Fate of Castro's Cuba should Nixon win in 1960?

[James G]

What fate would befall Cuba should Nixon have won in 1960, without the fraud which saw Kennedy supposedly win?
Instead of the Bay of Pigs, would we have seen a real invasion occur? Would the Soviets have backed away from Cuba - they were hardly committed here at that point - rather than risked everything or thrown everything at aiding Cuba in the face of an American invasion?
Should the Soviets have stayed out and Nixon won a war, would the election of 1964 had been his for the taking?

[lordroel]

Apr 19, 2019 15:59:25 GMT James G said:

What fate would befall Cuba should Nixon have won in 1960, without the fraud which saw Kennedy supposedly win?
Instead of the Bay of Pigs, would we have seen a real invasion occur? Would the Soviets have backed away from Cuba - they were hardly committed here at that point - rather than risked everything or thrown everything at aiding Cuba in the face of an American invasion?
Should the Soviets have stayed out and Nixon won a war, would the election of 1964 had been his for the taking?

Something like this maybe: What if:Richard Nixon Had Won the 1960 Presidential Election

In short what it says is:

If Nixon had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis, these would have been the first steps on the road to global thermonuclear war. Nixon would be hard pressed to resist the inevitable calls for U.S. retaliation. He might have tried to resist the institutional forces at work urging him to implement the SIOP, responding with a limited nuclear strike against a single Soviet military installation. And we can only hope Khrushchev would not have been taken in by Nixon’s madman bluff, resisting the logical response of attacking the U.S. first.

[insect]

Castro is thrown out. No Soviet intervention. Lyndon Johnson succeeds Nixon in 64.

[lordroel]

Apr 22, 2019 16:24:39 GMT insect said:

Castro is thrown out. No Soviet intervention. Lyndon Johnson succeeds Nixon in 64.

World War III happening in the meantime.

[EwellHolmes]

World War III would not happen; Moscow didn't view Cuba as worth it and the Soviet leadership only went about testing Kennedy because they viewed him as weak. They had no such illusions about Nixon, who was recognized as someone not to fuck with after the Kitchen Debates. As for Cuba, either Nixon doesn't do anything, as he held a healthy distrust of the CIA unlike Kennedy, or he actually goes all out and overthrows Castro with no half measures.

[James G]

No way do we have WW3 over Cuba if Nixon wins in 60. The Soviets hadn't moved into the Western Hemisphere yet and Castro had yet to turn to them for aid in exchange for basing of nukes.

[mcnutt]

More support for the Bay of Pigs that escalates into US troops fighting a guerrilla war in Cuba. We are too distracted to worry that much about Vietnam.

[stevep]

Apr 26, 2019 3:11:00 GMT mcnutt said:

More support for the Bay of Pigs that escalates into US troops fighting a guerrilla war in Cuba. We are too distracted to worry that much about Vietnam.

  That's definitely a possibility, especially if Cuba prompts unrest in other Latin states and the US tries the same approach elsewhere. 

  Although Cuba because it lacks a powerful communist neighbour and is an island in the American back-yard would be a lot more difficult for the communists to supply with equipment.

[arrowiv]

I think it would also depend if Nixon picks Kissinger (then a nobody at Harvard) to be his secretary of state. Kissinger's prime interests were basically China and the Middle East and the USSR and so I recall the only time he picked up an interest in Cuba was during the Angola civil war in 1974-75.

[James G]

May 20, 2019 21:04:28 GMT arrowiv said:

I think it would also depend if Nixon picks Kissinger (then a nobody at Harvard) to be his secretary of state. Kissinger's prime interests were basically China and the Middle East and the USSR and so I recall the only time he picked up an interest in Cuba was during the Angola civil war in 1974-75.

I'm sure it was at that time that Kissinger tried to push Ford to attack Cuba. Not invade - thus breaking the 'deal' made with Moscow during the 60s - but bomb Cuba. I once read a TL somewhere based on such an idea but a few months after a possible Ford victory in 1976.

[TheRomanSlayer]

I would suspect that the US would be bogged down in Cuba instead of Vietnam, although there is the issue of GitMo.

[James G]

May 22, 2019 6:12:08 GMT TheRomanSlayer said:

I would suspect that the US would be bogged down in Cuba instead of Vietnam, although there is the issue of GitMo.

Could Guantanamo Bay be one big Khe Shah (spelling: I know!) ?

[stevep]

May 22, 2019 11:28:24 GMT James G said:

May 22, 2019 6:12:08 GMT TheRomanSlayer said:

I would suspect that the US would be bogged down in Cuba instead of Vietnam, although there is the issue of GitMo.

Could Guantanamo Bay be one big Khe Shah (spelling: I know!) ?

  Well if it actually came to all out war I can't see the US holding it without a full scale invasion to secure the surrounding area.

[James G]

Should the US invade to depose Castro I would suspect the Soviets, bluster aside, do nothing. Havana - Moscow ties took some time to develope.
Castro and Che would retreat to the mountains and fight it out guerilla again. For the Soviets to supply them, or anyone else, that could be quite the challenge seeing as Cuba is an island nation on America’s doorstep.

[EwellHolmes]

May 24, 2019 8:42:09 GMT James G said:

Should the US invade to depose Castro I would suspect the Soviets, bluster aside, do nothing. Havana - Moscow ties took some time to develope.
Castro and Che would retreat to the mountains and fight it out guerilla again. For the Soviets to supply them, or anyone else, that could be quite the challenge seeing as Cuba is an island nation on America’s doorstep.

Exactly this, Cuba just isn't possible to make into an Alt-Vietnam.