In our modern world where the United States is one of the great military
superpowers, we don’t often worry about nuclear war. There was a time in our
nation’s history however, when the world was the closest it has ever come to nuclear
war. This was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The armed forces of The U.S. were
at their highest state of readiness in history and the Soviet Union was prepared to fight
the U.S. from the island of Cuba if the United States invaded. The crisis occurred when
the U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union had supplied missile installations in Cuba. Cuba
is only 90 miles from the state of Florida and these missiles would be capable of hitting
targets across most of the United States. The discovery of missiles by the U.S. led to a
very tense stand-off sometimes known as "Fourteen Days in October" between the
U.S. and the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of President John F. Kennedy and Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev, a nuclear war was avoided.
There were several causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis. One major cause was Soviet
insecurity. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev knew that the U.S. had more missiles than the
Soviets. He also was aware that the Soviet missiles were only powerful enough to be
launched to hit Europe. The U.S. on the other hand, had missiles that were capable of
hitting the entire Soviet Union. Khruschev felt like he was surrounded by enemies. The
U.S. had missiles in Turkey which were only 150 miles from the USSR. The Soviets were
losing the arms race and he feared this would invite a first strike nuclear attack by the
U.S. The United States and the USSR were also engaged in what is called a Cold War. This
is an economic, military and diplomatic struggle between communist and capitalist
countries.
A second major cause of the crisis was the growing tensions between the United States
and Cuba. The Cuban Revolution took place in 1959. Dictator Fulgencio Batista was taken
out of power and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro took power. Before the revolution, the
U.S. had great influence on Cuba’s economic and military affairs. Fidel Castro did
not like the U.S. and refused to be influenced by this country. Castro angered the U.S.
government when he took over property in Cuba belonging to wealthy American companies. In
an attempt to get Castro out of power, the U.S. trained and supplied arms to anti-Cuban
exiles who lived in the U.S. This was known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. The exiles
invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, but Castro’s army defeated them. After the Bay of
Pigs, Cubans really resented the U.S. and backed Castro. He then declared Cuba a Communist
country.
Kennedy and Khrushchev met after the Bay of Pigs incident and Khrushchev was very
aggressive. He threatened Kennedy with Berlin. This issue with Berlin was that after World
War II, Berlin was divided into two parts. East Berlin was under the control of Communist
East Germany and West Berlin was under capitalist West Germany. The U.S. had made a
promise to West Germany after the war to defend the city from being taken over by the
Communist East Germany. Khrushchev had already threatened earlier in the year to take over
West Berlin and had told President Kennedy he would take it to the point of war. The
threat over Berlin added fuel to the conflict.
The third major cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the actual build up of missiles
in Cuba. In April 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev came up with the idea of placing
intermediate range missiles in Cuba. This would double the Soviet arsenal and hopefully
stop the US from attacking the Soviet Union or Cuba.
Khrushchev promoted the KGB chief in Cuba, Alexander Alexeev, to ambassador and he
negotiated with Castro and got him to approve the plan. In July 1962, the Soviet Union
began a build up of offensive missiles in Cuba.
The Crisis Unfolds
The actual crisis occurred in a span of fourteen days. On October 16, 1962 the National
Photographic Interpretation Center took photos of surface-to-air missiles as they were
flying over Cuba. On October 16, President Kennedy was informed of the photographs.
Kennedy had known since August 28, 1961 that the Soviets had been testing nuclear weapons.
Now he knew that the Soviets had been deceiving him for months. He personally looked over
the photos and saw the missiles had a range of 1100 miles and could hit cities like New
York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Kennedy hand picked a group of trusted
government officials to advise him. This became known as EX-COMM
(Executive Committee of
the National Security Council) and they would play an important role in the Cuban Missile
Crisis. In their first meeting, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara outlined three
possible courses of action the US could take against the Soviet Union and Cuba. One course
was to call the Soviet Union to task publicly and solve the crisis openly. A second tactic
was to a blockade against defensive weapons entering Cuba. A third option was military
action against Cuba starting with an air attack against the missiles and then an invasion.
Kennedy wanted to appear tough, but he wanted to avoid a major war.
