On the Brink: 50 Year Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Fifty years ago this past week, the world watched transfixed as the United States and Soviet Union edged to the brink of war and what could have been a nuclear Armageddon. The cause was the U.S. discovery on October 16, 1962, of the installation of Soviet missiles in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Yet the two superpowers never stepped over the brink and the crisis was defused after 13 days of high suspense. The Soviet missiles were withdrawn, and Kennedy’s reputation soared as a result. He was enjoying stellar ratings when, thirteen months later, he was assassinated. Were the plaudits deserved?
The answer is a mixed one. Inasmuch as the placement of Soviet missiles developed out of the disastrous, Kennedy-authorized Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban dissidents the previous year, assisted covertly — but so clumsily as to fool no-one — by U.S. forces, the “victory” consisted of extricating Kennedy from a self-induced crisis. But the extrication was no simple matter.
Khrushchev had placed the missiles for non-offensive purposes, to secure Cuba from future invasion. But Kennedy could not be sure: the missiles, after all, were aimed at America’s soft underbelly from the south which, the Soviets knew, the U.S. radar system did not cover, doubling Russia’s first-strike capability.
We also now know from a tape recording released in 1990 that Khrushchev spoke of selecting American targets with care and with a view to inflicting maximum damage and spreading terror. And while it later emerged that the missiles had not been fitted with nuclear warheads when the crisis arose, we also know on the authority of Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, that the missiles could have been made operational within hours had Khrushchev given the order.
There was also the Khrushchev enigma to consider. Was he was sufficiently pragmatic to pull back from the brink, or was he a nihilist ideologue, willing to risk incinerating the world? Khrushchev was later to say that, “I’m not a Czarist officer who has to kill himself if I fart at a masked ball. It’s better to back down than to go to war.” But that could be the gloss of hindsight and it is scarcely the impression Kennedy took of Khrushchev from their meeting the previous year in Vienna. “[I] talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill seventy million people in ten minutes,” Kennedy later said of that meeting, “and he just looked at me as if to say, ‘So what?’ My impression was that he just didn’t give a damn if it came to that.” This too could be a retrospective gloss. Or perhaps Kennedy was overawed by his opposite number. But, given the stakes, Kennedy could not afford to be incautious.
A month before the crisis and, with an eye on the the mid-term congressional elections then two months away, Kennedy had said that he would not tolerate a Soviet offensive military capacity in Cuba. Suddenly, he was facing the prospect of nuclear missiles, and the military service heads, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, were urging air strikes to eliminate them.
It is a myth, popularized widely, including in the film Thirteen Days (2002), that Kennedy was never enamored of this option. To the contrary, the transcripts of ExComm, his swiftly convened crisis cabinet, show him to have assumed the need for strikes in the opening days. But confirmation that the Air Force could not ensure 100% elimination of the missile sites induced caution — and a dilemma. How to honor his pledge that he would never allow Cuba to become a strategic threat, while eliminating the threat that had now actually materialized without precipitating a nuclear exchange?
Kennedy opted for placing a naval “quarantine” on Cuba — the more obvious and accurate term “blockade” was avoided, blockade being an act of war — and the Organization of American States’ agreement to this course of action provided the legal cover required for this device. It worked. Soviet ships turned back rather than invite confrontation with the 63 U.S. naval vessels and 33,000-strong U.S. forces enforcing the quarantine. But this was scarcely the end of the crisis.
“The answer is a mixed one. Inasmuch as the placement of Soviet missiles developed out of the disastrous, Kennedy-authorized Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban dissidents the previous year, assisted covertly — but so clumsily as to fool no-one — by U.S. forces, the “victory” consisted of extricating Kennedy from a self-induced crisis.”
That pretty well sums it up. There never would have been a crisis if Kennedy and his cohorts hadn’t launched a sneak against Cuba (in flagrant violation of the U.N. treaty the liberal Democrats had just signed us onto a few years before, btw).
I remember it well, and I also remember how bad a president Kennedy was…much worse than Obama. The only reason Kennedy doesn’t rank amongst the worst presidents of all time is because he got capped after only three years in office. If he’d been around for two terms he probably would have been as disastrous as Roosevelt.
