The Cuban Missile Crisis.

Jim Broderick looks at the crisis management of the superpowers during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Cuba had been a particularly irksome problem for the United States since 1959 when the Communist Fidel Castro had come to power. Kennedy had already suffered a humiliating setback by failing to unseat Castro with the American-sponsored ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion in April 1961. Later that year he authorised a programme of covert action to destabilise the regime, including various schemes to assassinate Castro. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Cuban leader was expectant of a second American-led invasion and looked to the Soviet Union for support against the intentions of American imperialism.

Khrushchev himself had his own problems. Not only had he failed to instigate American withdrawal from Berlin, but US intelligence reports in 1961 and 1962 had finally convinced American leaders that the feared ‘missile gap’ was an illusion: Soviet nuclear capability, previously thought to be superior, was in fact vastly inferior to that of the United States. Furthermore, it rankled with Khrushchev that the US could ringfence the Soviet Union with American military bases and place Jupiter missiles in Turkey (these became operational in early 1962) just across the Soviet border. During the spring and summer of 1962 it was decided that a way to offset American nuclear superiority, put pressure on the US over Berlin and provide for Cuban defence would be to station intermediate and medium-range Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. Formal orders were issued to the Soviet Ministry of Defence to proceed with deployment on June 10th, 1962.

In late August, American U-2 high-level reconnaissance planes detected the construction of missile sites in Cuba. However, worried about the deteriorating situation in Europe and South-East Asia, the administration made the erroneous assumption that the purpose of these bases was to bolster Cuban defence. Reconnaissance missions were increased in September but, surprisingly, no new evidence was uncovered to convince Kennedy that the bases were other than defensive. This misjudgement was compounded by the fact that (unlike the United States) the USSR never before had sought to station its missiles outside its borders, while signals from the Soviet side were designed to encourage the view that it had no intention of doing so. On September 11th, the Soviet news agency Tass stated 'There is no need for the Soviet Union to shift its weapons for the repulsion of aggression...to any other country, for instance Cuba'.

Such signals were further reinforced at the highest diplomatic levels. On September 4th, and again on September 6th, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, called on the US Attorney General, the President’s brother, Robert Kennedy, with personal messages from Khrushchev. The thrust of these messages was that the Soviet Union had no intention of creating trouble for the United States prior to the upcoming congressional elections (scheduled for November) and that no action would be taken which would ‘complicate the international situation or aggravate the tension in relations between our two countries’. Although Kennedy’s response to Khrushchev was that the US would not tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba, it was clear that, so far, Soviet strategy was working and the US remained unaware of the audacity of Khrushchev’s nuclear adventure.

The crisis proper erupted on October 15th, when Kennedy was presented with photographic evidence from a U-2 fly-over which showed irrefutable proof that the Soviets were constructing what could only be nuclear missile sites a mere 90 miles or so from Miami. Shocked and furious, close associates remember Kennedy bursting out ‘How could he do this to me!’. The President assembled a team of fifteen of his closest advisers. Known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm), this small group functioned as the innermost council on national security for the next thirteen tension-filled days.

The first task of the ExComm was to decide on what options were available to the US. Six alternatives were suggested, ranging from doing nothing to a full invasion of Cuba. However, American strategy quickly boiled down to two main responses; either a ‘surgical’ airstrike on the bases themselves, or a blockade of the island. The airstrike option was subject to a number of problems, not least that the military could not guarantee that an attack would be ‘surgical’. While the sites could be destroyed, the air force could not be sure that the Soviet Migs and Ilyushin bombers stationed in Cuba could be prevented from launching counterattacks against the US mainland. Nor could the destruction of all nuclear missiles be assured by a small operation. In order to ensure complete destruction of the bases an operation of over 500 separate sorties would have to be initiated: in other words, a massive, rather than ‘surgical’, attack which risked inflicting up to 20,000 deaths on the Russian personnel at the sites and among local Cubans. In fact, the number of Russians deployed in Cuba was seriously under-estimated; more recent figures suggest that up to 42,000 Soviet military personnel were stationed on the island. Clearly, such an attack could not be disregarded by Moscow. Also, the airstrike would have to take place without warning which, for a country that had itself suffered a devastating surprise attack at Pearl Harbor would be hard to stomach.

As deliberations continued, the blockade option became increasingly attractive. It would prevent any further deployments by the Soviets, signal American commitment to having the missiles removed and place the burden of making the next move squarely back on Khrushchev’s shoulders. Kennedy stated his intentions on October 22nd. The President announced to the public the discovery of the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, declaring his intent to impose a ‘strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba’ which was to go into effect on October 24th. If any Soviet vessel resisted orders to stop, US ships were to fire upon them. He also announced that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded by the US as an attack from the Soviet Union itself and he demanded that the USSR remove all offensive weapons from Cuban soil.

Over the next few days U-2 reconnaissance flights were increased to one every two hours and Soviet ships carrying more men and material sailed ever closer to the island. On the 25th, Kennedy raised the level of military stand-by to DEFCON 2 – one step short of war. The two superpowers, it seemed, were on a collision course. However, on October 26th, a secret and impassioned letter arrived from Khrushchev to Kennedy. The Soviet Premier wrote 'If you have not lost your self-control and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more we pull, the tighter the knot will be tied.' What Khrushchev proposed was a deal in which the Soviet Union would withdraw all its missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American guarantee that it would not invade the island.

But the worst day of the crisis was yet to come. On October 27th, as the ExComm were trying to draft a response to the Soviet premier’s letter, Radio Moscow began to broadcast a second Khrushchev letter to Kennedy. This message was far harsher and stated that removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba would be dependent on the US removing its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Khrushchev had suddenly raised the stakes. The ExComm’s problems were exacerbated when it was informed that a U-2 reconnaissance plane had been shot down over Cuba. Kennedy told his fellow ExComm members: ‘Now it can go either way’. All this time the Soviet navy was drawing closer to the blockade line, increasing the likelihood that a military confrontation would occur.

Time was running out. Throughout the day the ExComm sought a way of resolving the crisis politically without using armed force. In the afternoon Robert Kennedy finally came up with a risky plan. He suggested that the President ignore the second letter and contact Anatoly Dobrynin to tell him of US agreement with Khrushchev’s first message. This gamble came to be known as ‘the Trollope ploy’ after the novels of Anthony Trollope in which his young heroines take ‘a squeeze of the hand as a proposal of marriage’. Kennedy dispatched a letter outlining US agreement with Khrushchev’s proposals but also included a dire warning that a continuation of the threat would be a ‘grave risk to the peace of the world’. After all, the quarantine was only a first step and the airstrike option was ready to go in only forty-eight hours should the Soviet Union continue to build its bases.

The answer came on the next day. In response to Kennedy’s shot in the dark, Radio Moscow broadcast a statement from Khrushchev. In exchange for American assurances on Cuba, the Soviet government ‘has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you describe as offensive...and return them to the Soviet Union’. Although the dismantling was to take some time, and despite the United States’ continuing difficulties with the Castro regime, the Cuban crisis had been defused.

© History Today