Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 brought the United States and the Soviet Union closer to nuclear war than perhaps any other incident in the Cold War (1946– 1991). The crisis began on October 14, 1962, when American U-2 spy planes flying over Cuba brought back photographs revealing that sites for medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles were under construction. The Cuban missiles posed a serious strategic problem for President John F. Kennedy because they were capable of hitting targets deep within United States territory. The missiles also posed a political dilemma for the president because of his campaign promises to contain Communism aggressively. Coming after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and with only weeks to go before the mid-term 1962 elections, Kennedy believed that American voters would see any decision that allowed offensive weapons to remain only ninety miles from U.S. soil as a sign of weakness.
It is still uncertain why the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro decided to install offensive missiles in Cuba. Some have speculated that the Communist leaders saw the missiles as a way to defend Cuba from another U.S. invasion. Others surmise that Khrushchev saw the missiles as a way to alter the strategic balance of power in the Cold War by creating the impression that the United States lacked the resolve to confront Communism. It also seems possible that the Soviet leader saw the missiles as diplomatic bargaining chips he could use to extract concessions from the United States on other sensitive Cold War issues.
To address the threat posed to U.S. interests by the Cuban missiles, Kennedy convened an executive committee (EXCOMM) of the National Security Council. The EXCOMM consisted of thirteen advisers, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA Director John McCone, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Special Counsel Theodore Sorensen. For twelve days beginning on October 16, the EXCOMM met in secret to plan the U.S. response.
Almost from the beginning of deliberations, the EXCOMM concluded that the United States had to take some action that would remove the missiles from Cuba. Among the proposals discussed was a preemptive air strike to destroy the missile bases before they became operational. Kennedy rejected this plan when the U.S. Air Force could not guarantee that all missile sites would be destroyed. The EXCOMM also discussed a land invasion of Cuba that would both destroy all offensive weapons and remove Castro from power. The president, worried that this strategy would provoke a Soviet retaliation against West Berlin or lead to general war, also rejected this plan. In the end, the EXCOMM agreed to impose a "quarantine" of Cuba, blocking all shipments of weapons to Cuba. Kennedy believed that this option would demonstrate the U.S. resolve to prevent the missiles from becoming operational and would also provide time for a diplomatic solution to be found.
The quarantine of Cuba began on the morning of October 22. Later that evening, in a televised address, Kennedy revealed to the American people for the first time the existence of the Cuban missiles and the plan for their removal. For the next several days Cold War tensions reached their zenith as the world waited for the Soviet response. The first part of that answer came two days later when the first Soviet ships bound for Cuba reversed course to avoid the U.S. blockade. On October 26 Khrushchev sent two cable messages to Kennedy that provided the second part of the Soviet response. In the first message the Soviet leader offered to remove the missiles in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba. Before the president could respond, a second, tougher cable arrived. In it Khrushchev demanded that until the United States pledged not to invade Cuba and also dismantled its Jupiter missiles in Turkey, the Soviet offensive weapons would remain on the Caribbean island. Although the United States had already decided to remove the Jupiter missiles because they were obsolete, the president refused to include them in any settlement for fear that it would appear that his administration had been forced to make concessions to the Soviets. On the advice of Robert Kennedy, the president resolved this dilemma by accepting the terms of the first letter he had received from Khrushchev and simply ignoring the second letter.
While the Kennedy administration waited for a response, Robert Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, on October 27. The attorney general insisted that unless the dismantling of the missiles began within twenty-four hours, the United States would "remove them." At the same meeting, the president's brother made clear that the United States was willing to remove all the Jupiter missiles from Turkey in the near future but insisted that their removal could not be part of the public settlement reached by the two Cold War adversaries. Early the next morning, October 28, when Khrushchev replied to the president that the missiles would be removed in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended.
The crisis seemed to have a sobering effect on both the United States and the Soviet Union. The realization that any slight miscalculation during the crisis could have triggered a nuclear war led both nations to establish a "hot line" providing rapid, direct communications between Washington and Moscow. The crisis also apparently encouraged Premier Khrushchev to soften his rhetoric against the United States, for he again began to emphasize the importance of "peaceful coexistence" with the United States. It similarly led President Kennedy the following year to initiate negotiations with the Soviets for nuclear arms reduction. The product of this effort was the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed on July 25, 1963, which ended atomic tests in the air and underwater. Although the Cuban Missile Crisis did little to improve U.S.-Cuban relations, in retrospect it seems clearly to have begun the process that culminated in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union less than a decade later.
Containment and Détente; Kennedy, John Fitzgerald; Preemptive War.
Bibliography
Fursenko, Aleksander, and Naftali, Timothy J. "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964. New York: Norton, 1997.
Garthoff, Raymond L. Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1989.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Norton, 1971.
May, Ernest R., and Zelikow, Philip D. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Nathan, James A., ed. The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992.
White, Mark J. The Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
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