The Missile Crisis in the US and Cuba - Coursework Example

Missile Crisis The action might have centred around Cuba, but the Missile Crisis was one which could have changed forever the shape and future of theworld as we know it. It was the closest the world had ever come to an all-out nuclear war! After World War II, the strained alliance between the US and the Soviet Union developed into a Cold War, which lasted until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was during this period that tension sometimes came to a head and became armed conflict. Most times, military forces from the countries involved in the Cold War rarely had any kind of direct confrontation; the war was primarily fought by intelligence agencies. But though major powers were not directly involved, they armed or funded surrogates, lessening direct impact on the populations of their own countries, but increasing conflict and tension between millions of civilians around the world. One of the ‘hot spots’ in the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the then US President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev were practically eyeball to eyeball, each with a finger on the trigger. One wrong move and this would have escalated to a nuclear confrontation, and ccompletely changed the course of history. For the Americans, the countdown began on Monday, October 15, 1962, when a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft revealed several Soviet nuclear missile installations in Cuba. They promptly swung into action and the subsequent 13 days has been recorded for posterity and popular consumption in a typical American good-guys-verses-the-bad-guys movie “Thirteen Days,” where the good guys were, of course, the Americans.   Who knows when it began for the Russians? Perhaps the insecurity of being on the defensive started after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the use of nuclear weapons is seen by some historians as a warning to the Soviet Union. According to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchevs memoirs, he conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba to counter an emerging lead of the United States in developing and deploying strategic missiles. At this point of time, MAD, or “mutually assured destruction” was a prominent feature of the nuclear arms race, supported in particular by the deployment of nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). The idea was that the two super-powers would not attack each other because both sides had nuclear weapons to decimate each other, and worse, to make the entire planet uninhabitable. So, since launching an attack would be suicidal for either party, neither would attempt it. (Wikipedia) For the Soviet Union, what brought things to a head was the presence of U.S. missile sites in Turkey, which directly threatened cities in the western sections of the Soviet Union, tilting the balance of terror in favour of the U.S. As for the Cubans, ever since the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, when the United States armed and funded Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government, the Cubans lived under the shadow of fear of more reprisals from the United States. It was to protect themselves from another such United States-sponsored invasion, that Fidel Castro gave the Soviet Union approval to build missile installations in Cuba. The differences in their view-points are reflected in how they subsequently remember the incident. The Cubans know it as the October Crisis, just one of the many run-ins with the Americans. The Soviets refer to it as the Carribean Missile Crisis, where the Cubans are merely instrumental in yet another confrontation with the Americans in the Cold War, while the Americans call it the Cuban Missile Crisis. However they saw it, the thirteen-day countdown (Timeline of the Cuban Missile Crisis, n.d.) was it was considered one of the tensest and most perilous moments in history. Starting with the American discovery of the SS-4 nuclear missiles in Cuba, when President Kennedy immediately convened his Executive Committee to consider Americas options, which ranged from doing nothing at all to a full invasion of Cuba. Before discussing military options, President Kennedy met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrie Gromyko to advise him that America would not tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba. Gromyko denied the presence of any Soviet weaponry in Cuba. The U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson even confronted the Soviets at the U.N. but they refuse to answer. President Kennedy then met with the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss military options. The choice had by then narrowed down to a naval blockade and an ultimatum, or full-scale invasion. After much debate, during which there were strong arguments pro-invasion, President Kenndy chose to quanrantine the Russians. There were many rational reasons for his choice. A blockade needn’t necessarily escalate into war, it would force the Soviets to make the next move. Besides, the President was all too aware that if they invaded in the next ten days, the missile base crews in Cuba would be likely to fire at least some of the missiles at U.S. targets in