An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek

Author:Robert Dallek [Dallek, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-31T11:48:15+00:00

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R O B E R T D A L L E K

Resistance to reform in Latin America itself was an even greater obstacle. Kennedy’s idealistic rhetoric about transforming the region had not persuaded entrenched interests across the hemisphere. “The governments of most Latin American countries have not yet grasped what this program calls for in the way of economic and social change, nor do the economically privileged groups understand the sacrifices which will be required of them,” Ambassador Thomas Mann in Mexico told Rusk in October. “The obstacles to change vary from country to country but they are all deep-seated and each will be extremely difficult to remove.” Bowles agreed. He doubted that the administration had considered how much a successful Alliance required revolutionary change. “What we are asking is that the philosophy of Jefferson and the social reforms of F.D.R. be telescoped into a few years in Latin America. And these steps will have to be taken against the wills of the rich and influential Latin Americans and the people in power. . . . The reforms we want them to make appear very radical to them. We take progressive income tax for granted, but this is shockingly radical to those countries.” If cautious firmness was the formula for dealing with Khrushchev in Europe, where a major miscalculation could provoke the ultimate conflict, Kennedy embraced largely covert but determined anticommunist efforts in Latin America. However undemocratic such actions might have been, Kennedy believed that he had no choice but to make sure that American surrogates got what they needed to combat Moscow-supported threats.

To facilitate counterinsurgency struggles in developing regions generally and Latin America in particular, Kennedy felt compelled to remove Bowles from the number two job in the State Department. Kennedy saw several reasons to replace him; one was his inability to reform the department’s bureaucracy, which JFK saw as miserably ineffective in acting imaginatively or promptly in responding to crises like Cuba and Berlin. Bowles’s tensions with Bobby and other advocates of practical — as opposed to what they called “fan-ciful” — answers to hard foreign policy questions also played a part.

Bowles’s antagonism to administration hard-liners was an open secret. “The question that concerns me most about this new Administration,” Bowles wrote privately after the Bay of Pigs, “is whether it lacks a genuine sense of conviction about what is right and what is wrong. . . . The Cuban fiasco demonstrates how far astray a man as brilliant and well intentioned as Kennedy can go who lacks a basic 29449 i-x,1-838 r17jk.ps 3/4/03 10:21 AM Page 437

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moral reference point.” As for Bobby, Bowles thought he demonstrated the perils of a newcomer to foreign policy who, “confronted by the nuances of international questions . . . becomes an easy target for the military-CIA-paramilitary-type answers which can be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.” Bowles certainly had it right about Bobby. Moreover, he was one of the few high officials —

Schlesinger

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