Philip Nash
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- November 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780198294689
- eISBN:
- 9780191601538
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198294689.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Kennedy's reliance on non‐nuclear assets and flexible response overshadowed his reliance on nuclear weapons, just as his nuclear restraint eclipsed recklessness. This is not surprising in view of the ...
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Kennedy's reliance on non‐nuclear assets and flexible response overshadowed his reliance on nuclear weapons, just as his nuclear restraint eclipsed recklessness. This is not surprising in view of the national security strategy Kennedy chose and the concerns about nuclear weapons he had. It is surprising, however, in light of the profound alarm with which Kennedy and most Americans viewed the Soviet threat; the frequency and intensity of the international crises Kennedy faced; and the widely acknowledged superiority of the US nuclear arsenal. Against this backdrop of threat, crisis, and strategic superiority, it is striking how small an active role nuclear weapons played in Kennedy's foreign policy.Less
Kennedy's reliance on non‐nuclear assets and flexible response overshadowed his reliance on nuclear weapons, just as his nuclear restraint eclipsed recklessness. This is not surprising in view of the national security strategy Kennedy chose and the concerns about nuclear weapons he had. It is surprising, however, in light of the profound alarm with which Kennedy and most Americans viewed the Soviet threat; the frequency and intensity of the international crises Kennedy faced; and the widely acknowledged superiority of the US nuclear arsenal. Against this backdrop of threat, crisis, and strategic superiority, it is striking how small an active role nuclear weapons played in Kennedy's foreign policy.
David R. Gibson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151311
- eISBN:
- 9781400842438
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151311.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
In October 1962, the fate of the world hung on the American response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba. That response was informed by hours of discussions between John F. ...
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In October 1962, the fate of the world hung on the American response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba. That response was informed by hours of discussions between John F. Kennedy and his top advisers. What those advisers did not know was that President Kennedy was secretly taping their talks, providing future scholars with a rare inside look at high-level political deliberation in a moment of crisis. This is the first book to examine these historic audio recordings from a sociological perspective. It reveals how conversational practices and dynamics shaped Kennedy's perception of the options available to him, thereby influencing his decisions and ultimately the outcome of the crisis. It looks not just at the positions taken by Kennedy and his advisers but how those positions were articulated, challenged, revised, and sometimes ignored. The book argues that Kennedy's decisions arose from the intersection of distant events unfolding in Cuba, Moscow, and the high seas with the immediate conversational minutia of turn-taking, storytelling, argument, and justification. In particular, the book shows how Kennedy's group told and retold particular stories again and again, sometimes settling upon a course of action only after the most frightening consequences were omitted or actively suppressed. This book presents an image of Kennedy's response to the Cuban missile crisis that is sharply at odds with previous scholarship, and has important implications for our understanding of decision making, deliberation, social interaction, and historical contingency.Less
In October 1962, the fate of the world hung on the American response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba. That response was informed by hours of discussions between John F. Kennedy and his top advisers. What those advisers did not know was that President Kennedy was secretly taping their talks, providing future scholars with a rare inside look at high-level political deliberation in a moment of crisis. This is the first book to examine these historic audio recordings from a sociological perspective. It reveals how conversational practices and dynamics shaped Kennedy's perception of the options available to him, thereby influencing his decisions and ultimately the outcome of the crisis. It looks not just at the positions taken by Kennedy and his advisers but how those positions were articulated, challenged, revised, and sometimes ignored. The book argues that Kennedy's decisions arose from the intersection of distant events unfolding in Cuba, Moscow, and the high seas with the immediate conversational minutia of turn-taking, storytelling, argument, and justification. In particular, the book shows how Kennedy's group told and retold particular stories again and again, sometimes settling upon a course of action only after the most frightening consequences were omitted or actively suppressed. This book presents an image of Kennedy's response to the Cuban missile crisis that is sharply at odds with previous scholarship, and has important implications for our understanding of decision making, deliberation, social interaction, and historical contingency.
Angela M. Lahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195314489
- eISBN:
- 9780199872077
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195314489.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Evangelicals in the United States held ambivalent, sometimes contradictory, attitudes about Castro's Cuba that revealed the multifarious influences on evangelical religious and political identity. ...
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Evangelicals in the United States held ambivalent, sometimes contradictory, attitudes about Castro's Cuba that revealed the multifarious influences on evangelical religious and political identity. The Cuban Missile Crisis temporarily homogenized the nation but opened up the potential for conflict between premillennialists and others, sharpening Cold War developments already in place.Less
Evangelicals in the United States held ambivalent, sometimes contradictory, attitudes about Castro's Cuba that revealed the multifarious influences on evangelical religious and political identity. The Cuban Missile Crisis temporarily homogenized the nation but opened up the potential for conflict between premillennialists and others, sharpening Cold War developments already in place.
