Lessons from the past
An uncompromising foreign policy is not how America successfully handled the Cold War. Now would be a good time to remember that fact.
When I was a youngster attending school back in 19-something-something, the Cuban Missile Crisis was taught as an American triumph in which President Kennedy stared down an aggressive Soviet Union, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war but eventually resulting in the removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Cuba.
A 2012 article by Leslie H. Gelb, The Myth That Screwed Up 50 Years of U.S. Foreign Policy1, began by summarizing this perspective.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s skillful management of the Cuban missile crisis, 50 years ago this autumn, has been elevated into the central myth of the Cold War. At its core is the tale that, by virtue of U.S. military superiority and his steely will, Kennedy forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to capitulate and remove the nuclear missiles he had secretly deployed to Cuba. (Gelb)
The official story, however, is a version so simplistic that the most important lessons from the crisis are lost. The picture above shows one of the central pieces of the story - the Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM).
In fact, the crisis concluded not with Moscow’s unconditional diplomatic whimper, but with mutual concessions. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba in return for U.S. pledges not to invade Fidel Castro’s island and to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey. (Gelb)
The Jupiter missiles were based in Turkey and Italy, and both groups of missiles were disassembled and removed. In addition, the Americans withdrew sixty Thor missiles, each carrying the same warhead as the Jupiters, that had been deployed in the UK.
For their part, the Soviets withdrew their IL-28 bombers from Cuba and disassembled their SS-4 and SS-5 nuclear missile launch sites. Rather than a one-sided triumph for America, the deal was closer to being an even trade of offensive firepower.
The Big Board
Although the most well known, the Cuban Missile Crisis was just one event occurring on the Big Board of geopolitics during the Cold War. Whether at war or at peace, governments are constantly making moves and countermoves as each tries to strengthen their own position on the Board.
Current players can’t alter previous moves - they can only deal with the strategic situation as it currently stands. President Kennedy inherited an already complex situation, the result of moves made by the Soviets and by the previous President. Combined with decisions made by Kennedy himself, this culminated in the famous standoff.
To better understand the lead up to, and resolution of, the Cuban Missile Crisis, we’re going to start by looking at some of the moves prior to the crisis, sixty years ago.
Prior to the crisis
The late fifties and early sixties were busy times in the world of geopolitics. Here are just some of the significant events adding to the tension of the Cold War:
November 1956: The Hungarian Revolution ends in failure after the Soviet military invades, using huge numbers of tanks and other armored vehicles to put down the revolutionaries.
October 1957: Sputnik 1 is the first successful satellite launch. Although the Americans will beat them to the moon, at this point the Soviets are still several years ahead in the Space Race.
January 1959: The Cuban Revolution ends with Castro’s communists in power, and by 1960 the full American embargo is in place. This creates an opportunity for the Soviets, who begin providing military aid.
May 1960: An American U-2 spy plane is shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia. Many of the U-2 flights violate Soviet airspace, something which is now impossible for the Americans to deny.
April 1961: The Bay of Pigs invasion. American supported counter revolutionaries attempt (and fail) to overthrow Castro’s government.
May 1961: Kennedy escalates in Vietnam, sending 400 Army Special Forces trainers to South Vietnam. (By the time of Kennedy’s assassination this number will be around 16,000.)
June 1961: The Berlin Crisis begins when Khrushchev demands the removal of NATO military units from Berlin by the end of 1961.
June 1961: After years of diplomatic efforts, Jupiter missiles are installed and operational in Italy.
November 1961: After a tense standoff, the Berlin Crisis ends when both Khrushchev and Kennedy agree to withdraw their tanks. Construction of the Berlin Wall begins.
April 1962: Jupiter missiles are installed and operational in Turkey.
October 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis.
And this is only a partial list. A lot is happening around the world in the years before the crisis in Cuba, with the Americans and the Soviets both making moves on the Big Board while they’re also at the negotiating table.
One of these events requires some explanation to understand its strategic significance, and its relevance to the Cuban crisis - the world’s first successful satellite launch.
Sputnik
A smallish satellite that did nothing more than orbit the Earth for a few weeks emitting a cute little beep, Sputnik was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets.
But the strategic implications of Sputnik were also enormous, demonstrating a technology that would permanently change how we all view the Board. Philip Nash, in his book The Other Missiles of October2, describes the issue raised by the success of Sputnik.
