Cuban Missile Crisis

11 Key excerpts on "Cuban Missile Crisis"

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  Handbook of Cold War and Proxy Warfare

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • College Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ Chapter 6 Cuban Missile Crisis CIA reference photograph of Soviet R-12 intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missile (NATO designation SS-4 ) in Red Square, Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis (known as The October Crisis in Cuba or Russian: Карибский кризис Caribbean Crisis in Russia) was a confrontation between the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War. In September 1962, the Cuban and Soviet governments began to surreptitiously build bases in Cuba for a number of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) with the ability to strike most of the continental United States. This action followed the 1958 deployment of Thor IRBMs in the UK and Jupiter IRBMs to Italy and Turkey in 1961 – more than 100 U.S.-built missiles having the capability to strike Moscow with nuclear warheads. On October 14, 1962, a United ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ States U-2 photoreconnaissance plane captured photographic proof of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba. The ensuing crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict. The United States considered attacking Cuba via air and sea and settled on a military quarantine of Cuba. The U.S. announced that it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed in Cuba and remove all offensive weapons. The Kennedy administration held a slim hope that the Kremlin would agree to their demands, and expected a military confrontation.

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  Know All About John F. Kennedy Political Era

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter-4 Cuban Missile Crisis CIA reference photograph of Soviet R-12 intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missile (NATO designation SS-4 ) in Red Square, Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis (known as The October Crisis in Cuba or Russian: Карибский кризис Caribbean Crisis in Russia) was a confrontation between the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War. In September 1962, the Cuban and Soviet governments began to surreptitiously build bases in Cuba for a number of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) with the ability to strike most of the continental United States. This action followed the 1958 deployment of Thor IRBMs in the UK and Jupiter IRBMs to Italy and Turkey in 1961 – more than 100 U.S.-built missiles having the capability to strike Moscow with nuclear warheads. On October 14, 1962, a United States U-2 ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ photoreconnaissance plane captured photographic proof of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba. The ensuing crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict. The United States considered attacking Cuba via air and sea and settled on a military quarantine of Cuba. The U.S. announced that it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed in Cuba and remove all offensive weapons. The Kennedy administration held a slim hope that the Kremlin would agree to their demands, and expected a military confrontation.

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  Comprehensive Book on Cold War, A

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Learning Press

    (Publisher)

  ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ Chapter- 6 Cuban Missile Crisis CIA reference photograph of Soviet R-12 intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missile (NATO designation SS-4 ) in Red Square, Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis (known as The October Crisis in Cuba or Russian: Карибский кризис Caribbean Crisis in Russia) was a confrontation between the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War. In September 1962, the Cuban and Soviet governments began to surreptitiously build bases in Cuba for a number of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) with the ability to strike most ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ of the continental United States. This action followed the 1958 deployment of Thor IRBMs in the UK and Jupiter IRBMs to Italy and Turkey in 1961 – more than 100 U.S.-built missiles having the capability to strike Moscow with nuclear warheads. On October 14, 1962, a United States U-2 photoreconnaissance plane captured photographic proof of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba. The ensuing crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict. The United States considered attacking Cuba via air and sea and settled on a military quarantine of Cuba. The U.S. announced that it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed in Cuba and remove all offensive weapons. The Kennedy admini-stration held a slim hope that the Kremlin would agree to their demands, and expected a military confrontation.

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  Fidel Castro: My Life

  A Spoken Autobiography

  • Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel Castro(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Scribner

    (Publisher)

  The ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ of October 1962 The world on the brink of nuclear war—The Soviets’ ‘betrayal’—Failed negotiations—Letters between Castro and Khrushchev—Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Putin—The Kennedy assassination

  With Kennedy, you—and the rest of the world—lived through one of the most dangerous international crises in world history: the so-called ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ of October 1962, what in Cuba is called the ‘October Crisis’. How do you see that situation now, forty-three years later?

  It was a very tense moment, and there are many lessons to be learned from that crisis. The world was on the verge of a thermonuclear war as a consequence of the United States’ aggressive, brutal policy against Cuba—a plan, approved about ten months after the disastrous defeat they suffered in Girón and about eight months before the crisis broke out, to invade the island with the direct use of that country’s naval, air and land forces.