Kenneth Routon
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813034836
- eISBN:
- 9780813038858
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034836.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Despite its hard-nosed emphasis on the demystifying realism of Marxist–Leninist ideology, the political imagery of the Cuban revolution—and the state that followed—conjures up its own magical ...
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Despite its hard-nosed emphasis on the demystifying realism of Marxist–Leninist ideology, the political imagery of the Cuban revolution—and the state that followed—conjures up its own magical seductions and fantasies of power. This book shows how magic practices and political culture are entangled in Cuba in unusual and intimate ways. He describes not only how the monumentality of the state arouses magical sensibilities and popular images of its hidden powers, but also the ways in which revolutionary officialdom has, in recent years, tacitly embraced and harnessed vernacular fantasies of power to the national agenda. In this analysis, popular culture and the state are deeply entangled within a promiscuous field of power, taking turns siphoning the magic of the other in order to embellish their own fantasies of authority, control, and transformation. This study brings anthropology and history together by examining the relationship between ritual and state power in revolutionary Cuba, paying particular attention to the roles of memory and history in the construction and contestation of shared political imaginaries.Less
Despite its hard-nosed emphasis on the demystifying realism of Marxist–Leninist ideology, the political imagery of the Cuban revolution—and the state that followed—conjures up its own magical seductions and fantasies of power. This book shows how magic practices and political culture are entangled in Cuba in unusual and intimate ways. He describes not only how the monumentality of the state arouses magical sensibilities and popular images of its hidden powers, but also the ways in which revolutionary officialdom has, in recent years, tacitly embraced and harnessed vernacular fantasies of power to the national agenda. In this analysis, popular culture and the state are deeply entangled within a promiscuous field of power, taking turns siphoning the magic of the other in order to embellish their own fantasies of authority, control, and transformation. This study brings anthropology and history together by examining the relationship between ritual and state power in revolutionary Cuba, paying particular attention to the roles of memory and history in the construction and contestation of shared political imaginaries.
Antonio Lopez
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814765463
- eISBN:
- 9780814765487
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814765463.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This book uncovers an important, otherwise unrecognized century-long archive of literature and performance that reveals Cuban America as a space of overlapping Cuban and African diasporic ...
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This book uncovers an important, otherwise unrecognized century-long archive of literature and performance that reveals Cuban America as a space of overlapping Cuban and African diasporic experiences. It shows how Afro-Cuban writers and performers in the U.S. align Cuban black and mulatto identities, often subsumed in the mixed-race and postracial Cuban national imaginaries, with the material and symbolic blackness of African Americans and other Afro-Latinas/os. In the works of Alberto O'Farrill, Eusebia Cosme, Rómulo Lachatañeré, and others, Afro-Cubanness articulates the African diasporic experience in ways that deprive negro and mulato configurations of an exclusive link with Cuban nationalism. Instead, what is invoked is an “unbecoming” relationship between Afro-Cubans in the United States and their domestic black counterparts. The transformations in Cuban racial identity across the hemisphere, represented powerfully in the literary and performance cultures of Afro-Cubans in the Unuted States, provide the fullest account of a transnational Cuba, one in which the Cuban American emerges as Afro-Cuban-American, and the Latino as Afro-Latino.Less
This book uncovers an important, otherwise unrecognized century-long archive of literature and performance that reveals Cuban America as a space of overlapping Cuban and African diasporic experiences. It shows how Afro-Cuban writers and performers in the U.S. align Cuban black and mulatto identities, often subsumed in the mixed-race and postracial Cuban national imaginaries, with the material and symbolic blackness of African Americans and other Afro-Latinas/os. In the works of Alberto O'Farrill, Eusebia Cosme, Rómulo Lachatañeré, and others, Afro-Cubanness articulates the African diasporic experience in ways that deprive negro and mulato configurations of an exclusive link with Cuban nationalism. Instead, what is invoked is an “unbecoming” relationship between Afro-Cubans in the United States and their domestic black counterparts. The transformations in Cuban racial identity across the hemisphere, represented powerfully in the literary and performance cultures of Afro-Cubans in the Unuted States, provide the fullest account of a transnational Cuba, one in which the Cuban American emerges as Afro-Cuban-American, and the Latino as Afro-Latino.
Dalia Antonia Muller
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631981
- eISBN:
- 9781469632001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631981.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
During the violent years of war marking Cuba’s final push for independence from Spain, over 3,000 Cuban émigrés, men and women, rich and poor, fled to Mexico. But more than a safe haven, Mexico was a ...
