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Review: ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis’, by Bruce Riedel
A few weeks before he was assassinated in November 1963, John Kennedy said: “I can tell you that there is nothing that has occupied our attention more than India in the last nine months.” Even comatose students of history might have had to reread that line. Surely he must have meant Cuba or the Soviet Union?
In fact, it was India — and the prospect of a resumption of its war with China — that haunted the final weeks of Kennedy’s life. The Cuban missile crisis had been resolved a year earlier. After coming within a hairsbreadth of war, Nikita Khrushchev famously blinked and withdrew Soviet nuclear weapons from the Caribbean island. In exchange, Kennedy quietly removed US nuclear weapons from Turkey.
Few westerners could forget those days of superpower tension, the closest the world has come to nuclear war. Only a tiny handful would recall, however, that at the same moment the American U-2 spy jet had spotted Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, China had invaded India. In Kennedy’s words, it was the “climactic period” of his administration.
His intervention was as decisive in the 1962 Indochina war as it was in Cuba. In the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, America’s plenipotentiary ambassador to India, it was the most dramatic combination of crises faced by a US president. “In the same week, on almost the same day, that the two great western powers confronted each other over Cuba, the two great Asian countries went to war in the Himalayas,” he wrote.
The disparity between our memories of the two crises is striking. Bruce Riedel — a national security adviser to four US presidents — brings the forgotten Indochina one to life. His book is a minor gem of elegant history writing. The Kennedy library’s compendium of books on the Cuban crisis runs to 13 pages. Yet Riedel’s is the first to address the president’s role in the Sino-Indian war.
One reason for the disparity is India’s desire for the 1962 war to be forgotten. To this day, its official report on the disastrous war remains top secret. Successive Indian governments denied that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, had even asked for Kennedy’s help.
It is easy to see why. Nehru’s worldview was based on India’s non-alignment in the cold war and third-world solidarity against the former colonial powers. He was disdainful of the US and believed deeply in “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai” or brotherhood.
Yet when Mao Zedong decided to “teach India a lesson” by hurling thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops across the border, Nehru turned to Washington. He had little choice. India was facing a “struggle for survival against an unscrupulous and powerful aggressor”, Nehru wrote to Kennedy. At Galbraith’s urging, the US president responded immediately. Within days 10,000 US servicemen had arrived in India. Eight flights a day of US and British weapons were sent to Calcutta. A US aircraft carrier was diverted to the Bay of Bengal. Having advanced with ease into northeastern India, Mao abruptly declared a ceasefire. “Like a thief in the night peace arrived,” wrote Galbraith. The clarity of Kennedy’s response was critical; but for him, it is doubtful Mao would have halted so soon.
There is much in Riedel’s short book to pore over. The tale of Nehru’s humiliation is poignant. China’s betrayal, and India’s sudden reliance on the US, killed Nehru’s spirit. He died a broken man a few months later.
Galbraith’s role is also instructive. The Harvard economist was arguably the most powerful US ambassador in modern times. For a full week after China’s invasion, he received no letter, call or telegram from Washington. It was utterly preoccupied with the Cuban crisis. Kennedy entrusted the US response entirely to Galbraith. It was a shrewd decision. The latter preferred to communicate directly with the president. Going via the state department was like “fornicating through a mattress”, said Galbraith.
Most of all, however, Riedel’s book shows the strength of a president who knew when to delegate authority and when to ignore the experts. The latter urged him to bomb Soviet missile sites in Cuba. Kennedy ignored them. We may well be alive today because he did so. India, likewise, has reason to remember him generously.
The writer is the FT’s chief US columnist
‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War’, by Bruce Riedel, The Brookings Institution, $29
Review: ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis’, by Bruce Riedel
A few weeks before he was assassinated in November 1963, John Kennedy said: “I can tell you that there is nothing that has occupied our attention more than India in the last nine months.” Even comatose students of history might have had to reread that line. Surely he must have meant Cuba or the Soviet Union?
In fact, it was India — and the prospect of a resumption of its war with China — that haunted the final weeks of Kennedy’s life. The Cuban missile crisis had been resolved a year earlier. After coming within a hairsbreadth of war, Nikita Khrushchev famously blinked and withdrew Soviet nuclear weapons from the Caribbean island. In exchange, Kennedy quietly removed US nuclear weapons from Turkey.
Few westerners could forget those days of superpower tension, the closest the world has come to nuclear war. Only a tiny handful would recall, however, that at the same moment the American U-2 spy jet had spotted Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, China had invaded India. In Kennedy’s words, it was the “climactic period” of his administration.
His intervention was as decisive in the 1962 Indochina war as it was in Cuba. In the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, America’s plenipotentiary ambassador to India, it was the most dramatic combination of crises faced by a US president. “In the same week, on almost the same day, that the two great western powers confronted each other over Cuba, the two great Asian countries went to war in the Himalayas,” he wrote.
The disparity between our memories of the two crises is striking. Bruce Riedel — a national security adviser to four US presidents — brings the forgotten Indochina one to life. His book is a minor gem of elegant history writing. The Kennedy library’s compendium of books on the Cuban crisis runs to 13 pages. Yet Riedel’s is the first to address the president’s role in the Sino-Indian war.
One reason for the disparity is India’s desire for the 1962 war to be forgotten. To this day, its official report on the disastrous war remains top secret. Successive Indian governments denied that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, had even asked for Kennedy’s help.
It is easy to see why. Nehru’s worldview was based on India’s non-alignment in the cold war and third-world solidarity against the former colonial powers. He was disdainful of the US and believed deeply in “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai” or brotherhood.
Yet when Mao Zedong decided to “teach India a lesson” by hurling thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops across the border, Nehru turned to Washington. He had little choice. India was facing a “struggle for survival against an unscrupulous and powerful aggressor”, Nehru wrote to Kennedy. At Galbraith’s urging, the US president responded immediately. Within days 10,000 US servicemen had arrived in India. Eight flights a day of US and British weapons were sent to Calcutta. A US aircraft carrier was diverted to the Bay of Bengal. Having advanced with ease into northeastern India, Mao abruptly declared a ceasefire. “Like a thief in the night peace arrived,” wrote Galbraith. The clarity of Kennedy’s response was critical; but for him, it is doubtful Mao would have halted so soon.
There is much in Riedel’s short book to pore over. The tale of Nehru’s humiliation is poignant. China’s betrayal, and India’s sudden reliance on the US, killed Nehru’s spirit. He died a broken man a few months later.
Galbraith’s role is also instructive. The Harvard economist was arguably the most powerful US ambassador in modern times. For a full week after China’s invasion, he received no letter, call or telegram from Washington. It was utterly preoccupied with the Cuban crisis. Kennedy entrusted the US response entirely to Galbraith. It was a shrewd decision. The latter preferred to communicate directly with the president. Going via the state department was like “fornicating through a mattress”, said Galbraith.
Most of all, however, Riedel’s book shows the strength of a president who knew when to delegate authority and when to ignore the experts. The latter urged him to bomb Soviet missile sites in Cuba. Kennedy ignored them. We may well be alive today because he did so. India, likewise, has reason to remember him generously.
The writer is the FT’s chief US columnist
‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War’, by Bruce Riedel, The Brookings Institution, $29
