Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States regarding the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The missiles were ostensibly placed to protect Cuba from further planned attacks by the United States after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, and were rationalized by the Soviets as equivalent to the U.S. placing deployable nuclear warheads in the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and most significantly, Turkey.

The crisis began on October 14, 1962 when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island were shown to U.S. President John F. Kennedy and ended fourteen days later on October 28, 1962, when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the installations would be dismantled. The Cuban Missile Crisis is often regarded as the moment when the Cold War came closest to escalating into a nuclear war. Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," while Cubans refer to it as the "October Crisis."

Background

Fidel Castro took power in Cuba after the Cuban revolution of 1959 and soon took actions which were harmful to American trade interests on the island. This started with nationalizing the former U.S. controlled telephone system, as well as introducing land reforms limiting the size of farm holdings, and later nationalizing other, largely American owned, industries. In response, the U.S. stopped buying Cuban sugar and refused to supply its former trading partner with much-needed oil.

The U.S. government became increasingly concerned about the new Cuban Government, which became a major focus of the new Kennedy administration when it took office in January 1961. In Havana, one of the consequences of this was the fear that the U.S. might intervene against the Cuban government. This fear materialized in April 1961 when Cuban exiles, trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, staged an invasion of Cuban territory at the Bay of Pigs. Although the invasion was quickly repelled, it intensified a buildup of Cuban forces that was already under way. U.S. armed forces then staged a mock invasion of a Caribbean island in 1962 called Operation Ortsac. The purpose of the invasion was to overthrow a fictitious leader named Ortsac ("Castro" spelled backwards). Castro soon became convinced that the U.S. was serious about invading Cuba. Shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro declared Cuba to be a socialist republic and entered close ties with the Soviet Union leading to a major upgrade of Cuban military defense.

The United States feared the conversion of any country to communism or socialism, but for a country to ally itself with the Soviet Union made the United States government especially nervous. There had been tension between the Soviet Union and the U.S., not only because of their opposing ideologies (communism and capitalism), but also because of the events surrounding Berlin. In 1948 the Soviet Union refused to allow food and supplies to pass through East German territory to West Berlin (see Berlin Airlift). The United States was forced to fly food and supplies into Berlin. This event made Americans extremely distrusting of Communists and especially the Soviet Union.

In February 1962, the U.S. began an economic embargo against Cuba. Around this time they also launched Operation Mongoose, a covert operation to overthrow Castro, starting with parachute drops of weapons and material along with several attempted infiltrations by CIA field operatives to organize and train an armed resistance. These plans were almost always disrupted. The arms drops were captured on several occasions and it appears all of the CIA operatives were captured shortly after arriving. On 27 September another group of operatives were captured and Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, who was project leader, would later complain that at this point Mongoose was hopeless.

Mongoose was not the only operational plan to overthrow Castro during this period. It was later revealed that the CIA had also been dealing with crime bosses John Roselli and Sam Giancana in an attempt to arrange an assassination. Cuban expatriates, ostensibly led by Eugenio Rolando Martínez, were in the process of starting a sabotage campaign, although this never took place. Direct military invasion was also studied in depth, and an operational plan for pre-invasion bombardment was presented by Curtis LeMay in September. U.S. overflights of Cuban airspace and minor harassment at Guantánamo Naval Base were also the subject of repeated diplomatic notes from Cuba.

U.S. nuclear advantage

The United States had a decided advantage over the Soviet Union leading up to the crisis. For example, by the close of 1962 the United States had far more nuclear weapons, with more than 300 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and a fleet of Polaris missile submarines. The Soviet Union, by contrast, possessed only four to six land-based ICBMs in 1962, and about 100 short-range, primitive V-1-type cruise missiles that could only be launched from surfaced submarines. The Soviet R-16 ICBM program suffered a major setback in October 1960 when the Nedelin catastrophe wiped out a large part of the technical team, setting the project back by a year.