retaliation. Another fear the Americans had was that though an air strike would neutralize missiles, it would force the Russians to take Berlin (Goldman, Oct. 8th, 1977), and this was unacceptable. Finally of course, in the words of Kennedy himself, "The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer - often, indeed, to the decider himself." (Wikipedia, 11 January 2006) On Monday, October 22, in a televised address, President Kennedy announced to the American public his plan to implement a naval blockade of 500 nautical miles around the coast of Cuba. He warned that the military was "prepare[d] for any eventualities," and condemned the Soviet Union for "secrecy and deception". Military alert was heightened by the U.S. to DEFCON 3 1. (atomic archive, n.d.) Several letters were exchanged between Khrushchev and Kennedy during this period. The second letter, sent by Soviet Premier Krushchev four days after the televised address, defended staunchly the Soviet right to keep missiles in Cuba as long as U.S. missiles remained in Turkey. Krushchev wrote, “You are worried over Cuba. You say that it worries you because it lies at a distance of 90 miles across the sea from the shores of the United States. However, Turkey lies next to us. (…) Do you believe that you have the right to demand security for your country and the removal of such weapons that you qualify as offensive, while not recognizing this right for us?” (CNN). Krushchev then demanded the removal of missiles as pre-condition to withdrawal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He also asked for a U.S. guarantee not to attack Cuba or support any more invasions. In the meantime, Russian ships were nearing the quarantine line, and the deadline was approaching. Tension grew, and for the first time in history U.S. Strategic Air Command was placed on DEFCON 2, a heightened state of alert - in fact, the highest ever in U.S. history - ready to strike targets within the Soviet Union. This, the evening of Saturday, 27 October 1962, was perhaps the most dangerous moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis - when the resolution of the crisis appeared to hang in the balance. Would it be war? Or would it be peace? Kennedy accepted the stipulation about not invading Cuba in public, and the one regarding removal of missiles from Turkey in private, by sending Robert Kennedy to the Soviet Embassy. This secretive meeting, which proved to be the turning point in the crisis, nevertheless has several foggy areas. No-one actually knows whether Robert Kennedy agreed to remove the missiles from Turkey as part of the agreement because U.S. officials insist that neither John nor Robert Kennedy promised to withdraw the missiles as part of the exchange deal, for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba, but had merely informed Dobrynin that Kennedy had planned to take out the American missiles in any event. (Hershberg, 1995) In all event, the Russians were satisfied. They capitulated and their ships turned back on October 28th, with Krushchev ordering removal of the Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. As Dean Rusk famously commented, "We went eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked." (Wikipedia ) In many ways, the manner in which President Kennedy handled the Crisis defined his character and shaped the course of his career at the White House. President Kennedy was said to be greatly influenced by the 1938 “Munich lessons”, where Britain and France failed to stand up to Adolf Hitler. They tried to buy him off with a strategic chunk of Czechoslovakia, and failed. Their appeasement, as it came to be called, failed to prevent World War II. Learning from Munich, American Cold War policy makers felt that a display of any sign of weakness to an enemy ran the risk of leading to World War III. (Richards, Feb. 5, 2001). As CEO of the JFK Library Foundation, Shattuck noted “The notion that, if you give essential anything to a rapacious dictator, that it wont satisfy their appetite. It will only make them more hungry and they wont be appeased. It will only bring on more war.” Many feel that it also defined the nature of the Cold War, and demonstrated how to survive it. (Shattuck, October 6, 2003) The traditional U.S. perspective therefore was that “superior military capability combined with the firm resolve to use that capability will deter aggression and repel an aggressor.” Arthur Schlesinger echoes popular sentiment when he observes that the world escaped a nuclear war and the United States achieved its aims because of the presidents "combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve, and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated." (Blight, n.d.) The film "Thirteen Days" reinforces the view that the United States forced the Soviet Union to back down, which, according to Professor Philip Brenner, expert on U.S.