Not surprisingly, he attained near demi-God status in the more idiotic portions of the American population (e.g. the media loved him even more than they love the New Messiah)
Preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion began during the Eisenhower administration. (You don’t think the whole preparation took place in the 3 months JFK had been in office, do you?)
This would have been a bipartisan policy; had Nixon defeated JFK in 1960, he would have authorized the invasion as well.
Preparations to fight the British Empire began in the 1920s with an operational plan called War Plan Red. Luckily, no one was stupid enough to actually implement that plan.
And, then along came Jack Kennedy, one of the biggest morons ever to unfortunately occupy the White House…and incredibly stupid acts become the order of the day.
Not only did they almost put us into WWIII by launching a sneak attack against the Cubans, and then throwing a little hissy fit when the Cubans, not surprisingly, took measures to defend their country against further sneak attacks, but they gave us an unwinnable war against the commies in Vietnam as a little side present, a present that ended up getting around 60,000 Americans killed for nothing.
Obama has been a bad president…Jack Kennedy was a much worse president.
While planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion did indeed start under the Eisenhower administration, far larger invasions were planned and conducted in far shorter time. A couple of quick examples:
1. Operation Market-Garden in WWII involved 3 airborne divisions, several ground divisions, thousands of airplanes, etc. It was planned and implemented in a couple weeks.
2. Inchon invasion in Korea was planned and conducted in a very short time (days to weeks).
The nationalization of American’s property by Castro was the first act-of-war committed by either side. If we’d gone in and filed fidel full of holes one day one, none of this would’ve been necessary. The lesson, which has been offered again and again (but still nobody learns) is that you take out enemies at the first chance. Castro’s still backing Leftist regimes in latin America 50 years after we let him off the first time. Iran, ditto. Rule: the right thing to do is always simple, and hard; the wrong thing is complicated, and easy. BTW, this is why Leftists always accuse Rightists of being simple-minded (assuming this to be a bad thing, you’ll note), because we want to do the right (simple/hard) thing, and the Left, as always, is backing the wrong thing.
Bay of Pigs or not, Nikita would never have dared place missiles in Cuba while Ike was President. It was likely his poor impression of Kennedy in Vienna which emboldened him. And the deal which resolved the crisis was hardly status quo ante; the Soviets removed their missiles, but gained not only a guarantee of Cuban sovereignty but the removal of the Jupiters from Turkey.
Exact! this was the result of the Vienna meeting.The Russians saw Kennedy as a push over.
This otherwise decent summary of the Cuban Missile Crisis omits one element that I found very telling when I learned of it: the position of Castro throughout this affair.
While any decent leader would have a great deal of concern for the wellbeing of his people during a crisis, Castro apparently did not. In fact, he lobbied very hard for Krushchev to initiate a first strike on the USA. I read the correspondence (in English translation) at the Georgetown University archives online some years ago. Diplomatic language is, by long tradition, restrained so that the language does not sound foaming-at-the-mouth rabid but it is so strong that it says livid rage to anyone familiar with diplomacy as Krushchev clearly was. Castro clearly wanted the USA hurt and hurt badly for the things it had done to offend him.
Furthermore, he did his best to make that happen. In addition to strongly-worded diplomatic communications with Moscow, Castro took some very provocative steps on the ground. The missile sites in Cuba that were already operational – and there were several – were manned entirely by Soviet troops and were under Soviet control. Castro had his minions rally loyal troops to surround the missile control facilities and loudly demand that the missiles be fired at the USA. (Picture Soviet missile personnel surrounded by a ring of unfriendly Castro loyalists screaming at them to launch their missiles….). And this was in the days FOLLOWING the agreement reached between Kennedy and Krushchev.
Of course Castro has always denied this despite the diplomatic evidence. The man who swore he had no political ambitions and who promised free and fair democratic elections within 6 months when he toppled Batista in 1959 is still the General Secretary of its Communist Party and continues to dominate his crumbling nation.
Castro tried his best and was pushing Nikita.This is Castro who used to say that Nikita had no “cojones”.
As I was just 18 and a college freshman at the time. I recall vividly calling my folks to tell them I was going to drive home because if we were going to war, I didn’t want to be so far from home. Scarey times.