Few in Washington, D.C. seriously believed that several dozen or so ballistic missiles in Cuba could change the essential strategic balance of power: the Soviet Union was hopelessly outgunned, but their close proximity would give the United States little or no warning if they were launched. It is now known conclusively that the United States had around 8 times as many nuclear weapons as the Soviet Union in 1962: 27,297 warheads to the USSR's 3,332. Before his arrest on the first day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky had served as an intelligence agent for the Americans and British; he was also a colonel in Soviet intelligence. Melman notes that "the proceedings of his trial in April 1963 revealed that he had delivered 5,000 frames of film of Soviet military-technical information, apart from many hours of talk with western agents during several trips to western Europe". Melman argues that top officers in the Soviet Union concluded "that the U.S. then possessed decisive advantage in arms and intelligence, and that the USSR no longer wielded a credible nuclear deterrent". (Melman, 1988: 119)

In 1961, the U.S. started deploying 15 Jupiter IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) nuclear missiles near İzmir, Turkey, which directly threatened cities in the western sections of the Soviet Union, including Moscow through its 1500 mile range and flight time of about 16 minutes. These missiles were regarded by President Kennedy as being of questionable strategic value; an SSBN (ballistic submarine) was capable of providing the same coverage, with both stealth and superior firepower.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had publicly expressed his anger at the Turkish deployment, and regarded the missiles as a personal affront. The deployment of missiles in Cuba — the first time Soviet missiles were moved outside the USSR — is commonly seen as Khrushchev's direct response to the Turkish missiles. Nikita Khrushchev had previously expressed his doubts to the poet Robert Frost about the readiness of the "liberal" United States to fight over tough issues.

Leadup

It was in this environment that Cuba and the Soviet Union agreed to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, with the understanding that an invasion would potentially be met by a nuclear response. Khrushchev devised the deployment plan in May of 1962, and by late July, over sixty Soviet ships were en route to Cuba, some of them already carrying military material.

John McCone, director of the CIA, had recently been on a honeymoon to Paris where he had been told by French Intelligence that the Soviets were planning to place missiles in Cuba, so he warned President Kennedy that some of the ships were probably carrying missiles; however, the President—along with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (his brother), Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara—concluded that the Soviets would not try such a thing. Kennedy's administration had received repeated claims from Soviet diplomats that there were no missiles in Cuba, nor any plans to place any, and that the Soviets were not interested in starting an international drama that might affect the U.S. elections in November.

A U-2 flight in late August photographed a new series of SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites being constructed, but on September 4 1962 Kennedy told Congress that there were no offensive missiles in Cuba.

On 4 September, Robert Kennedy met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. During the meeting Kennedy stated the U.S.'s concerns about weapons that were in Cuba. The Ambassador assured Kennedy that they were strictly defensive and that the military build-up was of absolutely no significance. A few days later, U.S. spy planes discovered a fairly sizable sub pen being constructed under the guise of a fishing village. On 11 September the Soviets publicly stated that there was no need for the distribution of nuclear weapons to anywhere outside the Soviet Union including Cuba. That same day, a personal communiqué was received from Khrushchev to President Kennedy stating that there would be no offensive weapons placed in Cuba.

U-2 flights and discovery

RF-101 Voodoo reconnaissance photograph of San Cristobal MRBM launch site.

In fact, the first consignment of SS-4 MRBMs had arrived on the night of 8 September, followed by a second shipload on September 16. The Soviets were building nine sites — six for SS-4s and three for SS-5s with a range of 4,000 kilometres (2,400 statute miles). The planned arsenal was forty launchers, an increase in Soviet first strike capacity of 70%. This matter was readily noticed by the Cuban population, and perhaps as many as a thousand reports of such reached Miami, and were evaluated and then considered spurious by U.S. intelligence.

