects to get his point across
-

Similarities

● Both used the CIA's worldwide authority to fight countries that adhered to
"un-American" principles.
● Outspoken in his opposition to communism and threats to the free world
(noncommunist countries of the world)
● They each have weapons, but they employ them in different ways. → Eisenhower was
more direct than Kennedy
● Mutually assured destruction - the willingness to deploy nuclear weapons:
○ Develop more nuclear weapons (massive nuclear arsenal) → Countries would
back down from war due to the nuclear arsenal.
○ Mutual assured destruction → If we have the same or similar nuclear arsenals,
we won’t use them against each other

● Pragmatic reasons - L.B. Johnson

Other Docs

Questions:
1. Compare and Contrast the foreign policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
2. Compare and contrast the foreign policies of two US presidents in the affairs of Latin
America

Lyndon B. Johnson - 1963-1968

● A pragmatist instead of an idealist

● Continuing the “Alliance for Progress” (Foreign Policy)
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