The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Lesson for Today?
On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced to the nation
that the Soviet Union was building military bases in Cuba. He added,
"The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear
strike capability against the Western Hemisphere." Such a capability was
impermissible, and so two atomic powers suddenly found themselves on the
brink of war. Then, with a series of deft diplomatic maneuvers, a deadly
confrontation was avoided. Though 45 years have passed since the Cuban
Missile Crisis, it still has a lot to tell us both about compromise and
about human fallibility.
On October 14, 1962, a U-2 spy plane photographed a Soviet missile at a
launching site in Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of the United States. If
launched, the missile could have struck the Eastern seaboard within
minutes. No one knew if the missile was armed with a nuclear weapon, but
it presented a serious threat no matter what. Kennedy convened an
executive committee that included Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,
former ambassador to Moscow Tommy Thompson, and Special Council to the
President Theodore Sorensen. ExComm, as the group was called, was
divided between some who favored an immediate air strike against Cuba
and others who wanted to first pursue a diplomatic strategy. These two
camps would later be dubbed hawks and doves.
Sorensen remembers Vice President Lyndon Johnson arguing, "When I was a
boy in Texas, walking along the road, and a snake raised its head, there
was only one thing to do, and that was to take a club and cut off its
head." But McNamara pushed for diplomacy, fearing an all-out nuclear
exchange. He asked Kennedy "to consider the consequences [of a strike].
I don't know quite what kind of world we'll live in after we've struck
Cuba. How do we stop at that point?"
Kennedy decided to set up a naval blockade of Cuba, halting the build-up
of weapons on the island by preventing any more from arriving. This sent
a strong message without air strikes. On October 24, Russian and
American ships ranged themselves along the quarantine line, eyeing each
other testily.
America waited for four days, seemingly on the brink of nuclear war,
until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev capitulated. He announced that
work on the missile sites would stop, if Kennedy promised never to
invade Cuba. Kennedy not only made that promise but also secretly agreed
to withdraw American nuclear-armed missiles from Turkey, at the edge of
the iron curtain.
As the ships pulled away from the quarantine line, tension between the
Soviet Union and the United States began to wane. Within a year, the
Limited Test Ban Treaty went into effect, the two countries vowed to
explore space together, and nuclear war between the superpowers seemed
increasingly unlikely.
The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that peaceful, diplomatic solutions
could be possible even between sworn enemies armed with the deadliest
weapons in history. People "no longer thought that the only solution to
the very real conflicts of interest between Washington and Moscow was to
look down the nuclear gun barrel at each other," Sorensen said.
For McNamara, the lesson was more about the limits of rational people.
In Erroll Morris's 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, McNamara reflects,
"The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is this: The indefinite
combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy
nations. Is it right and proper that today there are 7,500 strategic
offensive nuclear warheads, of which 2,500 are on 15-minute alert, to be
launched by the decision of one human being? … I think the human race
needs to think more about killing, about conflict. Is that what we want
in this twenty-first century?"
We have already been at a kind of a brink again in this new century, as
we approached war based on evidence that another hostile nation, Iraq,
was stockpiling internationally threatening weapons, as well as
thwarting United Nations weapons inspections. Again there was a fear
that untold destruction could be unleashed in a matter of minutes.
President George W. Bush suggested that Iraq would need as little as 45
minutes to spread chemical and biological weapons. The administration
retreated from this after the invasion revealed only empty bunkers and
unused trailers, but even though the danger ultimately proved false,
there was a real concern for American lives. Once again, in a different
situation in a different era, the relative merits and dangers of
military and diplomatic solutions had to be very carefully weighed.
For McNamara the reason why war was avoided 40 years ago was sheer
accident. He says, "At the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented
nuclear war… . Rational individuals came that close to total destruction
of their societies. And that danger exists today." Luck certainly played
a part. So did restraint and patience, and courage in believing that the
leader on the other side would ultimately behave rationally. That time,
at least, he did.
—Elizabeth D. Hoover is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.
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