On 8 October Cuban President Dorticos gave a speech at the U.N. General Assembly, noting that "If... we are attacked, we will defend ourselves. I repeat, we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves; we have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons which we would have preferred not to acquire and which we do not wish to employ." A number of unconnected problems meant that the missiles were not discovered by the U.S. until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of an SS-4 site near San Cristobal in Pinar del Río Province in Western Cuba.

Planning a response

The photographs were shown to Kennedy on October 16. At about 9 a.m. he called a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm), consisting of fourteen key officials including his brother Robert. There had been no planning for this sort of event because the intelligence community remained convinced that the Soviets would not place missiles in Cuba, so the ExComm had to quickly discuss options. Three lines of action were considered; a surgical air strike destroying all of the missiles, a full-scale invasion, or blockading the island.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed that a full out invasion was the only solution. They all agreed that the Russians would do nothing to stop them from taking over Cuba. JFK was skeptical saying:

They, no more than we, can let these things go by without doing something. They can't, after all their statements, permit us to take out their missiles, kill a lot of Russians, and then do nothing. If they don't take action in Cuba, they certainly will in Berlin.

JFK concluded that an air strike would give the Soviets "a clear line" to take Berlin, the way they took Hungary after the 1956 Suez invasion. He stated that our allies would think of us as "trigger-happy Americans" who lost Berlin because we couldn't endure the situation in Cuba.

Robert McNamara was a strong supporter of the blockade approach. He felt the blockade was a strong, but limited action that still left the U.S. in control of the situation. It should be noted that a naval blockade is, by legal definition, an act of war, but it felt it was so limited that the Soviets could not be made to attack simply by placing the blockade in effect. The word quarantine was used rather than blockade for reasons of international law (the blockade took place in international waters) and in keeping with the Quarantine Speech of 1937 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Additionally, Kennedy felt that in order for the action to have any legality, the Organization of American States would have to approve the action.

On the night of 17 October Kennedy met with Andrei Gromyko, who continued to stress that there were no offensive weapons being placed on Cuba, and that the USSR was involved in land reform and defensive operations only. Kennedy had, by this time, been appraised that the arsenal in Cuba represented about one half of the Soviet nuclear capability.

By October 19 the U-2 flights (then almost continuous) showed four sites were operational. The decision was made to go with the blockade, although preparations were started for an air strike and follow up invasion as well. The First Armored Division was redeployed to Georgia and five other divisions were placed on maximum alert. Strategic Air Command (SAC) distributed its aircraft to civilian airfields and put its B-52 nuclear strike force into the air in preparation for an attack.

When another meeting on the options suggested that air strikes could result in 10-20 thousand casualties, and another U-2 flight discovered bombers and cruise missile sites along Cuba's northern shores, Kennedy decided on a naval blockade of Cuba. When confronted with questions regarding rumors of offensive weapons in Cuba, Kennedy asked the press not to report the story until after he addressed the American public. That evening he informed the United Kingdom and other allies of the events.

The blockade

At 7 p.m. October 22, President Kennedy delivered a televised address announcing the discovery of the installations. He proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba on any nation would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, and would be responded to accordingly. He also placed a naval "quarantine" (blockade) on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of military weapons from arriving there.

The following day all non-essential personnel were evacuated from Guantánamo, and the U.S. military was put on world-wide DEFCON 3 alert. Later that day the Organization of American States unanimously supported the decision to quarantine Cuba and, by the end of the day, 180 U.S. Navy ships were prepared for the blockade.

However, Nikita Khrushchev claimed that the blockade was illegal, and ordered ships to bypass the quarantine. This became known to U.S. officials on the night of 23 October at a civil function in Washington. Lieutenant General Vladimir Dubovik made several comments that suggested that they would ignore the blockade, and when Ambassador Dobrynin arrived later he did not refute the account. A statement by TASS claimed that U.S. ships would be attacked in response to any attack on Soviet shipping.