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During the violent years of war marking Cuba’s final push for independence from Spain, over 3,000 Cuban émigrés, men and women, rich and poor, fled to Mexico. But more than a safe haven, Mexico was a key site from which the expatriates helped launch a mobile and politically active Cuban diaspora around the Gulf of Mexico. Offering a new transnational vantage on Cuba’s struggle for nationhood, this book traces the stories of three hundred of these Cuban émigrés and explores the impact of their lives of exile, service to the revolution and independence, and circum-Caribbean solidarities. While not large in number, the émigrés excelled at community building, and their effectiveness in disseminating their political views across borders intensified their influence and inspired strong nationalistic sentiments across Latin America. Revealing that émigrés’ efforts were key to a Cuban Revolutionary Party program for courting Mexican popular and diplomatic support, the book shows how the relationship also benefited Mexican causes. Cuban revolutionary aspirations resonated with Mexican students, journalists, and others alarmed by the violation of constitutional rights and the increasing conservatism of the Porfirio Díaz regime. Finally, this book follows the émigrés’ return to Cuba after the Spanish-American War, and shows how their lives in the new republic were ineluctably shaped by their sojourn in Mexico.Less
During the violent years of war marking Cuba’s final push for independence from Spain, over 3,000 Cuban émigrés, men and women, rich and poor, fled to Mexico. But more than a safe haven, Mexico was a key site from which the expatriates helped launch a mobile and politically active Cuban diaspora around the Gulf of Mexico. Offering a new transnational vantage on Cuba’s struggle for nationhood, this book traces the stories of three hundred of these Cuban émigrés and explores the impact of their lives of exile, service to the revolution and independence, and circum-Caribbean solidarities. While not large in number, the émigrés excelled at community building, and their effectiveness in disseminating their political views across borders intensified their influence and inspired strong nationalistic sentiments across Latin America. Revealing that émigrés’ efforts were key to a Cuban Revolutionary Party program for courting Mexican popular and diplomatic support, the book shows how the relationship also benefited Mexican causes. Cuban revolutionary aspirations resonated with Mexican students, journalists, and others alarmed by the violation of constitutional rights and the increasing conservatism of the Porfirio Díaz regime. Finally, this book follows the émigrés’ return to Cuba after the Spanish-American War, and shows how their lives in the new republic were ineluctably shaped by their sojourn in Mexico.
Devyn Spence Benson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469626727
- eISBN:
- 9781469626741
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469626727.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
Analyzing the ideology and rhetoric around race on the island and in south Florida during the early years of the Cuban revolution, Devyn Spence Benson argues that ideas, stereotypes, and ...
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Analyzing the ideology and rhetoric around race on the island and in south Florida during the early years of the Cuban revolution, Devyn Spence Benson argues that ideas, stereotypes, and discriminatory practices relating to racial difference persisted despite major state efforts to generate social equality. Drawing on Cuban and U.S. archival materials and face-to-face interviews, Benson examines 1960s government programs and campaigns against discrimination, showing how such programs frequently negated their efforts by reproducing racist images and idioms in revolutionary propaganda, cartoons, and school materials. Building on nineteenth-century discourses that imagined Cuba as a raceless space--“not blacks, not whites, only Cubans”--revolutionary leaders embraced a narrow definition of blackness, often seeming to suggest that Afro-Cubans had to discard their blackness to join the revolution. This was and remains a false dichotomy for many Cubans of color, Benson demonstrates. While some Afro-Cubans agreed with the revolution’s raceless sentiments, others found ways to use state rhetoric to demand additional reforms. Still others, finding a revolution that disavowed blackness unsettling and paternalistic, fought to insert black history and African culture into revolutionary nationalisms. Despite such efforts by Afro-Cubans and radical government-sponsored integration programs, racism has persisted throughout the revolution in subtle but lasting ways.Less
Analyzing the ideology and rhetoric around race on the island and in south Florida during the early years of the Cuban revolution, Devyn Spence Benson argues that ideas, stereotypes, and discriminatory practices relating to racial difference persisted despite major state efforts to generate social equality. Drawing on Cuban and U.S. archival materials and face-to-face interviews, Benson examines 1960s government programs and campaigns against discrimination, showing how such programs frequently negated their efforts by reproducing racist images and idioms in revolutionary propaganda, cartoons, and school materials. Building on nineteenth-century discourses that imagined Cuba as a raceless space--“not blacks, not whites, only Cubans”--revolutionary leaders embraced a narrow definition of blackness, often seeming to suggest that Afro-Cubans had to discard their blackness to join the revolution. This was and remains a false dichotomy for many Cubans of color, Benson demonstrates. While some Afro-Cubans agreed with the revolution’s raceless sentiments, others found ways to use state rhetoric to demand additional reforms. Still others, finding a revolution that disavowed blackness unsettling and paternalistic, fought to insert black history and African culture into revolutionary nationalisms. Despite such efforts by Afro-Cubans and radical government-sponsored integration programs, racism has persisted throughout the revolution in subtle but lasting ways.
