CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 is the closest the world has ever come to full-scale nuclear war, and fear of the narrow means by which true disaster was averted frightened European and North American leaders into changes that dramatically altered the international system. Thereafter the Cold War entered a more stable phase, as the superpowers shifted from direct confrontation to a series of proxy wars fought over the ensuing generation throughout the developing world. Washington and Moscow each recognized a need for diffusing their mutual tensions in the wake of the crisis, while their European and Asian counterparts generally developed a greater desire for an alternative to seemingly moribund Soviet and U.S. leadership.

THE CRISIS

Cuba was the focus of the crisis, but the roots of this conflict lay in long-standing Soviet and U.S. antagonism and insecurities. The country had become a thorn in the side of U.S. leaders following Fidel Castro's seizure of power in 1959. Analysts in Washington debated Castro's faith in communism, but whatever his leanings, U.S. policy makers believed their reputation in Latin America could not tolerate a truly radical state only ninety miles from Florida. Castro's threats to nationalize foreign property on the island might seem a dangerous example to revolutionary groups throughout a region long considered a U.S. sphere of influence, they reasoned, while Cuba was simply too close for comfort for U.S. leaders ever vigilant against communist outposts. President Dwight D. Eisenhower endorsed Castro's overthrow as early as January 1960, a year before breaking diplomatic relations with his regime. By the time John F. Kennedy took office the following year vowing to "oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas," plans for a U.S.-supported invasion by Cuban exiles were already advanced, and the new president approved the operation with minimal oversight.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 proved one of Kennedy's greatest fiascos. He publicly took full responsibility but swore thereafter to hold more tightly to the reins of power lest others drive his administration to ruin. He appointed his most trusted advisors, including his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to oversee Cuba policy, making Castro's removal one of his highest priorities. Cuba's affect on U.S. security and prestige, the president believed, threatened to tilt the Cold War's delicate balance in communism's favor.

Correctly believing that U.S. leaders sought his fall from power, Castro sought Moscow's protection, a move the Soviets embraced. Premier Nikita Khrushchev in particular sought greater parity in U.S.-Soviet relations by the early 1960s and believed Washington's greater nuclear strength, including its nuclear missiles stationed along the Soviet border in Turkey, ensured that the Americans held the better hand in any superpower clash. The two communist leaders therefore decided in May 1962, for reasons both believed were defensive, to deploy to Cuba some eighty nuclear missiles, with range enough to place virtually the entire continental United States—including the newly constructed American missile fields in the Dakotas—within Moscow's sights. "Installation of our missiles in Cuba would, I thought, restrain the United States from precipitous military action against Castro's government," Khrushchev later recounted, and "equalized what the West likes to call the 'balance of power'," (Khrushchev, pp. 493–494). Washington saw things differently. Soviet missiles in Cuba offered the Kremlin a true first-strike capability, including the ability to destroy Washington without warning while decimating America's missile deterrent as well. Surely the Kremlin would not risk this dangerous move, Kennedy's intelligence team incorrectly determined a full five months after Khrushchev ordered the missile deployment. If Cuba should "become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union," Kennedy publicly warned, "then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies" (Public Papers, 1962, p. 674).

Kennedy was therefore infuriated to learn, on 16 October, that a U.S. spy plane had captured photos of Soviet missile-site construction in Cuba. His national security team hastily developed three options for removing the threat: invasion, negotiations, or blockade of the island. While his more hawkish advisors called for an immediate strike, on 22 October Kennedy announced a "quarantine" around Cuba. Soviet leaders vowed their ships would not respect the American blockade, and Khrushchev warned that Kennedy was pushing "mankind towards the abyss" (Hunt, p. 239). Soviet ships eventually halted just short of the quarantine line two days later, but as missile-site construction continued in Cuba, each side continued to prepare for war.