The blockade went into effect at 10 a.m. on October 24. At the time, nineteen ships were en-route to Cuba from the Soviet Union. Sixteen of these were clearly identified as reversing course, and only the tanker Bucharest continued towards the U.S. lines. The other two, the Gagarin and Komiles were later discovered only a few miles from the U.S. lines, and that they were being escorted by a Soviet submarine positioned between the two ships. The USS Essex was instructed to block the progress of the submarine, including the use of "small explosives" if need be. At 10:25 a.m. John McCone received an intelligence message and announced that the ships had gone dead in the water. Dean Rusk leaned over to McGeorge Bundy and noted "We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked."

The crisis deepens

Only an hour later, at 11:24 a.m. a cable drafted by George Ball to the U.S. Ambassador in Turkey and the U.S. Ambassador to NATO notified them that they were considering making an offer to withdraw missiles from Turkey in exchange for a withdrawal from Cuba. Later, on the morning of 25 October, respected journalist Walter Lippman proposed the same thing in his syndicated column. For many years this has been interpreted as a trial balloon floated by the Kennedy administration, although the historical record suggests this is not the case.

At the time the crisis continued unabated, and that evening TASS reported on an exchange of telegrams between Nikita Khrushchev and Bertrand Russell, where Khrushchev warned that the U.S.'s "pirate action" will lead to war. However this was followed at 9:24 p.m. by a telegram from Khrushchev to Kennedy which Kennedy received at 10:52 p.m., in which Khrushchev stated that "if you cooly weight the situation which has developed, not giving way to passions, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot fail to reject the arbitrary demands of the United States", and that the Soviet Union views the blockade as "an act of aggression" and their ships will be instructed to ignore it.

That night, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed Strategic Air Command to go to DEFCON 2, for the first time in history. The message, and the response, were deliberately transmitted uncoded, in order to allow Soviet intelligence to capture them. Operation Falling Leaves quickly set up three radar bases to watch for missile launches from Cuba. The radars were experimental models ahead of their time. Each base was connected with a hotline to NORAD control.

At 1:45 a.m. (now the 25th), Kennedy responded to Khrushchev's telegram, stating that the U.S. was forced into action after receiving repeated assurances that no offensive missiles were being placed in Cuba, and that when these assurances proved to be false, the deployment "required the responses I have announced... I hope that your government will take necessary action to permit a restoration of the earlier situation."

At 7:15 a.m., 25 October, the USS Essex and USS Gearing attempted to intercept the Bucharest, but failed to do so. Fairly certain the tanker did not contain any military material, it was allowed through the blockade. Later that day, at 5:43 p.m., the commander of the blockade effort ordered the USS Kennedy to intercept and board the Lebanese freighter Marcula. This took place the next day, and the Marucla was cleared through the blockade after its cargo was checked.

At 5:00 p.m. Dean Rusk announced that the missiles on Cuba were still actively being worked on. This report was later verified by a CIA report that suggested there has been no slow-down at all. In response, Kennedy issued Security Action Memorandum 199, releasing nuclear weapons to be loaded onto aircraft under the command of SACEUR, who had the duty of carrying out the first air strikes on the Soviet Union.

The next morning, Kennedy informed the executive committee that he believed only an invasion will remove the missiles from Cuba. However he was persuaded to give the matter time and continue with both military and diplomatic pressure. He agreed, and ordered the low-level flights over the island to be increased from two a day to once every two hours. He also ordered a crash program to institute a new civil government in Cuba if an invasion went ahead.

At this point the crisis was ostensibly at a head. The USSR had shown no indication that they would back down, and had made several comments to the contrary. The U.S. had no reason to believe otherwise, and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion, along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in the case they respond militarily, which was assumed.

A Break

At 1:00 p.m. 26 October, John Scali of ABC News lunched with Aleksandr Fomin at Fomin's request. He noted that "war seems about to break out" and asked Scali to use his contacts to talk to his "high-level friends" at the State Department to see if the U.S. would be interested in a diplomatic solution. He suggested that the language of the deal would contain an assurance from the Soviet Union to remove the weapons under UN supervision and that Castro would publicly announce not to accept such weapons in the future, in exchange for a public statement by the U.S. that they would never invade Cuba. The U.S. responded by asking the Brazilian government to pass a message to Castro that the U.S. would be "unlikely to invade" if the missiles are removed.

