| The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50 CAMBRIDGE – This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis – those 13 days in October 1962 that were probably the closest the world has come to a major nuclear war . President John F. Kennedy had publicly warned the Soviet Union [ 178]not to introduce offensive missiles into Cuba . But Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to cross Kennedy’s red line surreptitiously and confront the Americans with a fait accompli . When an American surveillance plane discovered the missiles , the crisis erupted . Some of Kennedy’s advisers urged an air strike and invasion to destroy the missiles . Kennedy mobilized troops , but also bought time by [ 179]announcing a naval blockade of Cuba . The crisis subsided when Soviet ships carrying additional missiles turned back , and Khrushchev agreed to remove the existing missiles from the island . As then US Secretary of State Dean Rusk put it : “ We were eyeball to eyeball , and I think the other fellow just blinked . ” At first glance , this was a rational and predictable outcome . The United States had a 17-to-1 advantage in nuclear weaponry . The Soviets were simply outgunned . And yet the US did not preemptively attack Soviet missile sites , which were relatively vulnerable , because the risk that even one or two of the Soviet missiles would be fired at an American city was enough to deter a first strike . In addition , both Kennedy and Khrushchev feared that rational strategies and careful calculation might spin out of control . Khrushchev offered a vivid metaphor in one of his letters to Kennedy : [ 180]“We and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war . ” In 1987 , I was part of a group of scholars that met at Harvard University with Kennedy’s surviving advisers to study the crisis . Robert McNamara , Kennedy’s secretary of defense , said he became more cautious as the crisis unfolded . At the time , he thought that the probability of nuclear war resulting from the crisis might have been one in 50 ( though he rated the risk much higher after he learned in the 1990’s that the Soviets had already delivered nuclear weapons to Cuba ) . Douglas Dillon , Kennedy’s treasury secretary , said he thought that the risk of nuclear war had been about zero . He did not see how the situation could possibly have escalated to nuclear war , and thus had been willing to push the Soviets harder and to take more risks than McNamara was . General Maxwell Taylor , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , also believed that the risk of nuclear war was low , and he complained that the US let the Soviet Union off too easily . He felt that the Americans should have removed the Castro regime . But the risks of losing control of the situation weighed heavily on Kennedy , too , which is why he took a more prudent position than some of his advisers would have liked . The moral of the story is that a little nuclear deterrence goes a long way . Nonetheless , there are still ambiguities about the missile crisis that make it difficult to attribute the outcome entirely to the nuclear component . The public consensus was that the US won . But how much the US won , and why it won , is hard to determine . There are at least two possible explanations of the outcome , in addition to Soviet acquiescence to America’s superior nuclear firepower . One focuses on the importance of the two superpowers ’ relative stakes in the crisis : the US not only had a greater stake in neighboring Cuba than the Soviets did , but could also bring conventional forces to bear . The naval blockade and the possibility of a US invasion strengthened the credibility of American deterrence , placing the psychological burden on the Soviets . The other explanation questions the very premise that the Cuban missile crisis was an outright US victory . The Americans had three options : a “ shoot-out ” ( bomb the missile sites ) ; a “ squeeze out ” ( blockade Cuba to convince the Soviets to withdraw the missiles ) ; and a “ buyout ” ( give the Soviets something they want ) . For a long time , the participants said little about the buyout aspects of the solution . But subsequent evidence suggests that a quiet US promise to remove its obsolete missiles from Turkey and Italy was probably more important than was thought at the time ( the US also gave a public assurance that it would not invade Cuba ) . We can conclude that nuclear deterrence mattered in the crisis , and that the nuclear dimension certainly figured in Kennedy’s thinking . But it was not the ratio of nuclear weapons that mattered so much as the fear that even a few nuclear weapons would wreak intolerable devastation . How real were these risks ? On October 27 , 1962 , just after Soviet forces in Cuba shot down a US surveillance plane ( killing the pilot ) , a similar plane taking routine air samples near Alaska inadvertently violated Soviet air space in Siberia . Fortunately , it was not shot down . But , even more serious , unbeknownst to the Americans , Soviet forces in Cuba had been instructed to repel a US invasion , and had been authorized to use their tactical nuclear weapons to do so . It is hard to imagine that such a nuclear attack would have remained merely tactical . Kenneth Waltz , an American scholar , recently published an article entitled [ 181]“Why Iran Should Get the Bomb . ” In a rational , predictable world , such an outcome might produce stability . In the real world , the Cuban missile crisis suggests that it might not . As McNamara put it , “ We lucked out . ” |