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Fifty Years Ago: The Cuban Missile Crisis

Brown

Penultimate Amazing
Brown
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On October 14, 1962, photographs taken by a US aircraft showed strong evidence that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba.

The top brass saw no option: Invade Cuba and take out those missiles. Kill all the Russians that you have to in order to get the job done, and you may as well kill Castro while you're there.

President Kennedy saw a bigger picture. The stakes were bigger than just Cuba, and potential for loss of control of the situation was immense. He directed that a quarantine be imposed on Cuba: not a conventional blockade of all shipments to the island, but stoppage of vessels containing weapons.

Kennedy also flexed the USA's military muscles.

Kennedy further worked quietly to try to find a way that the Soviets could withdraw without losing face. He also worked for a way that the US could save face: the Soviets had demanded removal of some US missiles in Turkey and Southern Italy--which the US had planned to dismantle anyway before the Cuba business even started--but now Kennedy felt he could not dismantle those missiles under threat.

Meanwhile, Castro was convinced that invasion was imminent and his life was about to be in severe danger. He urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack. (Robert S.McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, interviewed Castro years after the crisis. To McNamara's shock, Castro disclosed that many missiles were fully operational and Castro had been pleading with Moscow that they be fired.)

It is not clear what the Soviets expected Kennedy to do, but they apparently did not expect him to do what he did. Their responses were inconsistent and sometimes surprisingly muted. In the end, both sides agreed to withdraw their missiles. Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba. As a result, Castro stayed in power, and he is today one of the few players who is still alive.

Link to thread: The Cuban Missile Crisis- Your experience
Link to Wikipedia topic
Link to thread: Thirteen Days
 
Brown said:
It is not clear what the Soviets expected Kennedy to do, but they apparently did not expect him to do what he did. Their responses were inconsistent and sometimes surprisingly muted. In the end, both sides agreed to withdraw their missiles. Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba. As a result, Castro stayed in power, and he is today one of the few players who is still alive.
Click to expand...

I believe the Soviets were as scared as the US by the potential outcome. Khrushchev got the hook not long after the dust settled, so I think more than a few in the USSR were "Dude you nearly got us ALL killed"

The Soviets really didn't have a dog in the fight, and nearly got destroyed over a cause that was really only ever a side show for them
 
MG1962 said:
I believe the Soviets were as scared as the US by the potential outcome.
Click to expand...


Considering the degree to which the USSR was outnumbered in strategic nuclear weapons at the time, that ought not to be surprising.
 
The crisis shows the danger of appearing weak - it encourages predators, and making them back down again is fraught with peril:

The Vienna summit:
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Kennedy, meanwhile, felt that he had to avoid giving the same impression of weakness which he had demonstrated before the summit, and felt he had demonstrated to Khrushchev during the summit. He later claimed of Khrushchev, "He beat the hell out of me" and told NYT reporter James ‘Scotty’ Reston it was the "worst thing in my life. He savaged me."[3]

In addition to conveying US reluctance to defend the full rights of Berlin’s citizens, Kennedy ignored his own cabinet officials’ advice to avoid ideological debate with Khrushchev. Khrushchev outmatched Kennedy in this debate, and came away believing he had triumphed in the summit over a weak and inexperienced leader. Observing Kennedy’s morose expression at the end of the summit, Khrushchev believed Kennedy "looked not only anxious, but deeply upset…I hadn’t meant to upset him. I would have liked very much for us to part in a different mood. But there was nothing I could do to help him…Politics is a merciless business

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_summit
------

Khrushchev left the Vienna summit unimpressed by Kennedy and feeling that he could push him around... that misapprehension almost led to disaster.
 
I remember it well. Thinking I was the only one in the youth club I was attending that we were all going to die that very night!
 
I was in the peacetime land Navy (stationed first at the Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital, then at Moffat Field, both in California, my home state) from August 1961 through early September 1964. I joined the Navy just after the Soviets built the Berlin Wall. While I was in boot camp, a plane carrying Dag Hammarskjold, well beloved Secretary General of the U.N. went down over the Congo (Zaire). Everyone thought the Soviets caused the fatal crash, though I could never figure out why.

While I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, working as a hospital corpsman on the SOQ (sick officers quarters) medical ward, this one patient, a Marine warrant officer, got word his unit was moving out. He called his C.O. to try to get some information about why they were being mobilized, but was stonewalled. Then, a bunch of the corpsmen, some of whom I knew personally, were ordered to pack their seabags and be ready to move out. The whole base was buzzing with such activity. It was only afterward that we found out that it was because of the Cuban missile crisis.