At 6:00 p.m. the State Department started receiving a message that appeared to be written personally by Khrushchev. Robert Kennedy described the letter as "very long and emotional". Khrushchev re-iterated the basic outline that had been stated to Scali earlier in the day, "I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear." At 6:45 news of Fomin's offer to Scali was finally heard, and was interpreted as a "set up" for the arrival of Khrushchev's letter. The letter was then considered official and accurate, although it was later learned that Fomin was almost certainly operating of his own accord without official backing. Additional study of the letter was ordered, and continued into the night.

The crisis continues

Castro, on the other hand, was convinced an invasion is soon at hand, and after an evening of drinking, dictated a letter to Khrushchev that appeared to call for a pre-emptive strike on the U.S.. He also ordered all anti-aircraft weapons in Cuba to fire on any U.S. aircraft, whereas in the past they were ordered only to fire on groups of two or more. At 6:00 a.m. on 27 October the CIA delivered a memo reporting that three of the four missile sites at San Cristobal and the two sites at Sagua la Grande appeared to be fully operational. They also note that the Cuban military continued to organize for action, although they are under order not to initiate action unless attacked.

At 9 a.m. Radio Moscow began broadcasting a message from Khrushchev. Contrary to the letter of the night before, the message offered a new trade, that the missiles on Cuba would be removed in exchange for the removal of the Jupiters from Turkey. Throughout the crisis, Turkey had repeatedly stated they would be extremely upset if the missiles would be removed. At 10 a.m. the executive committee met again to discuss the situation. McNamara notes that another tanker, the Grozny, is about 600 miles out and should be intercepted. He also noted that they have never made the USSR aware of the quarantine line, and suggest relaying this information to them via U Thant at the UN.

While the meeting progresses, at 11:03 a.m. a new message began to arrive from Khrushchev. The message stated, in part, "You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is ninety miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But... you have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us... I therefore make this proposal: We are willing to remove from Cuba the means which you regard as offensive... Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States ... will remove its analogous means from Turkey... and after that, persons entrusted by the United Nations Security Council could inspect on the spot the fulfillment of the pledges made." The executive committee continued to meet through the day.

Around noon that day a U-2 piloted by Rudolph Anderson was shot down by an SA-2 Guideline SAM emplacement, increasing the stress in negotiations between the USSR and the U.S. It was later learned that the decision to fire was made locally by a Soviet commander on his own authority, although exactly who this was is a matter of some debate. Later that day, at about 3:41 p.m., several F8U Crusader aircraft on low-level recce missions were fired upon, and one was hit by a 37 mm shell but managed to return to base.

At 4 p.m. Kennedy recalled the executive committee to the White House, and ordered that a message immediately be sent to U Thant asking if the Soviets would "suspend' work on the missiles while negotiations are carried out. During this meeting, Maxwell Taylor delivers the news that the U-2 had been shot down. Kennedy had earlier claimed he would order an attack on such sites if fired upon, but decides to leave the matter unless another attack is made.

Drafting the response

Throughout the meeting, Kennedy suggested they take up Khrushchev's offer to trade away the missiles. Unknown to most members of the ExComm, Robert Kennedy had been meeting with the USSR Ambassador in Washington to feel out if their intentions were genuine. The ExComm was generally against the proposal as it would undermine NATO, and the Turkish government had repeatedly stated they were against any such trade. If Kennedy could be forced to give up nuclear weapons in Turkey through actions in another part of the world, no European nation could consider itself safe from having their safety similarly bargained away.

