On 14 October 1962, the United
States government found that the Soviet military was installing offensive
ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba, less than 100 miles from the shores
of Florida. Secret U-2 flights by the CIA revealed the covert introduction of
nuclear weapons within striking distance of many of the major cities in the US.
When interviewed by Michael
Charlton of BBC London in 1985, and asked `why Chairman Khrushchev had
challenged President Kennedy with nuclear weapons on America’s doorstep in
Cuba, Dean Rusk (US Secretary of State 1961-69) said:
“I don’t believe that we ever
knew with precision just why Mr Khruschev decided to put the missiles in Cuba,
or why he thought that he could do so without a very strong American reaction.
It may be that he made the judgment that, since President Kennedy had not
followed up the Bay of Pigs (the failed invasion of Cuba to overthrow Fidel
Castro in April 1961) with American forces, we would not attach much importance
to Cuba. It may be that the advantages to him of getting a hundred of these
missiles in Cuba would be so great that it would be worth taking a chance if
there were only a twenty per cent chance of success.
“Whatever the reasons, we felt
that the missiles in Cuba from a military point of view would make it possible
for them to knock out our Strategic Air Command bases with almost no advance
warning.
“From a political point of
view, the effects in the Western hemisphere and in NATO would be devastating.
So that produced an extraordinarily dangerous crisis.”
In a short reflective note
on averting the Apocalypse on the afternoon of 27 October (published in the 80th
anniversary issue of TIME, March 31, 2003), Robert McNamara (US Secretary of Defense
1961-68) recalls: “…Fidel Castro had already recommended to Nikita Khrushchev
that nuclear weapons be used if the U.S. invaded (Cuba). That’s how close we
came. Events were slipping out of control (at 4 p.m. that afternoon the Joint
Chiefs recommended to President Kennedy that the US attack within 36 hours and
destroy the Soviet missiles for which according to the CIA, the nuclear
warheads had not been delivered)…”
McNamara wrote that the US
did not learn until 30 years later (30 years after the confrontation that had
brought the US and the Soviet Union to the edge of a nuclear conflict, and the
world to the brink of World War III) that “the Soviets already had 162
(nuclear) warheads in Cuba…” The SS-4 missiles each carried a 1 MT (one
megaton) warhead, and Washington was within their deadly range.
Why then did Khrushchev
blink?
McNamara told Charlton in
1985: “It was our tremendous conventional power in the region (backed up by
“tremendous US strategic nuclear superiority”) which forced the Soviets to take
those missiles out (of Cuba)…”
According to Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr., a presidential aide and policy adviser, President Kennedy
prepared for all options to counter the Soviet attempt to alter the balance of
power and to test the will of the United States. American military forces were
fully mobilized. A worldwide alert was ordered and aircraft readied to attack
Cuba. Troops were deployed for an
invasion if necessary, while an amphibious landing force of 40,000 marines and
180 ships moved into positions in the Caribbean. Nuclear weapons were loaded in
strategic bombers, kept constantly in the air ready to head for Moscow and
other key targets in the Soviet Union.
According to nuclear
historian Richard Rhodes, the Strategic Air Command put 7,000 megatons aloft
and tried to provoke a Soviet alert that would justify a US preemptive first
strike.
Curtis Le May, USAF
Chief of Staff, challenged Kennedy to invade Cuba. Kennedy cautiously, and
wisely, refused. “Not until 1989 did the Soviets reveal that there were two
dozen nuclear warheads on hand in Cuba during the crisis; invasion would have
started nuclear war,” Rhodes has recorded.
“For some dramatic
weeks the world feared an imminent nuclear war between the two superpowers,”
Alva Myrdal, Sweden’s former Minister of Disarmament wrote in 1976. “Khrushchev
backed down, the missiles were withdrawn (from Cuba)…”
In 1985 Rusk
elaborated for Charlton: “I think he (Khrushchev) recognized that the United
States had overwhelming conventional superiority in the vicinity of Cuba (our
state of Florida was about to sink under the sea with the weight of military
power we assembled there), and that his only response would almost have to be in the nuclear field. We did
not believe that Chairman Khrushchev would launch a nuclear strike because of
Cuba, but we could not know it for
certain. So we had to take that into account . But, fortunately, Mr Khrushchev
kept his wits about him and did not allow that matter to escalate into general
war…”
When asked by Charlton whether Rusk
subsequently came to the view that the Soviets had attributed their failure in
Cuba not just to the reality of America’s conventional superiority, but, also,
in the end, to their own nuclear inferiority,
Rusk answered: “We had some reason to believe, afterwards, that the Soviets
thought we had counted missiles at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. In
fact, we had not. Apparently they thought so, because shortly after that crisis
a high Russian official (Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetzov) said to Mr
John J. McCloy (an American negotiator) in New York, ‘Well, Mr McCloy, you got
away with it this time. You’ll never get away with it again!’
“If you take into account the
lead time required for making decisions and doing all the preparatory work and
so forth, much of their further deployment of nuclear weapons in later years
undoubtedly came from decisions made shortly after the Cuban missile crisis.”
The Soviets were to increase
tenfold their nuclear weapons within the next couple of decades. The Soviet
Union reached nuclear parity with the US by 1978, and shortly afterwards forged
further ahead.
Harold Brown (US Defense
Secretary 1977-81) said: “When we build, they build – and when we don’t build,
they build…”
Jimmy Carter (US President
1977-81) said to Charlton in 1985: “One interpretation to be placed on it is
that the Soviets were so far behind in nuclear weaponry, and they were deeply embarrassed
by the Cuban missile crisis when they were branded as inferior to us in nuclear
capability… So I think they proceeded aggressively to make sure that they were
at least equal to us…”
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