-Cuban relations and the Cuban Missile Crisis, is not entirely accurate. He argues that it was not “a game of chicken” which convinced the Soviets to seek a peaceful resolution to the showdown. “Khrushchev, like Kennedy, perceived the crisis was spiraling out of control. (…). Khrushchev knew, and contrary to the films depiction, Kennedy did not know that the Soviets had deployed tactical nuclear missiles to Cuba. “These battlefield weapons, intended for use against an invading army, had warheads nearly size the size of the Hiroshima bomb. Had a local Soviet commander fired one of these, it would have been the start of a general nuclear war. This was Khrushchevs fear. It is not the kind of fear one experiences in a game of chicken, where the fear is for your own personal safety. It was the fear of destroying all humankind, all life.” (Brenner, n.d.) Professor Philip Brenner sums up the American view of the Cuban Missile crisis by saying: “For nearly forty years most American accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis of have left Cuba out of the story. With the blockbuster film "Thirteen Days" the story now ignores the Soviet Union as well. The film turns history on its head and drums into our heads exactly the wrong lessons of the crisis.” Forty years later, at the Havana Conference in 1992, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Missile Crisis, asked Fidel Castro whether he was aware of the nuclear war- heads in Cuba, and whether he would have recommended their use. If so, what would the outcome for Cuba have been? Fidel Castro’s reply ‘sent a chill’ down his spine: “Now, we started from the assumption that if there was an invasion of Cuba, nuclear war would erupt. ( ...) we would be forced to pay the price, that we would disappear.... Would I have been ready to use nuclear weapons? Yes, I would have agreed (…). ” McNamara further comments on what might have been “but thankfully did not” and how lessons learned from the missile crisis could assist in reducing the risk of nuclear catastrophe in the 21st century. (McNamara, Oct. 92) The Cuban missile crisis turned out to be a clash between the ‘big guys’, the superpowers, both of whom reached a standoff, which proved to be a blessing for the rest of the world. So what happened to the forgotten ‘little guy’, Cuba? From the Cuban point of view, the Missile Crisis had nothing to do with a global perspective, or even of the inability to control events due to mismanagement and miscalculation. They were not interested in, or part of, the Cold War. They viewed the crisis from the vantage point of a small power. Their premise was simple: The United States was trying to overthrow their government, and had been since Fidel Castro came into power. For them it was more important to protect their country from invasion by the United States. The Cuban view-point is further amplified by Noam Chomsky in his book “Hegemony or Survival, Americas Quest for Global Dominance”. Commenting on the Missile Crisis, the book points out that the greatest form of terror on earth has been practiced by the leaders of the globes last superpower who, when faced with the choice between global control - hegemony - or survival, have constantly opted for the path of hegemony. (qtd. Engelhardt, October 24, 2003). In “Cuba in the cross-hairs” Chomsky notes that from the time Fidel Castros guerrilla forces rebelled and overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, till today, with the Bush administration pursuing its ‘war against terrorism’, against Cuba, a ‘member’ of the Axis of Evil, they have been persecuted by the Americans. "During the winter of 1959-1960, there was a significant increase in CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary raids piloted by exiled Cubans" based in the US. (qtd. Engelhardt, October 24, 2003). Despite this, the Cubans did not respond in kind, with violence within the United States for revenge or deterrence. Rather, it followed the procedure required by international law. It called on the UN for help, providing the Security Council with detailed records of some twenty bombings, alleging considerable damage and casualties and calling for resolution of the conflict through diplomatic channels. The US Ambassador gave his "assurance [that] the United States has no aggressive purpose against Cuba", in full awareness that his government was preparing for the Bay of Pigs invasion, and had already decided to overthrow the Castro government. (Chomsky qtd. Engelhardt, October 24, 2003). So Khrushchev’s offer to place missiles in their country was God-sent. But the Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement catapulted Cuba back into danger, because now that Krushchev had capitulated, would he come to Cuba’s assistance were the U.S. to attack the island again? Fidel Castro doubted it. He saw the withdrawal of the missiles as an invitation to the U.S. to attack them, because not only would the Soviet posture encourage hard-liners in the United States to press for an invasion, the United States would now know that the Soviet Union would not stand with Cuba in the face of U.S. threats. "We realized," Castro explained to the 1968 Central Committee, "how alone we would be in the event of a war." With the withdrawal of Soviet missiles, Cuba became even more vulnerable. It was clearly driven home to them that neither superpower could be trusted. Though it was the United States that posed the immediate menace to Cuba, Castro worried about the Soviet arrogance and lack of concern about Cuba’s fundamental rights. Joining the Soviet camp as a subservient member posed a potential long-term threat to Cuban sovereignty and