As the meeting progressed, a new plan emerged and Kennedy was slowly won over. The new plan called for the president to simply ignore the latest message, and return to Khrushchev's earlier one. Kennedy was initially hesitant, feeling that Khrushchev would no longer accept the deal now that a new one had been offered, but Llewellyn Thompson argued that he might accept it anyway. Theodore Sorensen and Robert Kennedy leave the meeting and return 45 minutes later with a draft letter to this effect. The president made several changes, had it typed, and sent it.

After the ExComm meeting finally broke up, a smaller meeting continued in the Oval Office. The group argued that the letter be underscored with an oral message to Ambassador Dobrynin stating that if the missiles are not withdrawn, military action would be used to remove them. Dean Rusk adds one proviso, that no part of the language of the deal would mention Turkey, but there would be an understanding that the missiles would be removed "voluntarily" in the immediate aftermath. The president agreed and the message was sent.

At Dean Rusk's request, Fomin and Scali meet again. Scali asked why the two letters from Khrushchev were so different, and Fomin claimed it was due to "poor communications". Scali replied that the claim was not credible and shouted that he though it was a "stinking double cross". He went on to claim that an invasion was only hours away, at which point Fomin stated that a response to the U.S. message was expected from Khrushchev shortly, and he urged Scali to tell the State Department no treachery was intended. Scali said that he didn't think anyone would believe him, but agreed to deliver the message. The two went their separate ways, and Scali immediately typed out a memo for the ExComm.

Within the U.S. establishment it was well understood that ignoring the second offer and returning to the first put Khrushchev in a terrible position. Military preparations continue, and all active duty Air Force personnel were recalled to base for possible action. Robert Kennedy later recalled the mood, "We had not abandoned all hope, but what hope there was now rested with Khrushchev's revising his course within the next few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The expectation was military confrontation by Tuesday, and possibly tomorrow..."

At 8:05 p.m. the letter drafted earlier in the day was delivered. The message read "As I read your letter, the key elements of your proposals - which seem generally acceptable as I understand them - are as follows: 1) You would agree to remove these weapons systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision; and undertake, with suitable safe-guards, to halt the further introduction of such weapon systems into Cuba. 2) We, on our part, would agree - upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations, to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments (a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against the invasion of Cuba." The letter was also released directly to the press to ensure it cannot be "delayed".

With the letter delivered a deal was now on the table. However, as Robert Kennedy noted, there was little expectation it would be accepted. At 9 p.m. the ExComm met again to review the actions for the following day. Plans are drawn up for airstrikes on the missile sites as well as other economic targets, notably petroleum storage. McNamara states that they had to "have two things ready; a government for Cuba, because we're going to need one, and secondly, plans for how to respond to the Soviet Union in Europe, because sure as hell they're going to do something there".

Just after midnight, at 12:12 a.m., the U.S. informed its NATO allies that "the situation is growing shorter... the United States may find it necessary within a very short time in its interest and that of its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere to take whatever military action may be necessary." To add to the concern, at 6 a.m. the CIA reported that all missiles on Cuba were now ready for action.

Ending of crisis

At 9 a.m. on October 28, a new message from Khrushchev was broadcast on Radio Moscow. Khrushchev stated "the Soviet government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at the building sites for the weapons, has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as 'offensive.' and their crating and return to the Soviet Union."

Kennedy immediately responded, issuing a statement calling the letter "an important and constructive contribution to peace". He continued this with a formal letter: "I consider my letter to you of October twenty-seventh and your reply of today as firm undertakings on the part of both our governments which should be promptly carried out".

Aftermath

The compromise satisfied no one, though it was a particularly sharp embarrassment for Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey was not made public as it was a secret dealing between Kennedy and Khrushchev. They were seen as retreating from circumstances that they had started — though if played well, it could have looked like just the opposite: the USSR gallantly saving the world from nuclear holocaust by not insisting on restoring the nuclear equilibrium. Khrushchev's fall from power two years later can be partially linked to Politburo embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the U.S. and his ineptitude in precipitating the crisis in the first place.

