1964 - Political Events
Political Events
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution approved by Congress August 7 authorizes President Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" (see 1963). Three North Vietnamese PT boats have allegedly fired torpedoes August 2 at a U.S. destroyer in the international waters of Tonkin Gulf 30 miles off the coast of North Vietnam, I. F. Stone has been the only journalist to challenge the president's account of the incident, Johnson has ordered retaliatory action after a second such alleged attack, U.S. aircraft have bombed North Vietnamese bases August 5, and the resolution has been approved 88 to 2 in the Senate and 416 to 0 in the House of Representatives. Gen. Nguyen Khanh has led a countercoup against Gen. Duong Van Minh in January and heads the government of South Vietnam until October despite several other countercoup attempts (see 1965).
Hostilities resume in Laos, where the French-controlled monarchy comes under renewed attack from the revolutionary movement that has become known as the Pathet Lao. Communist leader Kaysone Phomvihan, 43, moves his guerrilla forces into caves in the northern mountains, where they are relatively safe from U.S. carpet bombing.
Former Austrian chancellor Julius Raab dies at Vienna January 8 at age 72; Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti of a cerebral hemorrhage at Yalta April 21 at age 71; dowager Viscountess Lady Astor in Lincolnshire May 2 at age 84, having said, "The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything—or nothing"; former German foreign minister Heinrich von Brentano dies at Darmstadt November 14 at age 60.
Former Greek premier Sophocles Venizelos dies February 6 at age 69 aboard a cruise ship en route from Crete to the Athenian port of Piraeus. Greece's Paul I dies at his native Athens March 6 after a 17-year reign. His 23-year-old son succeeds to the throne and will reign until 1967 as Constantine II, but George Papandreou becomes premier, fighting breaks out between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios abrogates a 1960 treaty April 4, heavy fighting follows in northwestern Cyprus, Athens rejects direct talks with Ankara June 11, Turkish planes attack Greek Cypriot positions August 8, the UN orders a cease-fire August 9, Greece withdraws her units from NATO August 17, and the UN extends its mandate for force in Cyprus December 18 (see 1967).
Malta gains independence September 21 after 140 years of British colonial rule. She will become a republic in December 1974.
A Soviet coup d'état October 13 strips Nikita Khrushchev, now 70, of all power. Leonid Ilych Brezhnev, 57, becomes party leader, Aleksei Nikolaevich Kosygin, 60, becomes premier October 14.
Britain's Labour Party wins the general elections in October, Prime Minister Douglas-Home resigns, and Harold Wilson, now 48, begins a ministry that will continue until 1970. Richard H. S. Crossman is minister of housing and local government, and former Labour Party chair Barbara Anne Castle (née Betts), 53, minister of overseas development. A member of Parliament since 1945, Castle will become minister of transport next year and in 1968 will become the first secretary of state for employment and productivity. Former Supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean Gen. Henry Maitland "Jumbo" Wilson, 1st Baron Wilson, dies at Chilton, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire December 31 at age 83.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is organized to represent some 2 million refugees from the former Palestine mandate, who are scattered about in various Arab countries (see Israel, 1948). Its leadership is split between old families whose authority dates to Ottoman times and young middle-class (fedayeen) factions who favor the use of terrorism to put pressure on Israel and the West (see 1965).
Saudi Arabia's king Saud ibn Abdul Aziz is formally deposed in November at age 62 after a 12-year reign in which his extravagant spending and mismanagement of the $300 million per year Aramco oil royalties has led to an economic crisis. All powers have been transferred in March to his brother Faisal, who has served as viceroy and is proclaimed king November 2, beginning a reign that will continue until 1975.
Afghanistan adopts a new constitution that prohibits royal relatives from holding office (see 1933). Now 49, Mohammad Zahir Shah has been content to sit back and permit his relatives to run the country, but he now begins to take a more active role under a constitutional monarchy (see 1973).