I got out of the Navy about a month early to start college. This was about the time of the Gulf of Tonkin (non) Incident. So, I just missed a whole lot of crap.

Thinking about the Cuban missile crisis, I remember how, for most of my adult life, the specter of nuclear war was always hanging over us. The idea that the Cold War would end in my lifetime seemed incredibly remote, while the likelihood of nuclear war was a real possibility. It seemed like a miracle when everything changed in the 1990s.

After I lost my job in the animation industry and was working as a substitute teacher, one high school history class I subbed for one day was studying "ping pong diplomacy." The kids in the class were really impressed that I knew so much about that subject. The idea that Nixon going to China was by then history was a bit unsettling. Seeing the title to this thread, that the Cuban missile crisis happened 50 years ago, was another jolt.
 
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I was just an infant at the time, but in looking back, I consider Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis to be one of the two greatest foreign policy moments of the USA post WWII, the other being the Suez Crisis. Kennedy was masterful both in the big picture he saw, and the consequent bucking of his advisors, followed by the tense and masterful execution without a playbook to guide him.
 
Brown said:
On October 14, 1962, photographs taken by a US aircraft showed strong evidence that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba.

The top brass saw no option: Invade Cuba and take out those missiles. Kill all the Russians that you have to in order to get the job done, and you may as well kill Castro while you're there.

President Kennedy saw a bigger picture. The stakes were bigger than just Cuba, and potential for loss of control of the situation was immense. He directed that a quarantine be imposed on Cuba: not a conventional blockade of all shipments to the island, but stoppage of vessels containing weapons.

Kennedy also flexed the USA's military muscles.

Kennedy further worked quietly to try to find a way that the Soviets could withdraw without losing face. He also worked for a way that the US could save face: the Soviets had demanded removal of some US missiles in Turkey and Southern Italy--which the US had planned to dismantle anyway before the Cuba business even started--but now Kennedy felt he could not dismantle those missiles under threat.

Meanwhile, Castro was convinced that invasion was imminent and his life was about to be in severe danger. He urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack. (Robert S.McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, interviewed Castro years after the crisis. To McNamara's shock, Castro disclosed that many missiles were fully operational and Castro had been pleading with Moscow that they be fired.)

It is not clear what the Soviets expected Kennedy to do, but they apparently did not expect him to do what he did. Their responses were inconsistent and sometimes surprisingly muted. In the end, both sides agreed to withdraw their missiles. Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba. As a result, Castro stayed in power, and he is today one of the few players who is still alive.

Link to thread: The Cuban Missile Crisis- Your experience
Link to Wikipedia topic
Link to thread: Thirteen Days
Click to expand...


I wasn't alive then, but there appears to be a lot of romanticism of that time tied up with the idea of "Camelot". Historians, however, have moved on, particularly with the opening of Soviet archives and declassification of US intelligence reports.

One source I found was this:

http://www.amazon.com/DEFCON-2-Standing-Nuclear-During-Missile/dp/0471670227

It has good and bad conclusions about Kennedy. On the good side, it points out we now know there were tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba during the crisis. They believe it is highly likely they would have been used in the advent of an invasion by the United States. Kennedy's restraint, which I don't believe was even his first impulse, saved an enormous number of lives.

It is also interesting to note, that while the Soviets did ultimately back down, Castro was always against doing so. So in the advent of an invasion, there is little doubt that even in the best circumstances, Castro would have at least tried to use them. One would hope that during an invasion, the Soviets would have maintained control, but in the fog of war, who knows?

On the flip side, the authors point to recordings of White House meetings where the head of the CIA actually warned Kennedy that the Soviets would put missiles in Cuba and advocated intelligence flights over the island . But this, unfortunately, this was largely ignored. These meetiings happened at least as early as August.

There was a discussion in the book that the Kennedys didn't think the Soviets would go back on their word and also didn't want to risk losing a pilot.

Fortunately, after mounting evidence, JFK finally agreed and the missiles were found on the very first mission. But if he had waited a little longer, on the order of a week or so, the first flight may have revealed missiles already on line and ready to go. In their opinion, that would have changed the dynamics of the events tremendously and probably would have ultimately severely hurt JFK's reputation.