Mariah Zeisberg
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157221
- eISBN:
- 9781400846771
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157221.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter analyzes presidential conduct by showing how presidents can augment their authority to engage in independent acts of war. Specifically, it assesses Kennedy's behavior in the Cuban ...
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This chapter analyzes presidential conduct by showing how presidents can augment their authority to engage in independent acts of war. Specifically, it assesses Kennedy's behavior in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nixon's in the Cambodian bombing and incursion. It argues that the relational conception accommodates and explains the common intuition that the acts can be constitutionally distinguished. While both were responses to threats specified through a Cold War security order, the identification and management of threat in Kennedy's case was more deeply connected to the terms of that order than was Nixon's. The acts can also be distinguished on processual grounds. Kennedy's exercise of war power was more deeply connected to his skillful use of executive branch governance capacities.Less
This chapter analyzes presidential conduct by showing how presidents can augment their authority to engage in independent acts of war. Specifically, it assesses Kennedy's behavior in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nixon's in the Cambodian bombing and incursion. It argues that the relational conception accommodates and explains the common intuition that the acts can be constitutionally distinguished. While both were responses to threats specified through a Cold War security order, the identification and management of threat in Kennedy's case was more deeply connected to the terms of that order than was Nixon's. The acts can also be distinguished on processual grounds. Kennedy's exercise of war power was more deeply connected to his skillful use of executive branch governance capacities.
David R. Gibson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151311
- eISBN:
- 9781400842438
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151311.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This chapter begins with a brief sketch of the events that unfolded during the Cuban missile crisis. It describes the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or the ExComm, consisting ...
More
This chapter begins with a brief sketch of the events that unfolded during the Cuban missile crisis. It describes the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or the ExComm, consisting of Kennedy's cabinet, their immediate subordinates, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a number of other top-level advisers. It then turns to Kennedy's secret recordings of many White House meetings and telephone conversations, which capture more than twenty hours of ExComm deliberations. Next, it sets out the book's purpose, namely is to undertake the first sustained analysis of the ExComm recordings. The goal is to mine the details of these discussions from a sociological perspective that views conversation as an achievement unto itself, and anything achieved through conversation as indelibly shaped by its rules, constraints, procedures, and vicissitudes.Less
This chapter begins with a brief sketch of the events that unfolded during the Cuban missile crisis. It describes the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or the ExComm, consisting of Kennedy's cabinet, their immediate subordinates, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a number of other top-level advisers. It then turns to Kennedy's secret recordings of many White House meetings and telephone conversations, which capture more than twenty hours of ExComm deliberations. Next, it sets out the book's purpose, namely is to undertake the first sustained analysis of the ExComm recordings. The goal is to mine the details of these discussions from a sociological perspective that views conversation as an achievement unto itself, and anything achieved through conversation as indelibly shaped by its rules, constraints, procedures, and vicissitudes.
David R. Gibson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151311
- eISBN:
- 9781400842438
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151311.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This chapter begins with some historical background, situating the ExComm, as a deliberative body, against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs, where genuine deliberation was lacking. Then, it describes ...
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This chapter begins with some historical background, situating the ExComm, as a deliberative body, against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs, where genuine deliberation was lacking. Then, it describes how the ExComm's meetings were organized and conducted. It starts with some remarks about the composition of the group, and then describes, in general terms, how the meetings were structured. Next, it describe Kennedy's singular role in the meetings, as sometimes-chair, sometimes-decider, and addressee of choice. Finally, it looks at the conversational data through an entirely different methodological lens, presenting some simple quantitative findings about who spoke, how they obtained the floor, and who was addressed—patterns that offer further evidence for the qualitative observations about authority and expertise while providing additional insight into the interactional styles of the different ExComm members.Less
This chapter begins with some historical background, situating the ExComm, as a deliberative body, against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs, where genuine deliberation was lacking. Then, it describes how the ExComm's meetings were organized and conducted. It starts with some remarks about the composition of the group, and then describes, in general terms, how the meetings were structured. Next, it describe Kennedy's singular role in the meetings, as sometimes-chair, sometimes-decider, and addressee of choice. Finally, it looks at the conversational data through an entirely different methodological lens, presenting some simple quantitative findings about who spoke, how they obtained the floor, and who was addressed—patterns that offer further evidence for the qualitative observations about authority and expertise while providing additional insight into the interactional styles of the different ExComm members.
