Conventional wisdom of Cuban missile crisis re-evaluated
BY PETER ORSI
Sunday, October 14, 2012
10/14/12 at 5:53 AM
HAVANA — The world
stood at the brink of Armageddon
for 13 days in October
1962 when President
John F. Kennedy drew a
symbolic line in the Atlantic
and warned of dire consequences
if Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev dared to
cross it.
An American U-2 spy
plane flying high over Cuba
had snapped aerial photographs
of Soviet ballistic missile
sites that could launch
nuclear warheads with little
warning at the United States,
just 90 miles away. It was the
height of the Cold War, and
many people feared nuclear
war would annihilate human
civilization.
Soviet ships carrying nuclear
equipment steamed toward
Kennedy’s “quarantine”
zone around the island but
turned around before reaching
the line. “We’re eyeball-to-
eyeball, and I think the
other fellow just blinked,”
U.S. Secretary of State Dean
Rusk famously said, a quote
that largely came to be seen
as defining the crisis.
In the five decades since
the nuclear standoff between
Washington and Moscow,
much of the long-held conventional
wisdom about
the missile crisis has been
knocked down, including
the common belief that Kennedy’s
bold brinksmanship
ruled the day.
On the eve of the 50th anniversary
of the Cuban missile
crisis, historians now
say it was behind-the-scenes
compromise, rather than a
high-stakes game of chicken
that resolved the faceoff, that
Washington and Moscow
wound up winners and that
the crisis lasted far longer
than 13 days.
Declassified documents,
oral histories and accounts
from decision-makers involved
in the standoff have
turned up new information
that challenges the conventional
ideas of how the crisis
played out.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
The crisis was a triumph of U.S.
brinkmanship.
REALITY: Historians say the
resolution of the standoff was
really a triumph of backdoor
diplomacy.
Kennedy resisted pressure
from aides advising that he cede
nothing to Moscow and even
consider a pre-emptive strike.
He instead engaged in intense
behind-the-scenes diplomacy
with the Soviets, other countries
and the U.N. secretary-general.
Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy met secretly with the
Soviet ambassador Oct. 27 and
conveyed an olive branch from
his brother: Washington would
publicly reject any invasion of
Cuba, and Khrushchev would
withdraw the missiles from the
island. The real sweetener was
that Kennedy would withdraw
Jupiter nuclear missiles from
U.S. installations in Turkey, near
the Soviet border. It was a secret
pledge known only to a handful
of presidential advisers that did
not emerge until years later.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
Washington won, and Moscow lost.
REALITY: The United States
came out a winner but so did
the Soviet Union.
The Jupiter missiles are
sometimes described as nearly
obsolete, but they had come online
just months earlier and were
fully capable of striking into the
Soviet Union. Their withdrawal,
along with Kennedy’s assurance
he would not invade Cuba, gave
Khrushchev enough to feel he
had saved face, and the following
day, he announced the imminent
dismantling of offensive
weapons in Cuba.
Soon after, a U.S.-Soviet
presidential hotline was established
and the two nations
initiated discussions that led to
the Limited Test Ban treaty and
ultimately the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: It
was a high-seas showdown.
REALITY: It’s true the missile
crisis was full of tense moments.
On Oct. 27, a U.S. warship
dropped depth charges over a
nuclear-armed Soviet sub and
the Soviets shot down a U-2
spy plane over Cuba. It was “the
darkest, most dangerous day of
the crisis,” said Peter Kornbluh,
who is a Cuba analyst at the
nongovernment National Security
Archive, which has spent
decades working to get missile
crisis documents declassified.
Yet after Kennedy on Oct. 22
announced a U.S. naval quarantine
around the island to prevent
more military equipment from
arriving, Khrushchev recalled
ships carrying nuclear equipment
the following day, according
to the 2008 book “One
Minute to Midnight” by Michael
Dobbs, which was based on
newly examined Soviet documents.
That means that on Oct. 24,
when Secretary of State Rusk
made his famous “eyeball-toeyeball”
statement reacting to
supposedly up-to-the-minute
intelligence, the vessels were
already hundreds of miles away,
steaming home.
“This thing about eyeballto-
eyeball, it never was. That
confrontation never took place,”
Kornbluh said.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: It
was an intelligence coup for the
CIA.
REALITY: Along with being a
day late on the turnaround by
Soviet ships, the CIA missed
several key developments that
would have helped Kennedy and
his advisers navigate the crisis.
The CIA learned late in the
game about the ballistic missiles’
presence in Cuba, and they
were already operational by the
time Kennedy was informed of
their existence.
The agency was also unaware
of other, tactical nuclear missiles
in Cuba that could have been
deployed against a U.S. attack.
The Soviets had even positioned
nuclear-tipped missiles on a
ridge above the U.S. naval base
at Guantanamo Bay in preparation
for an invasion.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: The
crisis lasted just 13 days.
REALITY: Indeed it was 13 days
from Oct. 16, when Kennedy was
first told about the missiles, to
Oct. 28, when the Soviets announced
their withdrawal.
But the “October Crisis,” as
it is known in Cuba, dragged on
for another tense month or so
in what Kornbluh dubs the “November
Extension,” as Washington
and Moscow haggled over
details of exactly what weapons
would be removed.
The Soviet Union also had
problems dealing with Fidel
Castro, according to a Soviet
document made public this
month by Svetlana Savranskaya,
a Russia analyst for the National
Security Archive.
Deputy Premier Anastas
Mikoyan traveled to Cuba on
Nov. 2, 1962, and spent 20 days
in tense talks with the Cuban
leader, who was angry the Soviets
had reached a deal without
consulting him. Castro lobbied
hard but unsuccessfully to keep
the tactical nuclear weapons
that the Americans had not
learned about.
Original Print Headline: History rewritten on Cuban missile crisis
Associated Images:
A soldier walks by the newly painted outer casing of an old, empty Soviet missile on exhibit at the military complex Morro Cabana, which is open to tourists in Havana, Cuba. ISMAEL FRANCISCO / Cubadebate / AP
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