Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a very tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The period of greatest danger started on October 16, 1962, when U.S. reconnaissance was shown to U.S. president John F. Kennedy which revealed evidence for Soviet nuclear missile installations in Cuba, and lasted for 13 days until October 28, 1962, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced the installations would be dismantled. It is regarded as the moment when the Cold War was closest to turning into a nuclear war. Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," while Cubans refer to it as the "October Crisis."

Prelude

The Cuban Revolution

The revolution in Cuba, and Fidel Castro's subsequent alignment with the Soviet bloc was the second time a country had become communist without significant military or political intervention from the USSR, China being the first. As such, it was hugely symbolic to Soviet leaders - particularly Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leader regarded the defense of the communist island as critical to the international standing of the USSR and of communist ideology.

It is likely that Khrushchev believed that deployment of missiles in Cuba would protect the island from a second American invasion that he regarded as inevitable following the Bay of Pigs Invasion debacle of 1961. A significant military deployment of highly-prized weapons would also demonstrate the importance of the Soviet-Cuban alliance to Castro, who had requested physical evidence of Soviet support for the island.

U.S. missile sites in Turkey

In 1961, the U.S. started deploying 15 Jupiter IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) nuclear missiles near Izmir, Turkey, which directly threatened cities in the western sections of the Soviet Union. These missiles were regarded by President John F. Kennedy as being of questionable strategic value; a nuclear submarine was capable of providing the same cover with both stealth and superior firepower. In the late 1950's missile technology was well developed in the field of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), as opposed to ICBMs which could not be kept in a state of readiness at all times.

MRBMs represented only a small portion of the total American nuclear arsenal, but still much larger than the U.S.S.R.'s. Soviet strategists realized that some nuclear equality could be efficiently reached by placing missiles in Cuba. Soviet MRBMs on Cuban soil, with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 statute miles), could threaten Washington, DC and around half of the U.S. SAC bases (of nuclear-armed bombers), with a flight time of under twenty minutes. In addition, the U.S.'s radar warning systems oriented toward USSR would have provided little warning of a launch from Cuba.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had publicly expressed his anger at the Turkish deployment, and regarded the missiles as a personal affront. The deployment of missiles in Cuba - the first time Soviet missiles were moved outside the USSR - is commonly seen as Khrushchev's direct response to the Turkish missiles.

Missile Deployment

Khrushchev devised the deployment plan in May of 1962, and by late July over sixty Soviet ships were en-route to Cuba, some of them already carrying military material. John McCone, director of the CIA, warned President Kennedy that some of the ships were probably carrying missiles; however, a meeting with John and Robert Kennedy, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara decided that the Soviets would not try such a thing. Kennedy's administration had received repeated claims from Soviet diplomats that there were no missiles in Cuba, nor any plans to place any, and that the Soviets were not interested in starting an international drama that might impact the US elections in November.

The U-2 flights

Picture of one of the Soviet missile sites in Cuba.

A U-2 flight in late August photographed a new series of SAM sites being constructed, but on September 4, 1962 Kennedy told Congress that there were no offensive missiles in Cuba. On the night of September 8, the first consignment of SS-4 MRBMs was unloaded in Havana, and a second shipload arrived on September 16. The Soviets were building nine sites — six for SS-4s and three for SS-5s with a range of 4,000 km (2,400 statute miles). The planned arsenal was forty launchers, an increase in Soviet first strike capacity of 70%.

A number of unconnected problems meant that the missiles were not discovered by the US until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of an SS-4 site near San Cristobal. The photographs were shown to Kennedy on October 16 [1]. By October 19 the U-2 flights (then almost continuous) showed four sites were operational. Initially, the U.S. government kept the information secret, telling only the fourteen key officials of the executive committee. The United Kingdom was not informed until the evening of October 21. President Kennedy, in a televised address on October 22, announced the discovery of the installations and proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union and would be responded to accordingly. He also placed a naval "quarantine" (blockade) on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of military weapons from arriving there. The word quarantine was used rather than blockade for reasons of international law (the blockade took place in international waters) and in keeping with the Quarantine Speech of 1937 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. John F. Kennedy claimed that a blockade is an act of war (which was correct) and war had not been declared between America and Cuba.