However, the Cuban Missile Crisis was not completely responsible for the fall of Khrushchev's power. The main reason was that revolutionaries such as Leonid Brezhnev believed that Khrushchev did not have enough "power" to handle international crises. He believed that Khrushchev had failed in dealing in the crisis. Also, Chinese propaganda triggered other movements.

U.S. military commanders were not happy with the result either. General LeMay told the President that it was "the greatest defeat in our history" and that the U.S. should invade immediately.

For Cuba, it was a betrayal by the Soviets whom they had trusted, given that the decisions on putting an end to the crisis had been made exclusively by Kennedy and Khrushchev.

In early 1992 it was confirmed that key Soviet forces in Cuba had, by the time the crisis broke, received tactical nuclear warheads for their artillery rockets, and IL-28 bombers [2], though General Anatoly Gribkov, part of the Soviet staff responsible for the operation, stated that the local Soviet commander, General Issa Pliyev, had predelegated authority to use them if the U.S. had mounted a full-scale invasion of Cuba. Gribkov misspoke: the Kremlin's authorization remained unsigned and undelivered.[3] (Other accounts show that Pliyev was given permission to use tactical nuclear warheads but only in the most extreme case of an American invasion during which contact with Moscow is lost. However when American forces seemed to be readying for an attack (after the U-2 photos, but before Kennedy's television address), Khrushchev rescinded his earlier permission for Pliyev to use the tactical nuclear weapons, even under the most extreme conditions.)

The Cuban Missile Crisis spurred the creation of the "red telephone," a direct communications link between Moscow and Washington D.C. The purpose of this undersea line was to have a way the leaders of the two Cold War countries could communicate directly to better solve a crisis like the one in October 1962.

The short time span of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the extensive documentation of the decision-making processes on both sides makes it an excellent case study for analysis of state decision-making. In the Essence of Decision, Graham T. Allison and Philip D. Zelikow use the crisis to illustrate multiple approaches to analyzing the actions of the state. The intensity and magnitude of the crisis also provides excellent material for drama, as illustrated by the movies The Missiles of October (1974), a television docudrama directed by Anthony Page and starring William Devane, Ralph Bellamy, Howard Da Silva and Martin Sheen, and Thirteen Days (2000), directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp. It was also a substantial part of the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, which won an Oscar.

Various commentators (Melman, 1988; Hersh, 1997) also suggest that the Cuban Missile Crisis enhanced the hubris of American military planners, leading to military adventurism, most decidedly in Vietnam.

This incident also had an implication for Bahamas, whose economy was near collapse at the time. After the crisis, American tourists were prohibited from visiting Cuba. Hence the Bahamas became a sought after tourist destination and its economy was once again stabilized.

Historical Note

Arthur Schlesinger, historian and advisor to John F. Kennedy, on National Public Radio (16 October 2002) revealed that Castro had not wanted the missiles but that Khrushchev had forced them upon Cuba in a bit of political arm-twisting and "socialist solidarity." Schlesinger believed that, having accepted the missiles, Castro was angrier with Khrushchev than he was at Kennedy when the missiles were withdrawn, because Khrushchev had not consulted Castro prior to deciding to remove them from Cuba.

See also

• International crisis
• Cold War
• Brinkmanship
• Cuba-United States relations
• Cuban-Soviet relations
• Thirteen Days - book written by Robert F. Kennedy
• The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
• Stanislav Petrov
• Sino-Indian War, which occurred at the same time as the Crisis.