Cooler heads eventually prevailed. Public blustering continued, but private discussions—including secret meetings between Robert Kennedy and the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin—eventually developed a usable compromise. The Soviets would remove the missiles following a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba, while Kennedy promised to remove his missiles from Turkey (after a politically prudent six-month interval). "I am not going to war over worthless missiles in Turkey," Kennedy privately explained (LaFeber, 1994, p. 601). By 28 October full-scale war had been averted, though revelations during the late 1990s demonstrated that nuclear war was in fact closer than ever realized. Unbeknownst to Washington, Soviet commanders in Cuba had full authorization to employ nuclear arms in defense against a U.S. invasion, and one can only imagine the consequences of U.S. landing forces in Cuba being met with nuclear fireballs. "Where would it have ended?" asked former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1992 upon learning of this near-catastrophe: "in utter disaster" (LaFeber, 1994, p. 601). Only Castro seemed displeased by the peaceful conclusion of the crisis. Having been ready to sacrifice his country's existence for the sake of its independence, indeed having urged Khrushchev to strike the United States, Castro felt betrayed by what he termed the Kremlin's "surprising, sudden, and unconditional surrender" (Suri, p. 40). It would take several years and millions in aid before he would trust the Soviets again.

THE AFTERMATH

The ramifications of this near brush with disaster dramatically changed the course of the Cold War, and Europe's role in the conflict especially. Kennedy proved shaken by the nearness of the conflict and resolved thereafter to limit the risk of nuclear warfare. He authorized a direct "hot line" between the White House and the Kremlin so that leaders could communicate directly during any future crisis, and a U.S.-led ban on atmospheric nuclear tests followed. In retrospect, a decreased U.S. emphasis on potential flash points of superpower conflict followed as well, replaced by low-scale responses to communist insurgencies throughout the formerly colonized world. In areas such as Southeast Asia and Central America, subsequent U.S. policy makers would put this "flexible response" strategy to the test without fear of a nuclear exchange.

Soviet leaders drew similar and different conclusions from the conflict, shaped by their perception that they had lost the confrontation because of the very disparity of power that the missile deployment in Cuba had been designed to eliminate in the first place. On the one hand, Khrushchev left the conflict as shaken as Kennedy. What was needed was a "relaxation of tension," he told his U.S. counterpart. Others within his government preached strength, however. "You Americans will never be able to do this to us again," one Soviet diplomat warned, and while U.S. leaders focused on countering communist insurgents throughout the developing world, Soviet policy makers thereafter focused primarily on narrowing the nuclear gap (Garthoff, pp. 133–134). By the mid-1970s neither side could be said to have had a real advantage in this arena, especially as each possessed the ability destroy the other (and the world) numerous times over. Khrushchev did not survive in power long enough to oversee this transformation, however, but was instead deposed in October 1964. "You insisted that we deploy our missiles on Cuba," one accuser charged, "and carried the world to the brink of nuclear war." Yet "not having any way out, we had to accept every demand and condition dictated by the U.S." (Fursenko and Naftali, p. 354). The great irony of Khrushchev's departure is that he ultimately left the Soviet Union with the very international stability, built on a foundation of nuclear parity, that he had long sought, though the burden of matching the wealthier Americans would eventually cripple the Soviet economy.

The Cuban Missile Crisis altered European and Asian diplomacy as well. Chinese leaders forged ahead with their own nascent nuclear program in its wake, determined never again to let Moscow take the lead in the East–West conflict. Relaxation of U.S.–Soviet tensions, illustrated by their mutual support for the Limited Test Ban Treaty, proved that both countries only sought "domination of the world by the two great despots," China's foreign minister charged, while Mao Zedong later vowed that Beijing's nuclear threat guaranteed that "the Chinese people will never accept the privileged position of one or two superpowers" (Suri, pp. 75–76).