On October 18, 1962, EX-COMM and President Kennedy decided to use a blockade. This
would give the Soviets a way out of the crisis and hopefully avoid a nuclear war. On
October 19, Kennedy met with his Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the president’s top
military advisory group. On October 22, he met with congressional leaders, and then he
went on worldwide television and radio and announced that the US had discovered the
missiles. He demanded that Khrushchev withdraw these weapons and stated that the US would
start a naval quarantine zone around Cuba. Kennedy decided to call the blockade a
"quarantine" because international law defines a blockade as an act of war.
Member nations of the Organization of American States also backed the US in their attempt
to restore peace.
The days after the speech were filled with tension. Kennedy waited to see if the Soviet
ships would respect the blockade or if there would be a military confrontation at sea.
Soviet ships avoided the quarantine zone for many days. Khrushchev and Kennedy
communicated through diplomatic means. On October 26, Khrushchev sent a coded cable to
Kennedy offering to withdraw missiles from Cuba if the US would promise not to invade
Cuba. Kennedy had already made this promise a week earlier at a meeting with Andrey
Gromyko, a Soviet Foreign Minister. Khrushchev made a public speech and said he would
withdraw missiles from Cuba if the U.S. would withdraw missiles from Turkey along the
border with the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s top advisors told him not to give in to
Khrushchev’s demand even though the United States government did not place much value
on the missiles in Turkey. The missiles in Turkey were not really strategically important
to the United States military. Kennedy publicly said that the United States would pledge
not to invade Cuba. Kennedy planned to privately assure Premier Khrushchev that the United
States would remove the missiles from Turkey. He sent his brother Robert Kennedy to meet
secretly with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.
He told Dobrynin of the president’s promise to withdraw missiles from Turkey. He
warned the Soviets that time was running out and that President Kennedy would declare an
attack on Cuba soon. By the time Khrushchev received the report from Dobrynin, Khrushchev
had already decided to remove the missiles from Cuba. He came to realize that there was a
strong possibility of a nuclear war with the United States if he did not withdraw the
missiles from Cuba. On October 28, he made a worldwide broadcast and said he would remove
missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. promise not to invade Cuba. Castro caused a
problem when he refused to let United Nations inspectors in the country to verify the
process. An agreement was finally reached that stated Soviet missiles located in Cuba
would be removed in thirty days. The weapons would be removed out in the open so that
United States surveillance airplanes could witness that they were evacuated. All went as
planned and the Cuban Missile Crisis came to an end.
In the years after the crisis, many files from the U.S. and Soviet Union became
available. It was learned that if the United States had invaded Cuba, there would have
probably been a great loss of life. The U.S. government at that time did not know that
Soviet armies in Cuba had been equipped with nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield.
The U.S. had also underestimated the number of Soviet troops that were stationed in Cuba.
The U.S. thought there were only a few thousand troops, when there were really 40,000
Soviet troops. If the U.S. had invaded Cuba, they would have had a fierce resistance.
Results of the Cuban Missile Crisis
The immediate result of the Cuban Missile Crisis was a temporary strain in the
relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. Castro felt left out of the negotiations over
the missiles. He wanted to keep the missiles in Cuba as a way to make sure the U.S. would
never invade his country. Due to the fact that Cuba badly needed Soviet financial aid, the
relations between the two countries grew close again soon.
A second result of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that Khrushchev was removed as leader
of the Soviet in 1964. Many younger leaders in the Soviet Union thought that his actions
during the Cuban Missile Crisis showed him as a weak and indecisive leader. This along
with other problems he had with foreign policy and programs in his home country, all added
to his being removed from power.
A final result of the crisis was that the Cold War tensions began to decrease. Both
sides realized how close they had come to a nuclear war and decided to back down. In 1963
the " Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" was signed by the United States, the
U.S.S.R. and Great Britain. This treaty outlawed nuclear test explosions underwater and in
the atmosphere, but it allowed them underground.
The Key Players in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union at the time of the Cuban Missile
Crisis. He held the title of Premier of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964. When he was
Premier, he raised the country’s standard of living and helped the space program to
grow. He made great changes in the Soviet foreign policy. He believed in a policy known as
peaceful co-existence. He tried to avoid war with Western countries and he tried to
increase economic competition between Communist and non-Communist countries. Khrushchev
came up with an idea in the spring of 1962 to place nuclear missiles in Cuba because he
knew the United States was way ahead in the arms race of the Cold War. This was a major
cause of the crisis. He thought that if the Soviet Union lost the arms race, the U.S.
would strike first. He was assured by the military of the Soviet Union that the missiles
would be placed secretly, but on October 22, 1962, he learned that the U.S. had discovered
them. Nikita Khrushchev handled the Cuban Missile Crisis all on his own. He did not have
an advisory group like EX-COMM that Kennedy had. He knew that as the days of the crisis
continued that the Americans and Kennedy were very serious about invading Cuba. He never
wanted to start a war, so he backed down and promised to remove the missiles from Cuba in
exchange for the U.S. promise to remove American missiles from Turkey and a pledge that
the U.S. would not invade Cuba.