  The Soviets managed to obtain absolutely trustworthy information about that plan, and they notified Cuba of the existence of the danger, although they weren’t totally explicit—the truth is, they protected their source. They said they’d come to that conviction after the meeting between Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna. The details of the plan were learned some twenty years later, when the documents related to the subject were declassified and published by the US government.

  The Soviets sent Sharaf Rashidov, Party secretary in Uzbekistan, and Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces in the USSR, to talk to us. At the first meeting, Raúl and I were present.

  After offering the information I mentioned, they asked what I thought should be done to avoid the attack. I answered calmly: ‘Make a public statement warning the United States, just as they do in similar circumstances, that an attack on Cuba will be considered an attack on the Soviet Union.’

  I then made my argument for that approach. They sat and thought about it for a while and then added that in order for it not to be just a simple statement, certain concrete measures had to be adopted. That was when they said they thought it was a good idea to install a minimal number of medium-range missiles in Cuba.

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  Command in Crisis

  Four Case Studies

  • Joseph F. Bouchard(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  F O U R The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in October 1962 when American U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance planes photographed Soviet me-dium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) and intermediate-range bal-listic missile (IRBM) sites under construction in Cuba. The United States responded by demanding that the missiles be withdrawn, imposing a naval quarantine of offensive arms shipments to Cuba, preparing to launch air strikes against the sites and an invasion of Cuba, and alerting its strategic nuclear forces. After a tense week of diplomatic bargaining, Moscow agreed to withdraw its offensive missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba and an informal understanding that the United States would later with-draw its MRBMs from Turkey. The U.S. Navy played a prominent role in the crisis, enforcing the quarantine and carrying out a wide range of operations in support of President Kennedy's strategy. BACKGROUND In mid-July 1962 ships carrying arms destined for Cuba began leaving Soviet ports. The military buildup in Cuba was dramatic and immediately detected by the United States. An August 22 CIA Current Intelligence Memorandum on Soviet military aid to Cuba described the buildup as the most extensive campaign to bolster a non-bloc country ever undertaken by the USSR. 1 The United States closely monitored the military buildup in Cuba. 2 As the Cuban military buildup gained momentum and tentative indica-tors that the Soviets were deploying offensive missiles to Cuba were received, the Kennedy administration began studying options for dealing with offensive missiles and the Pentagon initiated a series of low-level military preparations. 3 87 The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis A significant siep in the evolution of U.S. policy was taken on August 23, 1962, when President Kennedy approved National Se-curity Action Memorandum No.

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  History, the White House and the Kremlin

  Statesmen as Historians

  • Michael Graham Fry(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Communication of this order is a testimony to the unprecedented state that US-Soviet relations have reached in the last decade of the twentieth century. The Cuban Missile Crisis, and the effort to understand it, must be counted as one of the historical causes of this development. THE Cuban Missile Crisis TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER 83 Notes 1. For a report on this conference see James G. Blight, Joseph S. Nye, and David A. Welch, 'The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited', Foreign Affairs, 66,1,1987, pp. 170-88. The transcript is available in David A. Welch, ed., 'Proceedings of the Hawk's Cay Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis', Center for Science and International Affairs, Working Paper 89-1 (Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1989). 2. For the transcript of the Cambridge meeting see David A. Welch, ed., 'Proceedings of the Cambridge Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis', Center for Science and International Affairs, Working Paper 89-2 (Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1989). See also James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Re-examine the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989). 3. Reported in Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, 'Essence of Revision. Or: Moscow, Havana, and the Cuban Missile Crisis', International Security, 14, 3,1989, pp. 136-72. 4. A separate series of conferences, involving US and Soviet historians rather than policy-makers, commenced last year. The result is to be a series of volumes entitled Soviet-American Dialogues on United States History. The first is devoted to Soviet accounts of the New Deal and will match chapters by Soviet historians with commentary by American historians. Other volumes in the series will address the American Revolution and Constitution, United States-Soviet relations before 1917, the two-party system in the United States, and additional topics yet to be decided.

