Cuban Missle Crisis

From WolfWikis

On October 16th, 1962, President Kennedy convened his advisors at the White House to deal with a recently identified threat. The CIA had photographic evidence that “[t]he Soviet Union had secretly established missile bases in Cuba while at the same time proclaiming privately and publicly that this would never be done.” ^[1] JFK and his closest advisors were set with the task of choosing and enacting an appropriate response, considering that the missiles could be “fully operational within two weeks.” ^[2]

Description

1 Contemplated Responses
2 Peripheral Tensions and the Threat of Escalation
3 Denoûement
4 Back To
5 References
6 Youtube Clips

Contemplated Responses

The situation, as Secretary of Defense McNamara viewed it, afforded three possible strategies. The first was to utilize diplomatic channels to engage Castro, Khrushchev and US allies openly to resolve the issue, although none present felt confident with this measure. Next, he suggested a “declaration of open surveillance” in concert with “a blockade against offensive weapons entering Cuba.” ^[3] The third and final strategy involved direct military intervention against Cuba with the objective of destroying the missiles through air strikes. ^[4] Despite the potential necessity to conduct airstrikes against the missile sites, it was agreed that many allies and observers would fail to understand any preemptive action against Cuba. ^[5] In choosing the second strategy, the administration was faced with the protests of Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, who merely decried the overflights. RFK was quick to respond to him that the US had a “resolution of the Organization of the American states that gives us the right to such overflights.” ^[6] Yet even these necessary reconnaissance flights nearly brought the conflagration to a boil.

Peripheral Tensions and the Threat of Escalation

RFK related to Dobrynin after the Cubans shot down a US surveillance plane that there was “strong pressure on [JFK] to respond with fire if fired upon,” ^[7] before noting that the US couldn’t cease those actions, as they were the only means to observe the missiles. RFK stated his fears of a “chain reaction… that will be very hard to stop.” ^[8] Of course this chain reaction would have happened more quickly had JFK chosen the aforementioned third option. In 1992 at a meeting of the key players involved in the confrontation, “Soviet General Anatoly Gribkov informed participants that, in addition to their intermediate-range ballistic missiles, the Soviets had deployed nine tactical missiles” ^[9] Similarly alarming was his revelation that “Soviet field commanders had the authority to fire those tactical nuclear weapons without further direction from the Kremlin!” ^[10] Such directions were given on the Soviet side despite a mutual desire not to “plunge the world into… catastrophic consequences.” ^[11] Besides a mutual fear of and a willingness to engage in a nuclear exchange, other factors unknown to both Khrushchev and Kennedy contributed to either side’s mistrust and perception of the other’s inimical intent. Short of war, the US interpreted that the “objective… [of the Soviet] buildup in Cuba [was] to demonstrate that the … balance of forces shifted [had]… that the US can no longer prevent the advance of Soviet offensive power even into its own hemisphere.” ^[12] Yet, the White House misperceived many Soviet actions not cleared by Khrushchev as hints to understanding the Soviet Premier’s strategy. Similarly, The CIA was sending teams of “covert sabotage teams into Cuba,” ^[13] some of which the President had no knowledge. In piecing together the Soviets’ motivation for positioning warheads in Cuba, the Eisenhower administration’s decision to place medium range missiles in Turkey and Italy in 1959 likely played a significant role. “A declassified military history of the Jupiter system reveals that the rockets became operational in April 1962.” ^[14] Khrushchev explicitly demanded the removal of these missiles for the first time in his letter to JFK on October 26th, 1962 at the height of tensions. ^[15] Additionally the 1989 declassification of a 1962 black ops program known as Operation Mongoose “combined sabotage, infiltration, and psychological warfare activities for a possible invasion… scheduled for October 1962.” ^[16]

Denoûement

Kennedy responded “in a formal letter to Khrushchev accepting… a U.S. non-invasion pledge in exchange for the verifiable departure of Soviet nuclear missiles.” ^[17] As an added measure Kennedy even pledged to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, “but only on the basis of a secret understanding, not as an open agreement that would appear to the public.” ^[18] Until this information was declassified, “U.S. officials maintained that neither John nor Robert Kennedy promised to withdraw the Jupiters as a… concession, in exchange for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba,” ^[19] as per a secret understanding with the Kremlin. Sorensen, who had edited RFK’s diary, later confessed that “Ambassador Dobrynin felt that Robert Kennedy’s book [on the missile crisis] did not adequately express that the ‘deal’ on the Turkish missiles was part of the resolution of the crisis.” He went on to elucidate that “his diary was very explicit that this was part of the deal; but at the time it was still a secret on the American side, except for the six of us who had been present at that meeting. So I took it upon myself to edit that out. ^[20] The chief lesson taken from the crisis was that the Americans would adopt a more nuanced view of international conflict and that “firmness in defense of… vital interests is the central guarantee of security and peace... [without which] we can expect neither security nor peace.” ^[21]

This small wound to the dignity of the Kennedy administration was of course a small price to pay to avoid a thermonuclear exchange. In doing so, the Kennedy administration was able to prevent the Soviets from attempting to run their blockade and to convince them to remove the existing missile installments already on the island.