Reading on the Cuban missile crisis

• Allison, Graham and Zelikow, P. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis; New York: Longman, 1999.
• Blight, James G., and David A. Welch. On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis; New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.
• Brugioni, Dino A. Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis; New York: Random House, 1991.
• Chayes, Abram. The Cuban Missile Crisis, International Crisis and the Role of Law; Oxford University Press, 1974; 2nd ed., 1987.
• Diez Acosta, Tomás, October 1962: The 'Missile' Crisis As Seen From Cuba; Pathfinder Press, New York, 2002.
• Divine, Robert A. The Cuban Missile Crisis; New York: M. Wiener Pub.,1988.
• Frankel, Max, High Noon in the Cold War; Ballantine Books, 2004; Presidio Press (reprint), 2005; ISBN 0-345-46671-3.
• Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Naftali, Timothy; One Hell of a Gamble - Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958-1964; W.W. Norton (New York 1998)
• Fursenko, Aleksandr; Night Session of the Presidium of the Central Committee, 22-23 October; Naval War College Review, vol. 59, no. 3 (Summer 2006).
• George, Alice L. (2006). Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807828289.
• Gonzalez, Servando The Nuclear Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis; IntelliBooks, 2002; ISBN 0-9711391-5-6.
• Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis; ISBN 0-393-31834-6.
• Khrushchev, Sergei, How my father and President Kennedy saved the world; American Heritage magazine, October 2002 issue.
• May, Ernest R. (editor); Zelikow, Philip D. (editor), The Kennedy Tapes : Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Belknap Press, 1997; ISBN 0-674-17926-9.
• Polmar, Norman and Gresham, John D. (foreword by Clancy, Tom) DEFCON – 2: Standing on the Brink of Nuclear War During the Cuban Missile Crisis; Wiley, 2006; ISBN 0-471-67022-7.
• Pope, Ronald R., Soviet Views on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Myth and Reality in Foreign Policy Analysis; University Press of America, 1982.
• Stern, Sheldon M., Averting the Final Failure: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings; Stanford University Press, 2003; ISBN 0804748462
• Stern, Sheldon M. (2005). The Week The World Stood Still: Inside The Secret Cuban Missile Crisis (Stanford Nuclear Age Series). Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804750777.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis: Declassified (Television Program)

Reading on related topics

• Bamford, James, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency; Anchor Books, 2002.
• Giglio, James N. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy; Lawrence, Kansas, 1991.
• Hersh, Seymour. The Dark Side of Camelot; Hammersmith, London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.
• Melman, Seymour. The Demilitarized Society: Disarmament and Conversion; Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1988.

Fiction based on the historical crisis

• DuBois, Brendan, Resurrection Day; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1999.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater; Konami, 2004.
• Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath ; G5 Software 2005.
• seaQuest DSV; episode entitled "Second Chance".
• Thirteen Days, 2000
• The Missiles of October, 1974

External links

• IV. Chronology of Submarine. Contact During the Cuban Missile Crisis. October 1, 1962 - November 14, 1962. Prepared by Jeremy Robinson-Leon and William Burr.
• CIA Documents on the Cuban Missle Crisis, 1962(.pdf, 354 pgs.)U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, McAuliffe, M. ed., CIA History Staff, 1992.
• Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, 1961 - 1963, Volume XI of the Kennedy Administration in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Keefer, E., Sampson, C., & Smith, L., Eds., U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1996. The official U.S. documentary historical record.
• Declassified Documents, etc. - Provided by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University.
• Declassified "Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense" on "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba," from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., March 13, 1962, html text from Cryptome .pdf from National Security Archive, at The George Washington University.

• Transcripts and Audio of ExComm meetings - Provided by the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program, University of Virginia.
• Tapes of debates between JFK and his advisors during the crisis
• Cuban Missile Crisis Reunion, October 2002
• The World On the Brink: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
• 14 Days in October: The Cuban Missile Crisis - a site geared toward high-school students
• Nuclear Files.org Introduction, timeline and articles regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis
• Cuba Havana Documentary Bye Bye Havana is a documentary revealing what Cubans are thinking about today
• Annotated bibliography on the Cuban Missile Crisis from the Alsos Digital Library.
• October, 1962: DEFCON 4, DEFCON 3, DEFCON 2
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• A multimedia page about the Missile Crisis, by author John Fenzel