France's Charles de Gaulle would not have put the idea any differently. The Cuban crisis reinforced his long-standing view that French power was needed as a counterweight to Soviet and U.S. balancing, and he was particularly incensed when Kennedy chose to only "inform" him of events during the crisis rather than "consult" (LaFeber, 1991, p. 228). He rejected the Limited Test Ban Treaty as a U.S.–Soviet ploy to limit France's "right to possess its own arms," and within a year he removed his military from full participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and vetoed Britain's application for entry into the European Common Market. British membership would be as Washington's "Trojan Horse," he charged, and "the end would be a colossal Atlantic community dependent on America and directed by America" (LaFeber, 1991, pp. 228–229). Cuba proved to de Gaulle that an independently strong France was needed for a true balance of powers, even if limits on French international cooperation followed.

British leaders had already reached a similar conclusion on the need for an alternative to bipolarity and on the central importance of nuclear weapons to true great power status because, as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan quipped, "We must rely on the power of the nuclear deterrent, or we must throw up the sponge!" (Nunnerly, 1972, p. 117). Macmillan's government was particularly infuriated with Washington's public expectation of unwavering support during the Cuban crisis, but unlike de Gaulle, British analysts determined to work to reform superpower relations from within rather than to break outright with the Americans. This faith in the special relationship was put to the test in December 1962, when Washington threatened cancellation of its promised Skybolt missile. Britain's nuclear deterrent, its sole remaining claim to great power status, required this U.S. aid, and an irate Macmillan ultimately persuaded Kennedy to supply Polaris missiles in their place. The damage to their relationship of these twin blows, Cuba and Skybolt, was immense, leading British leaders too to fear Washington's rising hegemony. "The United States didn't want a partner," one British official exclaimed in frustration. "They wanted a satellite" (LaFeber, 1994, p. 603).

Not every state chose nuclear parity as the answer to the East–West divide. German leaders in particular, whose history made development of this fearful weapon simply impossible, feared in particular their geographic peril. Set between the warring superpowers, indeed divided by them, German leaders pushed hardest for détente following 1962, because as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer explained even before the Cuban stalemate, any future war in Europe "would be a nuclear war … without any profit for the survivors" (Suri, p. 26). His was a common sentiment throughout the Continent, and with a wall bisecting the ancient capital of Berlin since 1961, German leaders led the charge following the Cuban Missile Crisis toward East–West reconciliation, even though it would take until the end of the decade for terms such as détente or Ostpolitik to enter the diplomatic lexicon. "There is no hope for us," West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt concluded after the Cuban Missile Crisis, "if there is no change," and Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain must "break through the frozen front between East and West" (Suri, p. 217).

Castro left the crisis the only real winner, while superpower bipolarity endured its death-blow. The tense October days allowed the Cuban leader to solidify his tenuous hold on power, and for the remaining decades of the Cold War he remained a favorite ally in Moscow and notorious in Washington. Neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev survived in power long after the affair, and their departure symbolized the way the Cuban Missile Crisis, in many ways the low point of the Cold War brought on by the logic of a world divided in two, revealed to observers throughout the world, and to Europeans especially, the need to find a third way.

See alsoArms Control; Cold War; Nuclear Weapons; Soviet Union.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Chang, Laurence, and Peter Kornbluh, eds. Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. Washington, D.C., 1997.

Kennedy, John F. Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy. 1961, 1962. Washington, D.C., 1962, 1963.

Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York, 1999.

Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. Translated and edited by Strobe Talbott. Boston, 1974.

May, Ernest, and Philip Zelikow, eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York, 2002.

Secondary Sources

Beschloss, Michael. The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963. New York, 1991.

Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy 1958–1964. New York, 1997.

Garthoff, Raymond L. Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Washington, D.C, 1989.

George, Alice L. Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis. ChapelHill, N.C.,2003.

Hunt, Michael. Crises in U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven, Conn., 1996.

LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1990. New York, 1991.

——. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750. New York, 1994.

Nash, Philip. The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997. Nunnerly, David. President Kennedy and Britain. New York, 1972.

Scott, L. V. Macmillan, Kennedy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. London, 1999.

Suri, Jeremi. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. Cambridge, Mass., 2003.

Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York, 2003.

Jeffrey A. Engel