Jawaharlal Nehru dies suddenly at New Delhi May 27 at age 74 after nearly 17 years as prime minister of India. The "Lion of Kashmir" Sheik Mohammed Abdullah has been released from prison April 8 after 6 years' confinement and has denounced India's policy toward Kashmir, which is claimed by Pakistan, but that policy continues under Pandit Nehru's 60-year-old successor Lal Bahadur Shastri (see 1965).
Onetime Filipino rebel Emilio Aguinaldo dies at Manila February 6 at age 94; former Japanese ambassador to the United States Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura at Tokyo May 8 at age 86; former Thai field marshal and premier Luang Phibunsongkhram at Tokyo June 12 at age 66, having fled his country in 1957.
Japan's prime minister Hayato Ikeda resigns for reasons of health in October after a 4-year ministry (and a longer career as minister of finance) in which he has helped the country produce spectacular economic growth. Ikeda is succeeded in December by former minister of finance Eisaku Sato, 63, who becomes president of the Liberal Democratic Party and will serve as prime minister until June 1972.
Rhodesian finance minister Ian D. Smith, 45, succeeds white-supremacy extremist Winston J. Field as prime minister April 13 following dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. A onetime RAF pilot who flew Spitfires in World War II, Smith has a 4,000 acre farm 220 miles southwest of Salisbury (later Harare). Authorities arrest former Southern Rhodesian African National Congress leader Joshua Nkomo, now 44, who left his party last year and will be incarcerated for the next 10 years at the Buffalo Range prison camp (see 1965).
Malawi gains independence July 6 after 66 years of British colonial rule. Formerly Nyasaland, she has broken her ties with Rhodesia, adopted a red, black, and green flag with a rising sun, and named U.S.- and British-educated physician Hastings Kamuzu Banda, 57 (University of Chicago '31), prime minister. Banda has told white settlers to accept majority rule or "pack up" (see 1966).
Zambia is created October 24 out of Northern Rhodesia and Barotseland with Kenneth David Kaunda, 40, as president of the new independent state. The British South African Co. has released mineral rights in the area on the promise of compensation from London and from the new Zambian government.
The United Republic of Tanzania takes that name October 29 with Julius K. Nyerere as president. African nationalists in Zanzibar have overthrown the predominantly Arab government January 12, thousands of Arabs have fled the island following the massacre of thousands by about 600 armed men under the leadership of communist-trained military leader John Okello. Okello has set up a People's Republic with Sheik Abeid Amani Karume as president and three Communist-trained cabinet members, Zanzibar has merged with Tanganyika April 26 at the suggestion of President Nyerere, and the new republic is communist-oriented.
Brazil's president Joao Goulart is overthrown April 1 and flees to Uruguay after a military coup that followed a presidential order distributing federal lands to landless peasants, doubling the minimum wage, and expropriating lands adjacent to federal highways. A U.S. naval force assembles in the Caribbean and heads south as President Johnson prepares to intervene to prevent a leftist takeover. An anticommunist purge follows the military coup, U.S. ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon requests the recall of U.S. naval forces before they reach Brazilian waters, and Brazil's congress elects Army chief of staff Gen. Humberto Castelo Branco April 11 to serve out the balance of President Goulart's term.
Venezuela's president Rómulo Betancourt retires after 6 years in office, having spurred industrial development to make the country less dependent on oil revenues, put through an agrarian law that expropriated large estates, and initiated a widescale program of public works. Now 58, he will live in self-imposed exile in Switzerland until 1972.
Haiti's president François "Papa Doc" Duvalier turns 57 April 14 and is declared president for life (see 1963). Excommunicated by the Vatican for harassing the clergy, he has been almost completely cut off from diplomatic relations with other countries, but his thuggish regime has given the country new political stability and he will retain power until his death in 1971.
British authorities in British Guiana revise the constitution that was introduced in 1953 and then suspended after the election of Cheddi Jagan as prime minister (see 1961); the CIA has covertly fomented social unrest in an effort to depose Jagan, and he is ousted for alleged communist connections. The constitutional change provides for proportional representation to reflect the relative voting strengths of blacks and East Indians, and it permits London-educated People's National Congress Party founder Forbes Burnham to join with a small, right-wing party and defeat the ruling People's Progressive Party. Burnham's new coalition government will halt the leftist program pursued by Jagan (see independence, 1966).
