Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
October 1962 was the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war, but almost everything else we’re told about it is propaganda.
We have the memo to President Kennedy dated Day 2 of the crisis with his own security chiefs clarifying that the Soviet missiles on Cuba made ‘no significant difference.’ So why does October 1962 develop into the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war?
1959: The first country the new revolutionary president of Cuba visits is the United States of America. And he’s a big hit. The students at Princeton carry him on their shoulders. Castro wants a trade deal with the American government. So why does Kennedy fight the presidential election of 1960 on getting tougher than the Republicans with Cuba?
The Cuban Missile Crisis begins not because Castro is a dangerous communist but because he is NOT. Khrushchev tells his ruling council: ‘The only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there’ - not only to prevent an American invasion, but also to keep Fidel Castro sweet.
15 October 1962: Soviet nuclear missile sites are discovered. It’s only three weeks before the mid-term elections. Kennedy decides that to negotiate publicly with Khrushchev would be a disaster at the polls; as would ignoring them which is what his allies advise him to do. So, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the President chooses ‘to play Russian Roulette with nuclear missiles.’
22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine’ nothing but ‘grand theatrics.’ Not a single Soviet ship is stopped by the US Navy. What was going on?
28 October 1962: by holding his nerve Kennedy defuses the crisis in just 13 days. He says it’s over although he’s unable to verify whether Khrushchev ever withdraws his missiles or not. The last missiles do indeed leave Cuba on day 48 of the crisis but for very different reasons.
Within days of 28 October 1962 two journalists publish the official but untruthful White House account, as instructed and edited by the President. They also call-out a political enemy for daring to consider a humiliating missile swap with the Soviets. But we show how the Kennedys had already suggested this very missile swap to Khrushchev via private backchannels, on condition he kept it secret. Which he did.
There is a mountain of writing about the Cuban missile crisis. It would take you several years’ reading full time to get through it all and by then there would be more.
But you can quickly make a good start. Don Munton and David A Welch’s The Cuban Missile Crisis: a Concise History (2nd ed 2011) is a great, well-informed, accessible place to begin. Beware its authors’ viewpoint that the crisis was simply shaped by everyone’s mistakes. So at one level is any historical episode. It’s the underlying causes we need to understand.
Then step up to Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali’s two books. One Hell of a Gamble (1997) was groundbreaking, taking in both Soviet and American (and to some extent Cuban) documents. It’s still the best-informed and most readable account. But first read the Cuban section in Fursenko and Naftali’s more recent Khrushchev’s Cold War (2007). It has a lot of astonishing new material. Fursenko and Naftali believe Khrushchev failed in Cuba, but you can make your own mind up.
After that, Sheldon Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis (2012) is the best account of ExComm, based on exhaustive study of the tapes. Alice George, Awaiting Armageddon (2003) is an eye-opening study of how completely unprepared America was for nuclear war. Jim Wilson, Britain on the Brink (2012) is less scholarly but the best account we have from one of America’s key allies. Peter A Huchthausen, October Fury (2002) is the essential book on the blockade, shocking and hilarious by turns.
David Gioe, Len Scot and Christopher Andrew, An International History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A 50-year retrospective (2014) draws together academic research, especially on diplomacy and intelligence. David Coleman, The Fourteenth Day: JFK and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2012) is the authoritative account of the Soviet-American negotiations that dragged on through November 1962. See also James G. Blight and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days (2002), which is an eye-opening and scholarly account of the crisis largely from the Cuban perspective.
Sergo Mikoyan, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis (tr Svetlana Savranskaya 2012) is important because its author was with Castro during some of the key moments. It’s longwinded and confusing. Fortunately the translator has summed up all the important points in a short postscript. Read that first. Then hunt the rest for funny and illuminating details on Anastas Mikoyan’s visit in 1960 or Operation Anadyr. Fidel Castro has given his own account of the crisis in interviews with Ignacio Ramonet, published in Fidel Castro, my Life (tr 2007).
Watch ABC The Missiles of October (1992) and Jeremy Isaacs’s Cold War episode 10 Cuba 1959-62 (1998). They don’t carry the latest research but have interviews with many of the men who took part. Watch them sweat to keep the old myths going.
There must be literally millions of documents online.
Hear the ExComm tapes and other recordings from these days for yourself here, or here. Cross-check with Sheldon Stern for the accuracy of the transcripts.
Head over here for written exchanges between Khrushchev and Kennedy.
A collection of CIA documents is here.
More documents are here.
This is good general site, based at the Harvard Kennedy School.