Many people believe that if it were not for the diplomacy of Khrushchev, the Cuban
Missile Crisis might have ended in a nuclear war. He restored peace to a very dangerous
situation. However, his decisions in the crisis hurt him politically. Young leaders in the
Soviet Union looked upon the crisis as a loss for the Soviet Union, they blamed Khrushchev
and he was removed from power in 1964. He died in 1971 of natural causes.
John F. Kennedy was president of the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He
was a popular president who took office in 1961. In his foreign policy, Kennedy was an
advocate for a strong anti-communist stand. For Kennedy the Cuban Missile Crisis began on
the morning of October 16, 1962 when he was told about the missiles in Cuba. He felt
betrayed by the Soviet Union because they had been communicating through secret channels
for several months and the Soviets always assured him that they would not place missiles
or other weapons in Cuba. Kennedy did some careful thinking about the crisis and he
appointed a group of men known as EX-COMM. These were his most trusted advisors who would
help him make decisions through the crisis. Because of Kennedy’s skill and diplomacy,
many believe that the crisis came to a peaceful end. Kennedy was assassinated twelve
months after the crisis while on a campaign trip in Dallas.
The Executive Committee of the United States National Security Council (EX-COMM),
became a very important part of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy selected this group of
trusted advisors to help him with the crisis. President Kennedy chaired the committee.
Members included Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara, Chairman of the JCS General Maxwell Taylor, Special Assistant to
the President for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, CIA Director John McCone,
Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Undersecretary of State George Ball, Special Counsel
Theodore Sorensen, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, and Soviet Specialist
Llewellyn Thompson. George Ball was one of the most important and influential members of
EX-COMM as Undersecretary of State. He repeatedly stressed the importance of avoiding
actions that would have harsh consequences such as a nuclear war. He was a strong advocate
for the naval quarantine of Cuba. He did not want strong military action such as an air
strike against that country.
Fidel Castro was Premier of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Castro took control
of Cuba in 1959. He took over U.S. oil refineries in Cuba in 1960 and this angered the
U.S. The U.S. in return, stopped buying Cuban Sugar and then Castro took over all U.S.
businesses in Cuba. President Kennedy was very angry at Castro and authorized the Bay of
Pigs Invasion. This was an attempt to overthrow Castro by Cuban exiles, but it failed.
After this, Castro worried that the U.S. might invade again and agreed to let Khrushchev
place Soviet missiles in Cuba. Castro’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis was that of
a pawn. He had no say in the decisions of the crisis. Castro felt betrayed by the Soviet
Union when the crisis ended. Fidel Castro is still Premier of Cuba today. He has seen
seven U.S. presidents come and go. Relations with the U.S. today are still strained.
A final important player in the Cuban Missile Crisis was Anatoly Dobrynin. He was the
Soviet Ambassador to the United States during the crisis. He was not a close advisor to
Khrushchev, but his role in resolving the crisis was very important. Attorney General
Robert Kennedy had a "back-channel" of communication with Dobrynin even before
the crisis happened. Khrushchev and President Kennedy were able to communicate openly
through Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Ambassador Dobrynin. It is known that Robert
Kennedy met with Dobrynin three times during the crisis. They met on October 23, 26, and
27. They held their meetings in secret and the crisis was openly discussed in hopes of
finding a resolution. After each meeting, Dobrynin cabled a report to Khrushchev and he
was able to see how urgent the crisis was.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a very important lesson for the world. It showed just how
close nations could come to nuclear war. Although it was a very tense fourteen days in
U.S. history, it showed the world that the U.S. was a super power and was willing to
defend what it believed in. The rulers of the nations, John F. Kennedy and Nikita
Khrushchev, were also very important in bringing the crisis to a peaceful end. If it were
not for the wishes of these men to restore peace, the Cuban Missile Crisis might have had
a devastating end. The Cuban Missile Crisis was indeed a very important event in the
history of the United States and of the world.
