Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962 confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear‐capable missiles in Cuba.Fidel Castro's radical Cuban government alarmed U.S. officials because it advocated revolution throughout Latin American and built economic and military ties with the Soviet Union, the United States's primary Cold War adversary. Since 1959, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations had sought to overthrow Castro through the failed Bay of Pigs expedition and other hostile measures.

In summer 1962, Cuba and the Soviet Union secretly agreed to deploy in Cuba forty‐eight SS‐4 ballistic missiles with a range of 1,020 miles, thirty‐two SS‐5s with a range of 2,200 miles, twenty–four surface‐to‐air missiles (SAMs), antiaircraft batteries with 144 launchers, and forty‐two bombers with a 600‐mile range. While seeking to defend Cuba, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev also wanted to counter the American Jupiter missiles in Turkey targeted against the Soviet Union and bolster Moscow's leadership of the communist world, currently under challenge from Mao Zedong's China.

As Republican party partisans criticized President John F. Kennedy for failing to unseat Castro, the Central Intelligence Agency monitored Cuba through U‐2 reconnaissance flights. On 14 October, a U‐2 spy plane photographed missile sites. The CIA predicted that some Soviet missiles could shortly become operational, perhaps even with nuclear warheads. On 16 October, an alarmed President Kennedy assembled key advisers, soon designated the Executive Committee (ExComm), and debated how to respond. ExComm advisers ruled out an air strike because it might leave missiles untouched. Kennedy readied U.S. forces for an invasion but hesitated because of potential high casualties and possible Soviet retaliation, perhaps against Berlin. (Unbeknownst to Kennedy, Soviet tactical nuclear weapons were already deployed in Cuba to blunt an invasion, and about 42,000 Soviet troops, not 10,000 as thought, guarded the island.) ExComm shelved the negotiations option because U.S. officials refused to talk with Castro, and they feared that Khrushchev would simply stall until missiles were operational. In the end, ExComm endorsed a naval blockade, or “quarantine,” to stop further Soviet military shipments and to force Khrushchev to retreat in the face of superior U.S. power in the region.

Kennedy announced the blockade on 22 October. U.S. war vessels patrolled the Caribbean to intercept ships, and 140,000 U.S. troops in Florida prepared for an assault against Cuba. Nervous observers sketched doomsday scenarios, but the president received widespread bipartisan support. Moscow denounced the blockade as a violation of international law and an intrusion into Soviet–Cuban affairs. On 26 October, in one of several letters he exchanged with Kennedy during the crisis, Khrushchev proposed to remove the “defensive” Soviet missiles if the United States pledged not to invade Cuba. The next day, Khrushchev asked for more: removal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Meanwhile, the president's brother Robert Kennedy met privately with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, exploring the missile‐swap option. That day, 27 October, the crisis escalated when a SAM shot down a U‐2 over Cuba and an Alaska‐based U.S. spy plane strayed into Soviet territory. The crisis seemed about to “[spin] out of control,” recalled National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy.

Deciding to strike a deal, President Kennedy publicly agreed to the no‐invasion pledge and privately, through Robert Kennedy, assured Dobrynin that the Jupiters would be withdrawn. Khrushchev, fearing a loss of control over events and the unpredictable Castro, accepted these terms. Not until mid‐November, however, did the Soviets agree to pull out the bombers (the SS‐5s had never arrived). Castro bitterly resented the settlement and rejected United Nations on‐site inspections to confirm missile removal. Although the missiles and bombers departed Cuba, a formal Soviet‐American agreement was never signed, and Kennedy's no‐invasion pledge was highly qualified.

Taking credit for effective crisis management, Kennedy enhanced his image for boldness and courage. In retrospect, Kennedy's handling looks less impressive, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara later put it, because of the “misinformation, miscalculation, misjudgment, and human fallibility” that dogged all leaders in the crisis. Soviet leaders in 1964 deposed Khrushchev, apparently believing he had undertaken a reckless gamble. The outcome of the crisis both slowed and accelerated the Cold War. In its aftermath, Washington and Moscow worked to soothe tensions, installed a “hot line” or teletype link between the White House and the Kremlin, and signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Still, some analysts argue that Kennedy's success in driving the missiles from Cuba may have emboldened him to become more interventionist in Vietnam. U.S. policy toward Cuba remained hard‐line, with new assassination plots and CIA sabotage. The Soviets vowed to end their nuclear inferiority by building more weapons, thus escalating the nuclear arms race. With its potential for thermonuclear exchange, the Cuban missile crisis ranks as perhaps the Cold War's most perilous moment.
See also Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Nuclear Strategy; Nuclear Weapons.

Bibliography

Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluth, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, 1992.
James Nathan, ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited, 1992.
James Blight et al. , Cuba on the Brink, 1993.
Thomas G. Paterson , Contesting Castro, 1994.
Aleksandr Fursenko and and Timothy Naftali , One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964, 1997.
Mark J. White , Missiles in Cuba: Khrushchev, Castro, and the 1962 Crisis, 1997.

Thomas G. Paterson