THE PRESIDENCY (See Cover) The hour—6 p.m.—was unusual for a presidential press conference. So was the occasion. So was the tingling of high excitement that filled the room. The U.S., fretful and frustrated about the buildup of Russian arms and military personnel in Cuba, anxiously waited to hear what President Kennedy would say about his Cuba policy.
Politicians and private citizens had been barraging Kennedy with demands that he "do something." Moscow, having the time of its life, had issued a statement warning Kennedy that he had better do nothing if he wanted to stay out of trouble. The U.S., said the Russians, "cannot now attack Cuba and expect that the aggressor will be free from punishment for this attack. If such attack is made, this will be the beginning of unleashing war." Kennedy was calm. He came with a prepared statement, which he read with force. But its well-formed sentences did not shift the debate or alter any previous views; they did not change the policy of "containment" and watchful waiting which the President has espoused to date.
"Whatever Must Be Done." Castro, said the President, is "in trouble. Along with his pledges for political freedom, his industries are stagnating, his harvests are declining, his own followers are beginning to see that their revolution has been betrayed." As for those shipments of Communist weapons, they "do not constitute a serious threat to any other part of this hemisphere." Accordingly, "unilateral military intervention on the part of the U.S. cannot currently be either required or justified.
"But let me make this clear once again," Kennedy went on. "If at any time the Communist buildup in Cuba were to endanger or interfere with our security in any way ... or if Cuba should ever attempt to export its aggressive purposes by force or the threat of force against any nation in this hemisphere, or become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies." But doing "whatever must be done" is not a policy; it is a taken-for-granted imperative for any Administration in any crisis. Kennedy's statement failed to still voices that had been raised against his inaction in the Cuba crisis. And in the absence of a more positive policy, there was increasing talk about a solid rock upon which current U.S. action against Cuba might be based.
That rock is the Monroe Doctrine.
Nikita Khrushchev considers the Monroe Doctrine a corpse. Said he in 1960: "Now the remains of this doctrine should best be buried, as every dead body is, so that it does not poison the air by its decay." Some Americans, even including some officials of the U.S. Government, look upon it as, if not quite dead, then at least moribund. It is "out of date," says Eleanor Roosevelt.
But others think differently. Last week New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating declared on the Senate floor that "the Monroe Doctrine, cornerstone of American foreign policy, has been violated." In a letter to the President, Texas' Democratic Congressman O. C. Fisher called for a naval blockade of Cuba and invocation of the Monroe Doctrine, "since the Soviets have now openly and brazenly