The Cuban Missile Crisis

A Lesson in Diplomacy

This year marks 62 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world came to the brink of nuclear armageddon during the twentieth century. What began as a typical, chilly fall morning in October 1962 took a quick turn when President Kennedy received confirmation from his advisors that U2 spy planes photographed missile sites under construction in Cuba, the small island nation which had become a thorn in the side of American regional security. A mere 90 miles south of Florida, Cuba embodied an inherent intersection of American foreign and domestic Cold War policy: the fear of communism was no longer a distant phenomenon, sanitized by headlines and images from distant pockets of the world. America’s ideological Cold War adversary had materialized within reach of the mainland. 

Cuba 1997: A Harrowing Revelation

Swayed by the conventional wisdom of domino theory and emotionally exploited by fear-driven propaganda, a vast contingent of the American populace in the early 1960s grew concerned of the proximity of the newly formed, Soviet-backed Castro regime in the Western Hemisphere. The success of Fidel Castro’s revolution against the corporate and casino-friendly Batista regime coalesced an unlikely alliance between organized crime, Cuban exiles, the CIA, and the National Security Council, who acting out of mutual interest, conspired to remove Castro from power and regain their economic foothold. The prospect of a Castro regime made it increasingly tenuous for American military and intelligence brokers to maintain a modern day posture of the “Monroe Doctrine” by protecting U.S. business interests on their side of the Atlantic. 

In August 1997, at a conference in Havana commemorating the 35th anniversary of the crisis, the Russians revealed that 100 of their missiles in Cuba had been armed with nuclear warheads, and that the individual missile commanders were under orders to fire at will, if under attack. Had this escalation occurred, it is near certain that millions would have perished both in the United States and across the Atlantic. Most of JFK’s advisors in the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) proposed a tactical strike to neutralize the missile sites.

Luckily, President Kennedy, a combat veteran who had personally witnessed the heavy cost of war, opted for a middle ground approach of launching a naval quarantine of Cuba. The around-the-clock risk of nuclear war stemming from innocent miscommunication emphasized a new prospect for American foreign policy affairs: field expertise lacking in sufficient caution and multilateral awareness fails to produce meaningful paths towards de-escalation and conflict resolution. Furthermore, crucial decision making in a bureaucracy cannot rely on numbers alone, but must be founded on a proper assessment of the facts, and logical presumptions about the reaction elicited by each prescribed course of action. 

Thirteen Days: A Multilateral World  

That JFK listened to his better instincts and refused to adopt the belligerent course of action proposed by even his close advisors, instills in us a tremendous debt of gratitude and a dire sense of awareness that is as relevant as ever six decades later. The Cuban Missile Crisis illuminated a stark yet vital truth: Bipolar stances are simply not compatible with a multilateral world. Decision making along the lines of “good vs. evil” fails in every regard, especially in that it relies on false assumptions about internal motives and outlooks as well as broad generalizations about an adversary. The speculation that results form this mode of thinking fails to account for the true strengths and flaws of policy directives. 

While most Americans may have been inclined to ascribe a malicious position to Khrushchev and Castro for secretly building the missile sites, from the adversary’s perspective, this was a rational choice that served to protect Cuba and the USSR’s sovereignty and national interest, especially in the wake of covert regime-change attempts from rogue factions of the CIA, as had materialized with the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961. This was a context that JFK understood, having taken extreme measures to avert repeats of the April fiasco when he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and top-brass CIA officials like Richard Bissel and General Charles Cabell.

Despite these preventive measures for future escalations, the October crisis was ultimately inevitable. It was the height of the Cold War, and JFK was confronted with two extremes: appeasement or belligerence. Indeed, the key to de-escalation was to strike a balance by finding a middle ground that preserved American national security without imposing excessive provocations. 

Back-Door Channels

How did JFK secure a narrow margin of victory over the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon? Several historians attribute the upset 1960 victory to JFK’s handling of the Cuba issue in the first televised Presidential debates that year, where he maintained a firm stance against communism within reach of the American mainland. Nixon, by contrast, remained mute on the issue to avoid jeopardizing the covert Bay of Pigs operation that was in its earliest stages of planning. This dichotomy became an early litmus test for the public’s emotional reaction to the issue of Cuba, while also highlighting the disconnect between outward perceptions and finer observations that evade national consciousness. This is where the role of back-door channels offered a crucial focal point for leveraging tensions and exercising strategic ambiguity. 

On October 26th, 1962, Khruschev sent a letter pledging to remove the missiles if the U.S. promised not to invade Cuba, and this became the public understanding of how the crisis finally fizzled to an end. The situation escalated afterwards, nonetheless, when on October 27th, acting without authorization, a commander of a Cuban SAM (surface to air missile) shot down and killed U2 reconnaissance pilot Major Rudoplh Andersen Jr. A second letter from Khruschev to Kennedy that called for the US to remove its Jupiter missiles from the Russian border in Turkey further inflamed the crisis, since the earlier mutual concession pledge had seemingly been abandoned.

Understanding the gravity of the situation and the immense delicacy needed to ensure utmost clarity in communications, JFK requested his brother and Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, to meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobyrnin to reach a mutual understanding about each nation’s interests. RFK’s acknowledgement of America’s role in provoking the USSR at its doorstep was crucial towards securing the mutual concession that allowed the tensions on both sides to finally subside, on Sunday, October 29, 1962. 

An Uncertain Future

Premier Khrushchev found himself in a similar position to President Kennedy in October 1962, surrounded by hardliners and military officials whose instincts leaned toward aggression. Rare in public and political discourse is the critical thinking and humility that enable tolerance and respect on all sides of a global crisis. Amid recent conflicts, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1966 film Topaz stands out as an early, rare attempt to explore the interconnectedness of global affairs and the influence of intelligence agencies within and beyond borders, particularly in the lead-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

The distinction between national security and nuclear proliferation was indeed a fine line that has only deepened with age. In 2024, as newfound Middle East turmoil soars to unprecedented heights, the lessons from this international missile debacle from six decades ago presents remarkable parallels and lessons that need not go unheeded. The United States is the key arbiter of Western-backed Middle East policy, and serves as the essential point for facilitating regional cooperation. Strategic ambiguity is the key to achieving progress in global affairs: during the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK didn't name-call and degrade Khruschev for placing missiles in Cuba.

He maintained a firm and cordial disposition, and this is what resolved the crisis. President Kennedy, a combat veteran, understood the perplexing duality of international affairs, and the idea that two seemingly contradictory stances can both retain merit. His success in working alongside Krhuschev to de-escalate the crisis entailed finding common ground and advancing settlements without being aimlessly offensive to the adversary. 

A deeply critical analysis of the crisis reveals one lesson that remains central: In order to solve a problem, you must first properly define it. Any solution that results from, or is proposed on the basis of, unsound reasoning, is no solution at all. Similarly, to prescribe a medication on the basis of a faulty diagnosis will prove to have disastrous consequences. In pursuit of effective diplomacy, utmost caution and jurisprudence are paramount from the very beginning. The lesson here is that diplomatic leverage and relations with both allies and adversaries is needed to exact meaningful change in global affairs. At the same time, vital geopolitical interests can be pursued without jeopardizing moral imperatives. As the events yet to unfold in the coming months remain shrouded in ambiguity, we can only hope that, as in 1962, cooler heads will prevail.