In NATO Europe, Sputnik severely exacerbated what had become, by 1957, a fundamental problem confronting the Atlantic alliance: that even as NATO increased its dependence on nuclear weapons, European members increasingly doubted the reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. (Nash)
Following the end of WWII, the Soviets had the most powerful land army in the world. This huge military force was seen as a very serious threat to the security of western Europe - so powerful that the NATO countries assumed nuclear weapons would be needed to stop it. But the Europeans had a concern:
If the Red Army attacked toward the Rhine, would the United States use its nuclear weapons and risk suicide, or let Europe fall in hope of surviving? (Nash)
With its geographic isolation created by two large oceans, America in the pre-ICBM era was virtually immune to meaningful attack, and could act without fear of repercussions for its civilian population. But the Sputnik program marked the beginning of a new strategic calculus:
The breakthrough represented many things for the Soviets, including a major propaganda coup, proof of their technological sophistication, and most important, confirmation of their ICBM capability, which they had first demonstrated in August. (Nash)
To be blunt, putting Sputnik into orbit demonstrated the Soviets also had the ability to put a nuclear-warhead-sized object anywhere on earth. This was a chess piece that could threaten parts of the Big Board that were previously unreachable.
For America, the board suddenly became much, much smaller. For its European allies, the prospect of America refusing to get involved in a continental European war became much more likely.
America tries to reassure its allies
Immediately following the success of Sputnik, at the semi-annual meeting of NATO’s governing body in December 1957, the U.S. made an offer to its European allies.
After the ailing Eisenhower delivered brief words of encouragement, his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, tabled the U.S. proposals. Chief among them was the U.S. offer, as Dulles put it, “to make available to other NATO countries intermediate-range ballistic missiles, for deployment in accordance with the plans of SACEUR,” NATO’s military commander. (Nash)
The plan was proposed by General Lauris Norstad (SACEUR stands for Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) and this offer would eventually culminate in the placement of the Jupiter missiles.
It wasn’t the only option available - both the U.S. and the Soviets had developed, and built, significant numbers of tactical nuclear weapons. As an example, the U.S. had nuclear artillery shells that could be fired from any standard American 155 mm howitzer, and which had an explosive force equivalent to the entire payload of several heavy bombers.
A few years earlier Norstad had proposed creating a joint NATO stockpile of these types of tactical weapons, so they would be immediately available to NATO allies in Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion.
This concept, which General Norstad and then the French had originally proposed in 1956, envisaged a joint stockpile of nuclear weapons of several types, including tactical, aircraft- and artillery-delivered, and air defense, pre-positioned for NATO’s use. (Nash)
Prior to the NATO meeting, Norstad had suggested making a public announcement of the availability of the tactical weapons in Europe, to reassure America’s allies about the American commitment to a nuclear defense.
However, even for the moment accepting the predicament in which Eisenhower and Dulles had placed themselves by calling the summit meeting, and the resulting need for a substantive proposal, the IRBM offer is questionable because other options existed. Perhaps the most feasible was suggested to Eisenhower by none other than Norstad, in late October, that is, before the administration announced the IRBM offer: the nuclear stockpile, standing alone and not in the shadow of the IRBM offer as actually occurred. (Nash)
Eisenhower instead moved forward with offering NATO allies the new IRBMs, which meant basing the new missiles in Europe - and under joint control with each host country.
Jupiter and Thor
The missiles being offered to America’s allies were the Jupiter and Thor IRBMs. Once based in Europe, the short flight time of these new missiles significantly increased the threat the US could present to the Soviets.
The IRBM deployment episode at least confirms the suggestion of revisionists that Eisenhower was no idiot. He recognized, in 1959, that IRBMs represented a new development in strategic weapons, in that NATO could now hit the Soviet Union while giving its forces little warning and no hope of defense. (Nash)
After years of negotiation with different NATO allies, 30 Jupiter missiles were installed in Italy, 15 Jupiters went to Turkey, and 60 Thor missiles were based in the UK. As Nash describes in his introduction, these missiles were fully operational.
Italian crews tended the missiles in their country, while in Turkey the U.S. Air Force did the honors as the Turks finished their training. In case of a serious alert, crews would pump their IRBMs’ fuel tanks full of a liquid oxygen-kerosene mix. Although originally intended to be kept in separate concrete “igloos” in USAF custody—in accordance with U.S. law—and mounted only at the last minute, the W-49 thermonuclear warheads already sat atop the missiles to quicken their reaction time. (Nash)
The willingness of Air Force leadership to ignore the law regarding something as significant as the handling of the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal is more than just a little concerning.
One can almost hear Jack Nicholson’s monologue from A Few Good Men playing in the background. After all, the W-49 warhead was not exactly small:
Once over their destinations, the W-49S in their nose cones would each detonate with a force of 1.44 megatons, more than one hundred times the destructive power of the atomic bomb that had incinerated central Hiroshima seventeen years earlier. (Nash)
For those keeping count, that’s 45 Jupiter and 60 Thor missiles sited in Europe, each with a 1.44 megaton warhead and with the range to strike major cities in the Warsaw Pact and in western Russia.
Escalation and resolution in Cuba
While the US was looking for countries to host their new IRBMs, something important happened close to home - the Cuban Revolution. After six years of fighting, January of 1959 saw Castro and the Communists finally in control. The U.S. had placed an embargo on arms sales to Cuba in 1958 (so they started buying from the Soviets) and by 1960 this had been expanded to a trade embargo, allowing only the sale of food and medicine.