U.S. response

With the news of the confirmed photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, President Kennedy convened a special group of senior advisers to meet secretly at the White House. This group later became known as the ExComm, or Executive Committee of the National Security Council. From the morning of October 16 this group met frequently to devise a response to the threat. The officials had discussed the various options. An immediate bombing strike was dismissed early on, as was a potentially time-consuming appeal to the United Nations. The real options for the ExComm were only military, the diplomatic ones barely considered and dismissed on the first day before even the real discussions started. The choice was reduced to either a naval blockade and an ultimatum, or full-scale invasion. A blockade was finally chosen, although there were a number of hawks (notably Paul Nitze, and Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor) who kept pushing for tougher action. An invasion was planned, and troops were assembled in Florida. However US intelligence was flawed: they believed Soviet and Cuban troop numbers on Cuba to be around 10,000 and 100,000, when they were in fact around 43,000 and 270,000 respectively [2]. Also, they were unaware of the 12 Luna tactical nuclear weapons already on the island, which could be launched on the authority of the Soviet commander on the island, General Pliyev, [3] in the event of an invasion. An invasion would therefore probably have invoked a nuclear strike against the invading force, with catastrophic results.

There were a number of issues with the naval blockade. There was legality - as Fidel Castro noted, there was nothing illegal about the missile installations; they were certainly a threat to the U.S., but similar missiles aimed at the U.S.S.R. were in place in Europe (sixty Thor IRBMs in four squadrons near Nottingham, in the United Kingdom; thirty Jupiter IRBMs in two squadrons near Gioia del Colle, Italy; and fifteen Jupiter IRBMs in one squadron near Izmir, Turkey). There was concern of the Soviet's reaction to the blockade; it might turn into escalating retaliation.

Kennedy spoke to the American public, and to the Soviet government, in a televised address on October 22. He confirmed the presence of the missiles in Cuba and announced the naval blockade as a quarantine zone of 500 nautical miles (926 km) around the Cuban coast. He warned that the military was "prepare[d] for any eventualities," and condemned the Soviet Union for "secrecy and deception". The U.S. was surprised at the solid support from its European allies, although Britain's prime minister Macmillan and well as much of the international community did not understand why a diplomatic solution was not considered.

The case was conclusively proved on October 25 at an emergency session of the UN Security Council. U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson attempted to force an answer from Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin as to the existence of the weapons, famously demanding, "Don't wait for the translation!" Upon Zorin's refusal, Stevenson produced photographs taken by U.S. surveillance aircraft showing the missile installations in Cuba.

Khrushchev sent letters to Kennedy on October 23 and 24 claiming the deterrent nature of the missiles in Cuba and the peaceful intentions of the Soviet Union; however, the Soviets had delivered two different deals to the United States government. On October 26, they offered to withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. guarantee not to invade Cuba or support any invasion. The second deal was broadcast on public radio on October 27, calling for the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey in addition to the demands of the 26th. The crisis peaked on October 27, when a U-2 (piloted by Rudolph Anderson) was shot down over Cuba and another U-2 flight over Russia was almost intercepted when it strayed over Siberia, after Curtis LeMay (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff) had neglected to enforce Presidential orders to suspend all overflights. At the same time, Soviet merchant ships were nearing the quarantine zone. Kennedy responded by publicly accepting the first deal and sending Robert Kennedy to the Soviet embassy to accept the second in private that the fifteen Jupiter missiles near Izmir, Turkey would be removed. The Soviet ships turned back and on October 28. Khrushchev announced that he had ordered the removal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. The decision prompted Dean Rusk to comment, "We went eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked."

Satisfied that the Soviets had removed the missiles, President Kennedy ordered an end to the quarantine of Cuba on November 20.