I was in the 6th or 7th Grade in a small town in Southeast Georgia at the time. The Interstates weren’t completed yet and my little town happened to be at the intersection of two of the old federal transcontinental highways, US 1, running from Maine to Key West, and US 80, running from San Diego to Savannah. For days civillian traffic was restricted to certain hours and the roads and even the ricketety old railroad were awash in OD. There was a SAC base nearby so B-52s and B-47s at 1000 feet were a common sight and they were still using the B-29-based KC-97 as a tanker, also impressive at low altitude. It was all exciting for a kid but parents were clearly worried about it all. People in my part of the Country weren’t real fond of Mr. Kennedy but seemed to approve of his handling of it all. ‘Course, in those days we only knew what we read in the papers, and that Huntley-Brinkley fifteen minutes in the evening was a new-fangled thing.
There may have been flaws in the lead up to and resolution to the crises. But compared to Obama, who has givenbthe Caribbean away on a silver platter, the Cuban crises was handled quite well. Great article.
In “On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace”, Donald Kagan describes in detail the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. His analysis points the finger quite starkly at JFK’s role in causing the Soviets to overestimate themselves. In short, they were no match for US power at that time. However, JFK’s weakness caused them to reach for the brass ring, and almost precipitated World War III.
I have read several pertinent “facts” which are offered with a request for rebuttal(s), as needed.
In the their meeting in Vienna, Kennedy was suffering from his chronic episodal back pain, due to a tree planting ceremony earlier. Kennedy was high on drugs and Khrushchev sized him up as a drunk playboy; it led to higher risk taking by the Bear.
The Bay of Pigs was a set up by the bureaucracy on a brand new President who could be rolled. The invasion force was marginal for the job, and the trump card was a US Commander-in-Chief’s decision to commit US military forces. But nobody would tell the boss, until the hook was set, our guys were getting slaughtered on the beach. To everyone’s mutual hatred, he said no. He wrote off the men on the beach. Thereafter, Bobby’s job was to ride herd on the cowboys.
And McNamara, a generation later, learned to his horror, that the authority to launch had been delegated to Castro. The US would never do this, but the “Use them or lose them” argument won in the politburo. The trigger would be the first US boot on Cuban soil. McNamara judged we had gotten within minutes of WWIII, the evaporation of Washington D. C. and everything south of it.
Since I was living in D.C. at the time, how close did I come to becoming a plasma?
What was the Berlin Wall timeframe in this sequence?
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the result of faulty American diplomacy. Successful diplomacy averts crises; it does not create them. Kennedy’s “successful” handling of the crisis honors his legacy but ignores the fact that it should not have occurred in the first place. It would not have occurred under an Eisenhower/Dulles administration. Avoiding crises, not solving them, is the hallmark of a successful foreign policy. The Soviets made a mistake in underestimating Kennedy’s possible response. They never would have underestimated Eisenhower’s.
Skipping over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy’s role in involving the U.S. in the ill-fated Vietnam War again demonstrates his faulty and amateurish approach to foreign policy. His acquiescence in the CIA-orchestrated assassination of the the Vietnamese prime minister, who was negotiating with North Vietnam for a peaceful settlement, was the catalyst for the ensuing disaster.
There is much substance here. Kennedy won the election by whipping up a fear of a missile gap, that Eisenhower had allowed our nation to fall behind the USSR in missile technology. Eisenhower, the conqueror of Europe, scoffed at this charge, but the herd listened. A few weeks after the election, President Kennedy announced that a special commission had concluded that the missile gap had been closed, did not exist.
There was and is, a powerful cabal who raised Kennedy onto a pedestal, the American demigod. But many thought he was a light weight talent. He led us into “Nam, by listening to his advisers, e.g. McNamara. Eisenhower had been faced with the same decision years before, by a unanimous military command, but said no. When asked for his reason, he said, “I know war”, then went and played golf.
Americans, who do not study history and listen to pundits, vote lousy people into office. The result is pain and death.
Vote wisely.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility
It’s basic human nature to idealize the past. But those were definitely SCARY times, 50 years ago. On balance times are better today, in that the Warsaw Pact/Soviet Union and the threat of wholesale nuclear annihilation are no more. We did, after all, win the Cold War.
They may not have been what I would have preferred as elected officials, but Jack Kennedy, Harry S. Truman and Hubert Humphrey were real Democrats. They really cared about the country, and are nothing like the kooks/weirdos that control the Democrat party today.