In 1961, American backed counter-revolutionaries attempted to overthrow the new government. This ended soon after it started, with the militarily and politically (for the U.S.) disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
After the failure of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion, and with the US severing diplomatic ties and enacting sanctions against Cuba, Castro’s government moved closer to their new Soviet allies.
By 1961 the U.S. had successfully based the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey, Italy and the UK, and by 1962 the Soviets had based IL-28 bombers in Cuba. Although their range was not sufficient to reach very far into the continental U.S., these bombers represented a threat similar to that posed by existing American bombers in Europe.
The Soviets also built bases in Cuba for their R-12 (NATO name SS-4) medium range ballistic missiles (MRBM) and R-14 (NATO name SS-5) intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM).
After receiving confirmation of the missile bases in Cuba (as well as, likely, operational missiles already present), President Kennedy announced a blockade of Soviet ships heading to the island and the “crisis” part of the Cuban Missile Crisis had officially begun. When it ended a few weeks later, the official story was that Kennedy stood firm with the Soviets, and Khrushchev eventually backed down and withdrew the Soviet warships and nuclear missiles.
But we now know Kennedy had secretly offered removal of the Jupiter missiles during negotiations with Khrushchev.
So unknown to the American public a deal was struck: the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles and IL-28 bombers from Cuba, and the Americans agreed not to invade Cuba and to remove their Jupiter missiles. In the end the Americans also removed the Thor missiles, seeing them as no longer strategically important. With this secret deal in place, both sides began publicly deescalating over the next few weeks.
The American need for secrecy meant most of the people involved were kept in the dark, and the Soviets had to put a great deal of trust in the promises of the President.
In reality, the U.S.-Soviet missile agreement of 27 October existed not between the two governments but between only the highest levels of each government, to the exclusion and deception of all levels below. This fact led to two-tiered behavior among both Soviets and Americans. At the highest level, the Americans sought to fulfill their part of the missile bargain and dismantle the Jupiters by 1 April, and the Soviets sat and watched, hoping that Kennedy would keep his word. (Nash)
Kennedy kept his word, and within the promised five months all the Jupiters were disassembled.
Consequences of secrecy
Everyone involved in the deal made by Kennedy kept it secret until the late 1980s. Returning to the article in Foreign Policy:
It was not until 1988, however, that one among them clearly and openly acknowledged his decades-long hypocrisy and its costs. In his book Danger and Survival, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s national security advisor, lamented: "Secrecy of this sort has its costs. By keeping to ourselves the assurance on the Jupiters, we misled our colleagues, our countrymen, our successors, and our allies" into concluding "that it had been enough to stand firm on that Saturday." It took 26 years, but there it was. (Gelb)
The following year Ted Sorenson confirmed the missile deal as well.
In Moscow at a retrospective on the crisis in 1989, JFK speechwriter and confidant Ted Sorensen touted Bobby Kennedy’s Thirteen Days as the definitive account. Dobrynin interrupted to say that the book omitted the Jupiters, to which Sorensen replied that Dobrynin was correct, but at the time, the deal was still "secret." "So I took it upon myself to edit that out," he said. (Gelb)
The Cuban Missile Crisis is seen by many as the pivotal moment in the Cold War - this was when Kennedy gained the upper hand, by using the threat of American military power to force the Soviets to back down.
In reality, although this was the event that arguably brought the world closest to nuclear war, it was one event among several that could potentially ignite a direct conflict. The balance of power moved back and forth between the two sides for most of the Cold War.
But an entire generation of young Americans had grown up with the mythical version of the standoff, and that may be influencing decisions even today. As Gelb puts it:
American leaders don’t like to compromise, and a lingering misunderstanding of those 13 days in October 1962 has a lot to do with it. (Gelb)
In dealing with current international events it would be better to admit, and take lessons from, Kennedy’s careful use of deals, threats, and compromises to successfully weave a path through a very dangerous time.
The article by Gelb in Foreign Policy is ten years old but still very relevant, so please read the whole thing: here’s a link to it if you have time.
The Myth That Screwed Up 50 Years of U.S. Foreign Policy:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/08/the-myth-that-screwed-up-50-years-of-u-s-foreign-policy/
Archived copy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220224181029/https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/08/the-myth-that-screwed-up-50-years-of-u-s-foreign-policy/
Links to purchase Nash’s The Other Missiles of October can be found here:
https://flexpub.com/preview/the-other-missiles-of-october
You're very welcome. The truth behind these events wasn't really public knowledge until after I was out of school, so a lot of this was new information to me. With many of the memoirs from the time being either self-serving or simply omitting the secret parts, it takes some time to untangle the actual events.
Amazing, thanks for the write up