Kennedy and British Guiana: A Cold War International History
13-03-13 Institute for the Study of the Americas
http://www.sas.ac.uk/ http://events.sas.ac.uk/isa/events/vi…
Fifty Years Without JFK: Rethinking Global Diplomacy – Americas: Panel 2
Kennedy and British Guiana: A Cold War International History
Robert Anthony Waters Jr. (Ohio Northern University)
This paper will re-examine the Kennedy administration‘s relations with British Guiana and Premier Cheddi Jagan. It is a revisionist account that puts U.S. policy in the larger context of Cuban and Soviet intervention. The paper will do the following:
1) Trace Kennedy’s views on British Guiana and explain the reasons for his sometimes tangled policy. Included in this assessment will be the probable role of the U.S.S. Oxford spy ship, which was sent to the Guianese coast shortly before Kennedy turned against Jagan and began to seek his ouster.
2) Examine British Guiana’s impact on the “Special Relationship” — a worried British official wrote that relations between the two countries were at a “tipping point,” which the colony could topple if Macmillan did not agree to oust Jagan. Tied to the Special Relationship was British Guiana’s impact on U.S. anti-colonial policy: While the U.S. pressured the British to remove Jagan, the British countered with suggestions for a quid pro quo in Kenya, Southern Rhodesia, and British Honduras, and even discussed the possibility of helping in British Guiana as a means to avoid participation in U.S. plans to intervene in Laos. This paper will analyze the success or failure of these colonial bargaining chips.
3) Investigate Jagan’s charge that the United States had persuaded Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt to demand changes in the country’s borders as a means to pressure Jagan, and explicate the successful U.S. effort to pressure Israel against assisting the Guianese to create a national defense force based on the Israeli model.
4) Describe the Cuban and Soviet intervention in British Guiana, particularly during the anti-government general strike in 1963 and the pro-government sugar workers’ strike of 1964.
5) Discuss the administration’s effort to use a combination of political pressure and CIA support for intervention by U.S. trade unions in order to oust Jagan and pre-empt independent Guyana from joining the Communist Bloc.
6) Use Kennedy’s post-missile crisis British Guiana policy to assess if his foreign policy underwent what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called a “Great Turning” away from Cold War confrontation in international hot spots.
Americas: Panel 2
Chair: Dr. Thomas Rath
Northern Exposure: The Kennedy Administration, Canadian Nationalism, and Canada-
US Relations
Asa McKercher (University of Cambridge)
http://youtu.be/F81Ik7zaSTw
‘I should have said we don’t care’: Kennedy, Cuba and the impossibility of having it all.
Luca Trenta (Durham University)
http://youtu.be/BkmWxxAArxQ
Kennedy and British Guiana: A Cold War International History
Robert Anthony Waters Jr. (Ohio Northern University)
http://youtu.be/L1MV8aR7DGg
Panel 2, Americas: Q&A Session
http://youtu.be/xm26Se6SOPc
Comments
Soooo…..this is his spin. I am strongly convinced that the funding for his research came from the Americans resulting in the Indian bashing and the pro white American praise worshiping. Why is the American govt still refusing to declassify all the files on Guyana? Are these files so shameful, so damaging, so embarrassing to undermining any remaining credibility that it has with the Guyanese people? The fact that the American govt is STILL INTERFERING in Guyana’s affairs is proof that it is still seeking to undermine Guyana’s sovereignty and prosperity. There is no end to their greed, covetousness and despotic ambition to control the world.
Good to know that Dr Jagan couldn’t be bought unlike the opportunist, racist, and demagogue Burnham that the Americans and British picked to do their bidding and scheming. They are excellent when it comes to assessing and selecting persons with the kind of character necessary for vile, ugly, despotic leadership. I give them flying marks for that.
Dr Jagan was not a born and bred two bit cutthroat politician that so called western democracies are notorious for breeding and molding. Neither was he the default shyster lawyer type. Yet he was a true Aristotelian politician, a just man of great virtue. Thus he will be remembered amongst the great and benevolent world leaders who are and will be forever remembered with great and deserving reverence.
—
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) — American writer and philosopher
“The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”
“Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.”