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  Failing to Win

  Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics

  • Dominic D. P. Johnson, Dominic Tierney, Dominic D. P Johnson(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  5 THE Cuban Missile Crisis Both sides could . . emerge from the crisis claiming victory, but there was little doubt as to who the real winners and losers were. —john lewis gaddis in this chapter we examine people’s evaluations of the U.S.-So-viet clash over nuclear missiles installed in Cuba in 1962. As one of the most important and best-documented crises of the century, the Cuban Missile Crisis represents a valuable case for examining our hypotheses about perceptions of victory and defeat. Observers around the world came to view the crisis as a triumph for the United States. The question is, why? History In mid-October 1962 U.S. intelligence discovered that the Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. The missiles had sufficient range to threaten nearly all major American cities. The secret nature of the installation, in the context of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s earlier assurances that he would not place missiles in Cuba, sparked shock and anger in Washington. President John F. Kennedy convened a committee (dubbed the ExComm) to advise him on the crisis. On 22 October, in a televised speech, Kennedy informed the nation of both the presence of the 94 95 The Cuban Missile Crisis New York Boston Chicago Toronto D e t r o i t St. Louis Houston Dallas San Francisco Los Angeles Seattle Minneapolis Denver Philadelphia Washinton D.C. 2200 nm 1100 nm Mexico City Havana Bogota Caracas Miami Atlanta MAP 1. The ranges of Soviet SS-4 and SS-5 nuclear missiles if fired from Cuba. Map by Philip Schwartzberg. missiles in Cuba and his decision to impose a “quarantine” on ship-ments of “offensive weapons” to the island. During the next week the world peered into the abyss of nuclear war. Then on 28 October Khrushchev announced that he had ordered the weapons to be dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union. In response, Kennedy offered a pledge that the United States would not invade Cuba.

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  Explaining Political Judgement

  • Perri 6(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Fursenko and Naftali’s two books (1997 and 2003) provide invaluable secondary sources for the Soviet re ´gime, because they used, for the 1997 book, declassified Soviet documents and interviews. For their 2003 book, they obtained privileged access to selected Praesidium minutes. In addition, we have Taubman’s (2003) biography of Khrushchev, and the 116 October 1962, before and after oral history materials in Blight et al. (2002 [1993]) and Blight and Welch (1989). Many more historical studies have been published on particular issues (e.g. Boyle, 1996; Coleman, 2007; Dorn and Pauk, 2009; Fischer, 2001; Alice George, 2003; Ghent, 1979; Husain, 2005; Nash, 1997; Rawnsley, 1995; Renshon, 2009a, 2009b; Savranskaya, 2005; Scott, 1999a, 1999b; Shalom, 1979; Smith, 2003). One debate examines contrasting views about the importance of domestic politics in US decision-making (Hampson, 1984/5; McKeown, 2000; Paterson and Brophy, 1986). There are also historical syntheses (Allyn et al., 1989/90; Fitzgerald, 2007; Medland, 1990) and criticism (Laffey and Weldes, 2008) of the literature, as well as occasional new data (e.g. Ketov, 2005). A very short chronicle of the crisis The events described in the West as the Cuban Missile Crisis were known in the Soviet Union as the Caribbean crisis. The USSR had already been through several crises involving missiles elsewhere. Its geostrategic interests required the Kremlin to think about the whole theatre, not just the island. In Cuba it was the October crisis: there have been so many other crises with the USA. Scott (2007) points out that if the White House thought of the thirteen days of most intense stand-off, in Havana it began with the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and lasted well into 1963, October representing only the apex of confrontation. For the Kremlin it began in spring 1962 and lasted until December.

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  Overconfidence and War

  The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions

  • Dominic D. P. Johnson(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5 The Cuban Missile Crisis No student of Soviet affairs has suggested that Khrushchev was a prudent man. He was attracted to grand gestures and acted impulsively. He gambled, often with little apparent chance of success. Cuba fits this pattern of behavior. —Richard Ned Lebow I’m a pessimist, Mr. President . . . We’ve changed our evalua-tions. —General Maxwell D. Taylor The Cuban Missile Crisis offers another demanding test of the positive illusions hypothesis. On the Soviet side, the opportu-nity for assessment of the situation was long; options other than deploying missiles in Cuba were available; and the likely U.S. reaction to the deployment should have been clear. On the U.S. side, although the opportunity for assessment was short, the in-tense debate within the specially formed executive committee (ExComm) was a high-quality decisionmaking process; a number of options were available to President Kennedy; and U.S. intelli-gence information, though later found to have been flawed in cer-tain important respects, was good enough for the decisionmakers to rank the stakes of the key available options. (See Table 3.) Also, the Cuban Missile Crisis is perhaps the most deeply studied crisis in international politics, with numerous explanations already of-fered for the moves made on each side. I argue that the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, exhibited positive illusions in deciding to install missiles in Cuba against clear evidence that doing so would not be tolerated by the United States. Any positive illusions on the U.S. side, by contrast, appear 108 to have been dispelled by the thorough ExComm decisionmaking process. Proponents of military action were pacified—enough at least to seek a peaceful solution—in the course of extensive de-bate about options and their likely ramifications. Those who still preferred military action were overruled.