Canada adopts the Maple Leaf flag October 22. Queen Elizabeth will make it official early next year.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur (ret.) dies at Washington, D.C., April 5 at age 84; World War I hero Alvin C. York at Nashville, Tenn., December 2 at age 76.
U.S. Communist Party chairman Elizabeth Gurley Flynn dies of acute gastroenterocolitis and a pulmonary aneurism at Moscow September 5 at age 74. After a state funeral in Red Square her remains are flown to Chicago for burial near the graves of Eugene Dennis, Bill Haywood, and the Haymarket martyrs of 1886.
The Warren Commission Report issued September 27 finds that Lee Harvey Oswald alone was responsible for last year's assassination of President Kennedy and that no conspiracy was involved. Chief Justice Earl Warren has headed the presidential commission, but its report meets with skepticism in many quarters as various lawyers and publicists come out with books that seek to discredit the commission's findings.
Former president Herbert C. Hoover dies at New York October 20 at age 90.
Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, (R. Me.) makes an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Now 66, she has served in the Senate since 1948 and will continue until 1972. Self-styled "conservative" Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, now 55, of Arizona narrowly defeats the more liberal New York governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, 56, in the California primary June 2 (the margin is 48,953 out of more than 2 million votes cast) and is chosen to lead the Republican ticket after electrifying the party's right wing July 16 at San Francisco's Cow Palace, saying, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Pittsburgh millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, 32, has escorted the nominee in his family plane to California for the annual Bohemian Grove retreat (an alternate delegate to the convention, Scaife will be a major contributor to right-wing causes for more than 40 years).
President Johnson wins election in his own right with the largest popular vote plurality in U.S. history, receiving 61 percent of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes in a landslide victory over Sen. Goldwater, who has attacked Democrats for their interference in the life of the individual and their "big government" competition with private industry. Goldwater has opposed Medicare, but it is his convention speech and his suggestions of escalating the Vietnam war that have raised wide fears and he receives just 38 percent of the popular vote, 52 electoral votes (only Arizona and five Deep South states go Republican, with Southerners deserting the Democrats for the first time, largely because of racial issues).
Hawaiian voters elect Patsy Mink (née Takemoto), 36, to Congress; she is the first congresswoman of Japanese descent.
Suppression of a student protest at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall begins a long period of U.S. campus unrest that will develop into an antiwar movement.
President Johnson announces a vast increase in U.S. aid to South Vietnam December 11 "to restrain the mounting infiltration of men and equipment by the Hanoi regime in support of the Vietcong"; a military coup December 19 overthrows South Vietnam's High National Council.
The American Conservative Union holds its first board meeting December 18 at Washington's Statler Hilton Hotel. Organized after Sen. Goldwater's crushing defeat in the presidential election, its purpose is to mobilize forces against repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and oppose other liberal actions at a time when most Americans are proud to call themselves "liberal." Founders include William F. Buckley Jr., Newark, N.J.-born National Review senior editor Frank S. (Straus) Meyer, 55, Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Indianapolis Star editor Jameson G. (Gilbert) Campaigne, 50, and author John Chamberlain, now 61. The lobbying group will embrace Religious Right causes, including some (like opposition to legalized abortion) that Goldwater ("Mr. Conservative") stoutly opposes (see communications [Viguerie], 1965).
The Lockheed Blackbird surveillance plane tested by a Lockheed Aircraft pilot at Burbank, Calif., December 22 is far more advanced than the U-2A shot down in 1960. Designed as was the U-2 by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, it has a deep blue fuselage made entirely of titanium alloy that dissipates heat and absorbs radar, can reach an altitude of more than 100,000 feet at a speed of Mach 3.5, can cruise at three times the speed of sound, and has a range of 4,000 miles.
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