Aftermath

The compromise satisfied no one, though it was a particularly sharp diplomatic embarrassment for Khrushchev and the Soviet Union, who were seen as backing down from a situation that they had created, whilst, if played well, it could have looked like just the opposite; the USSR gallantly saving the world from nuclear holocaust by not insisting on restoring the nuclear equilibrium. Khrushchev's fall from power a few years later can be partially linked to Politburo embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the US and his ineptitude in precipitating the crisis in the first place.

U.S. military commanders were not happy with the result either. General LeMay told the President that it was "the greatest defeat in our history" and that the US should invade immediately.

For Cuba, it was a betrayal by the Soviets whom they had trusted, given that the decisions on putting an end to the crisis had been made exclusively by Kennedy and Khrushchev.

In early 1992 it was confirmed that Soviet forces in Cuba had, by the time the crisis broke, received tactical nuclear warheads for their cruise missiles, artillery rockets, and IL-28 bombers [4], though General Anatoly Gribkov, part of the Soviet staff responsible for the operation, stated that the local Soviet commander, General Issa Pliyev, had predelegated authority to use them if the U.S. had mounted a full-scale invasion of Cuba. Gribkov misspoke: the Kremlin's authorization remained unsigned and undelivered.

The short time span of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the extensive documentation of the decision-making processes on both sides makes it an excellent case study for analysis of state decision-making. In the Essence of Decision, Graham T. Allison and Philip D. Zelikow use the crisis to illustrate multiple approaches to analyzing the actions of the state. The intensity and magnitude of the crisis also provides excellent material for drama, as illustrated by the movie Thirteen Days (2000), directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp. It was also a substantial part of the 2003 documentary The Fog Of War, which won an Oscar.

In October 2002, McNamara and Schlesinger joined a group of other dignitaries in a "reunion" with Castro in Cuba to continue to release classified documents and further study the crisis. It was during the first meeting that Secretary McNamara first discovered that Cuba had many more missiles than initially expected, and what McNamara refered to as 'rational men' (Castro and Khruschev) were perfectly willing to start a nuclear war over the crisis. Furthermore, it was revealed at this conference that an officer aboard a Soviet submarine, named Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, may have single-handedly prevented the initiation of a nuclear catastrophe [5]. The reported details of this event are remarkably similar to the plot from the movie Crimson Tide (1995), except that the roles of the Americans and Soviets are reversed.

See also

• International crisis
• Brinkmanship
• Thirteen Days
• The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

Further reading

• Allison, Graham and Zelikow, P. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Longman, 1999.
• Blight, James G., and David A. Welch. On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.
• Brugioni, Dino A. Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Random House, 1991.
• Divine, Robert A. The Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: M. Wiener Pub.,1988.
• Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Naftali, Timothy; One Hell of a Gamble - Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958-1964; W.W. Norton (New York 1998)
• Giglio, James N. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy. Lawrence, Kansas, 1991.
• Gonzalez, Servando The Nuclear Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis; IntelliBooks, 2002 ISBN: 0-9711391-5-6
• Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis; ISBN 0-3933183-4-6
• May, Ernest R., and Philip D. Zelikow., eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis. Concise Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.
• Nuti, Leopoldo (ed.) I «Missili di Ottobre»: La Storiografia Americana e la Crisi Cubana dell’Ottobre 1962 Milano: LED, 1994.
• Thompson, Robert S., The Missile of October: The Declassified Story of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• Diez Acosta, Tomás, October 1962: The 'Missile' Crisis As Seen From Cuba. Pathfinder Press, New York, 2002.
• Bamford, James, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency Anchor Books, 2002.

External links

• Declassified Documents, etc. - Provided by the National Security Archive.
• Transcripts and Audio of ExComm meetings - Provided by the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program, University of Virginia.
• Forty Years After 13 Days - Robert S. McNamara.
• Tapes of debates between JFK and his advisors during the crisis
• Cuban Missile Crisis Reunion, October 2002
• The World On the Brink: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
• 14 Days in October: The Cuban Missile Crisis - a site geared toward high-school students