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  Spying on the World

  The Declassified Documents of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 1936-2013

  • Richard J. Aldrich, Rory Cormac, Michael S. Goodman(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Edinburgh University Press

    (Publisher)

  14 The Cuban Missile Crisis, in the JIC’s view, was over. Unsurprisingly, though, this was not the end of the JIC’s interest in Cuba. In fact the JIC’s most telling and valuable contribution was in the aftermath of the crisis, when it tried to explain Soviet motives. Immediately following the cessation of the crisis the JIC approved an assessment, four months in preparation, entitled ‘Escalation’. It began with the hypothetical premise that a hostile act had been committed by either the Soviet Union or the West and had been opposed by the other. Building upon how the crisis had developed, it concluded that ‘it is now the fear of global war arising through a process of escalation which constitutes the deterrent to lim-ited aggression, rather than the fear of immediate, massive retaliation’. 15 There was a real danger in misunderstanding the opponent’s motives or misreading his intentions. A subsequent JIC paper, disseminated in early December, con-cluded that the Soviet Union would wish to avoid deliberate war; therefore, ‘apart from an accident, and assuming the Soviet leaders act rationally, we only envisage global or limited war between the Soviet Union and the West coming about as a result of a process of miscalculation’. 16 However, the most important assessment was a further paper also dissemi-nated in early December. It was the first, substantial attempt by the JIC to con-sider what the Soviet motives had been in placing missiles in Cuba. The report re-examined the JIC’s earlier judgements on Soviet defence policy in light of what had happened in Cuba, concluding that its previous assessments were still valid. The Soviet Union’s concern about its strategic vulnerabilities vis-à-vis the United States was thought to be central to its actions, and this was reflected in the desire to strengthen Cuban defences against a future US invasion, but also to place offensive Soviet missiles as close to the US mainland as possible.

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  The Cuban Missile Crisis

  Origins, Course and Aftermath

  • Jonathan Colman(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Edinburgh University Press

    (Publisher)

  28 The Cuban Missile Crisis 98 The American people responded to the crisis with a blend of patriotism and anxiety. Independent polls indicated that 84 per cent backed the quarantine and that only 4 per cent opposed it; but 20 per cent believed that ‘some shooting’ would occur and another 20 per cent felt that the Third World War was inevita-ble. 29 There was panic buying of tyres, cars and gasoline (clearly, many citizens were thinking of fleeing to remote areas). Prices on Wall Street fell substantially, although firms that built atomic shelters were swamped with orders. 30 Public concerns about the possibility of nuclear war – especially in relation to the crisis over Berlin in 1961 – meant that by the time of the missile crisis, exist-ing shelters, public or private, could house about one-third of the population. However, the civil defence programme that had been announced during the Berlin crisis had not gained much ground because of fears over its effectiveness and about creating panic, while most of the public shelters lacked essential provisions such as food and water. During the confrontation, Kennedy expressed interest in evacuating key areas of the United States, but this came to nothing because of concerns about creating public alarm. 31 There were plans to protect US government employees from nuclear war. If an attack was imminent, Kennedy and leading offi-cials would be transported to Mount Weather, a bunker hidden in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia fifty miles away from Washington. The facility could house 200 people for thirty days. Similarly, members of Congress had their own bunker in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Generally, though, the attempt to preserve the continuity of government had serious limitations, not least because sufficient advance warning was needed and because the plans were in many respects out of date. 32 There was another difficulty. Dean Rusk noted that the programme was psychologically impossible.

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