Subsequent readings so far have not been able to disconfirm this latter point. In fact, one pro Kennedy author also mentions CIA warnings in his book:

An Unfiinished Life

http://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Li...=an+unfinished+life+john+f.+kennedy+1917-1963
 
Scary times back then. I love watching the documentary's on this stuff, here is a tid bit that could have been bad.

We now know, for example, that in addition to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

Tim
 
I wasn't born until '69, but do remember my family talking about this tense time in their lives.

My dad (family) was stationed at Shaw AFB ('62 - '66) in South Carolina during that time and he flew recon in the RF-101 and took many of the low level photos.
Mom and sister relayed that families on base were preparing for the worst. Lots of "duck and cover" drills at schools and blackouts and "exercises" on base.

I remember my dad being very helpful when it came time for me to study this period in history class. I vividly recall the gravity when he was explaining to me the DEFCON stages and what his squadron was to do at each stage and what pilots families were expected to do as well.

Very frightening time for the world.
 
I greatly like the verdict on the 1962 Cuba crisis, by one of my favourite authors -- who tends toward contrarian views on things. At the time, she was aged about 30, in the process of finalising a big and adventurous project which she had, for years, been looking forward to undertaking.

Quoting her approximately, from memory: "I took the view that this was just the superpowers playing silly buggers with each other, rather more dramatically and inflatedly than usual; and that in the end, they'd mutually sort it out, without having a nuclear war -- and I carried on with preparations for what I was planning." Happily, she turned out to be right.
 
fleabeetle said:
I greatly like the verdict on the 1962 Cuba crisis, by one of my favourite authors -- who tends toward contrarian views on things. At the time, she was aged about 30, in the process of finalising a big and adventurous project which she had, for years, been looking forward to undertaking.

Quoting her approximately, from memory: "I took the view that this was just the superpowers playing silly buggers with each other, rather more dramatically and inflatedly than usual; and that in the end, they'd mutually sort it out, without having a nuclear war -- and I carried on with preparations for what I was planning." Happily, she turned out to be right.
Click to expand...

And this person is . . . ?
 
fleabeetle said:
"I took the view that this was just the superpowers playing silly buggers with each other, rather more dramatically and inflatedly than usual; and that in the end, they'd mutually sort it out, without having a nuclear war -- and I carried on with preparations for what I was planning."
Click to expand...
Happily, she turned out to be right about part after semicolon, which is what really counted. But she was wrong about part before semicolon.

Good example of when "being right" causes a lot of non-productive anxiety. Also known as "ignorance is bliss". :)
 
TimCallahan said:
And this person is . . . ?
Click to expand...
Dervla Murphy, writer, citizen of the Irish Republic; has written many IMO splendid books about her travels in mostly out-of-the-way parts of the world. Now in her early eighties; still, as far as I know, going strong.

Mark6 said:
Happily, she turned out to be right about part after semicolon, which is what really counted. But she was wrong about part before semicolon.

Good example of when "being right" causes a lot of non-productive anxiety. Also known as "ignorance is bliss". :)
Click to expand...
I feel that something of a case can be made in favour of the "ignorance-is-bliss" approach...
 
NPR's The World had an excellent segment on this yesterday; seems the crisis went on considerably longer than most know and that we came much closer to war than most know.

After Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the ballistic missiles, no one apparently knew that he left "tactical" warheads in place. Further, that some 45,000 Soviet troops were present on the island, which no one seems to have taken into account or known of when we were seriously considering invasion.
According to recently-declassified Russian documents, the commanding general on site in Cuba seriously wanted to "go"....
As did Castro.

http://www.theworld.org/2012/10/cuban-missile-crisis/
 
That was scary stuff. I was a teenager in Glasgow, Scotland at that time. Nearby was the huge US nuke submarine base in the Holy Loch in the Clyde estuary. We all expected to get vaporised pretty close to the beginning of a US-Soviet nuclear exchange. I remember an estate agent around these times advertising a house in nearby Dunoon, in these terms: that in the event of nuclear war the fortunate purchaser would know nothing about it.
 
Watched Thirteen Days recently, scariest movie I ever saw. I knew there was a nuclear standoff, but I never imagined we were that close to war. Must've been absolutely terrifying to live through for all parties back in the day.
 
I was called up for the draft for the CMC. Failed the physical.
Heart murmur.
It's still ticking after all those years. :) 116 66 113 after today's bike ride.
 
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