Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban missile crisis was the, mainly diplomatic, clash between the USSR and the USA over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles on Cuba during thirteen days from October 15, 1962,

Since 1959 the Soviet government had accepted that any future war would be largely nuclear, in that year the Strategic Rocket Forces was founded. The Soviet government became increasingly militaristic in the face of Kennedy's rearmament program. In response the Soviets decided to install nuclear weapons in Cuba, their reasoning was two-fold. First to defend this new Communist state from American or American-sponsored invasion and second to move the nuclear balance away from the favour of the US. The US had recently begun to deploy missiles in Turkey which threatened European Russia. Soviet technology was well developed in the field of medium-range ballisitic missiles (MRBMs) as opposed to ICBMs. The Soviets did not believe they could achieve parity in ICBMs before 1970 but saw that a certain kind of equality could be quickly reached by placing missiles on Cuba. Soviet MRBMs on Cuba, with a range of around 1,000 miles, could threaten Washington DC and around half of the SAC bases with a flight time of under twenty minutes, additionally the US radar warning system was orientated towards the USSR and would provide little warning of a launch from Cuba.

Nikita Khrushchev had devised the plan in May 1962 and by late July over sixty Soviet ships were en-route to Cuba with a percentage of them carrying military material. John McCone, director of the CIA, warned Kennedy that some of the ships were probably carrying missiles but a meeting of John and Robert Kennedy, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara decided that the Soviets would not try such a thing.

Picture of one of the Soviet missile sites in Cuba

A U-2 flight in late August photographed a new series of SAM missiles sites being constructed in Cuba but on September 4 Kennedy told Congress that there were no offensive missiles on Cuba. On the night of September 8 the first consignment of SS-4 MRBMs was unloaded in Havana, a second ship-load arrived on September 16. The Soviets were building nine sites, six for SS-4s and three for longer ranged SS-5s (up to 2,000 miles). The planned arsenal was forty launchers, a increase in Soviet first strike capacity of 70%.

A number of unconnected problems meant that the missiles were not discovered by the Americans until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of a SS-4 site near San Cristobal. By October 19 the then almost continuous U-2 flights showed four sites were operational. Initially the US government kept the information to a circle of the fourteen key officials of the executive committee, Britain was not informed until the evening of October 21. The officials discussed the various options - an immediate bombing strike was dismissed early on as was a potentially time consuming appeal to the UN. The choice was reduced to either a naval blockade and a ultimatum or full-scale invasion. A blockade was finally chosen although there were a number of 'hawks' (notably Paul Nitze, Douglas Dillon and Maxwell Taylor) who kept pushing for tougher action and a invasion was planned and troops were assembled in Florida (although with over 40,000 Russian soldiers in Cuba complete with tactical nuclear weapons the proposed invading force would have been in trouble). With the naval blockade there were a number of issues. There was legality - as Fidel Castro complained there was nothing illegal about the missile installations; they were a threat to the US but similiar missiles aimed at the USSR were in place in Britain, Italy and Turkey. Then there was the Soviet reacion to the blockade - would a conflict start out of escalating retaliation?

Kennedy spoke to the US people (and the Soviet government) in a televised address on October 22. He announced the naval blockade as a quarantine zone of 500 miles around the Cuban coast, warned that the military was "prepare[d] for any eventualities", and condemned the Soviet "secrecy and deception". The US was suprised at the solid support from its European allies and also from much of the remaining international community.

The Soviets had delivered two different deals to the American government. One on October 26 offered to withdraw the missiles in return for an US guarantee not to invade Cuba or support any invasion. The second was broadcast on public radio on October 27, calling for the withdrawal of US missiles from Turkey in addition to the demands of the 26th. The crisis peaked on October 27, when a U-2 was shot down over Cuba and another U-2 flight over Russia was almost intercepted. At the same time Soviet merchant ships were nearing the quarantine zone. Kennedy responded by publically accepting the first deal and sending Robert to the Soviet embassy to accept the second in private - the small number of Jupiter missiles in Turkey would be removed. The Soviet ships turned back. "We went eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked".

The crisis was a tactical victory for the Soviets but a strategic loss. They had been seen to have backed down and the attempt to gain strategic parity had failed to the anger of the Soviet military commanders. Khushchev's fall from power a few years later can be linked, partially, to his 'failure' to start World War III over Cuba. America military commanders were not happy with the result either, Curtis LeMay told the president that it was "the greatest defeat in our history" and that they should invade today. But the event brought much needed stability to the US-USSR strategic relationship.

see also cold war