independence. (Brenner, n.d.) During the crisis both countries ignored Cuba. The Soviets were clearly using Cuba in a game of one-upmanship in the Cold War, and Castros suspicion that the Soviets were using Cuba as a bargaining tool was confirmed a few months later, during his trip to the Soviet Union, when he learned about the secret agreement between Kennedy and Khrushchev to exchange U.S. missiles in Turkey for Soviet ones in Cuba. “Cuba was (as) worried about the threat posed by its friendship with the Soviet Union as it was about the danger arising from its enmity with the United States.” (Brenner, n.d.) Ernesto “Che” Guevara, in his famous March 1965 “Farewell Letter” to Fidel Castro, wrote, “I have lived magnificent days, and I felt at your side the pride of belonging to our people in the luminous and sad days of the Caribbean [missile] crisis.” (Blight, 2002). Blight, author and expert on the Cuban Missile Crisis, analyses the curious choice of words, ‘sad’ and ‘luminous’, odd adjectives to describe the tension built-up during what could have been a catastrophe of global proportions. After all, what could be ‘sad’ and ‘luminous’ about a reprisal from Armageddon? For Cuba, what was luminous was that they were arm-in-arm, exhilarated by the thought of going to battle with the United States, the sheer poetry of fighting arm-in-arm, even unto death, for their beliefs. The sadness came from being betrayed by their ally, the people they trusted – the Soviet Union – who was clearly not prepared to put itself on the line for their beliefs. The Soviets eventually sold out, taking out not only the missiles, but every last piece of weaponry they were going to use to defend themselves from U.S. attack. And this terribly vulnerable sentiment of ‘sadness and luminosity’ remains today, because for Cuba the “moments of terror” engendered by the Missile Crisis hasn’t actually ended. “War was avoided, but the crisis continues.” (Blight, 2002). Notes 1DEFCONs (Defense readiness conditions) describe progressive defense alert postures, and are graduated to match situations of varying military severity. Numbered 5 to1, they are phased according to increase in combat readiness. DEFCON 5 denoting normal peacetime readiness, and 1, maximum force readiness. (Federation of American Scientists, April 29, 1998) Works Cited Address to the American People about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Jan. 14th, 06 from Atomic archive website: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports/Cuba/CubaSpeech.shtml Blight, J. G. and Philip Brenner. (n.d.) Lessons of the Cuban missile crisis. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the website: http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/Sad-1.htm Blight, J. G. and Philip Brenner. (2002.) Prologue from Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/pub/SLDPrologue.pdf#search=sad%20luminous%20days Brenner, P (n.d.). The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: The 40th Anniversary. Retrieved January 14th, 2006 from The National Security Archive, George Washington University Website: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/brenner.htm Cold War. Kennedy-Krushchev letters. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the CNN website: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/10/documents/kennedy.khrushchev.letters/ Cuban Missile Crisis (15 January 2006). Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis Cuban Missile Crisis, Timeline of the Cuban Missile Crisis Retrieved Jan. 14th, 06 from Atomic archive, website: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports/Cuba/timeline.shtml Cuban Missile Crisis - A Historical Perspective John F Kennedy Library Defense Conditions (April 29, 1998) Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the Federation of American Scientists website: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/defcon.htm Engelhardt, Tom (October 24, 2003). Tomgram: Noam Chomsky on terrorizing Cuba. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1027 Essence of Decision. Jan. 11th 2006. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence_of_Decision Goldman, J. and Giel Stein. (8 October 1997) Audio Materials from the Kennedy Presidency. The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 18-29, 1962. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the History Out Loud, website: http://www.hpol.org/jfk/cuban/ Hershey, Jim. (1995). Anatomy of a Controversey. Retrieved January 14th, 2006 from The National Security Archive, George Washington University Website: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/moment.htm McNamara, S. Robert. (Nov. 2002). Forty Years After 13 Days. Retrieved Jan. 20th, 2006 from the Arms Control Association website: http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_11/cubanmissile.asp#mcnamara Mutually Assured Destruction. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from the Wikipedia website: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_assured_destruction Richards, M. (Feb. 5, 2001) Historical Analogies: Handle with Care. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2006 from History News Service website: http://www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2001/020501b.html Read More