16 to 28 October 1962 -- Cuban Missile Crisis

"Do You Hear What I Hear?"  -- Robert Goulet (Lyrics by Noël Regney, Music by Gloria Shayne Baker)

In The Guns of August, historian Barbara Tuchman offers a hypnotic narrative of that fatal month in which the postering, brinksmanship, and poor decisions of the Great Powers led to four awful years of horrible slaughter in muddy trenches. It is a superior book, one I would recommend for any student of history or statecraft.

John F. Kennedy too thought The Guns of August an excellent primer for those who would practice foreign policy. Shortly after its release, he provided each cabinet member and senior military advisor with a copy, instructing them to read and learn its lessons. And instruction was not to stop there. Kennedy wanted “every officer in the Army” to read The Guns of August. His Secretary of the Army followed up by sending a copy to every United States military base in the world. But Kennedy perhaps profited most when he turned to Tuchman’s book for guidance over 12 tense days in October 1962 when the world stared into the abyss of nuclear conflict and chose to step back from the precipice.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, Soviet Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, confronted the United States from a position of weakness in 1962. Not only did the US have eight times the number of nuclear weapons as did his country, but the American weapons were mounted on superior delivery vehicles guided by far more accurate targeting systems. The balance of power had shifted dramatically since World War II when the Red Army proved itself the world’s preeminent military machine. Now the US had a two-to-one advantage over the USSR in conventional forces. And things were not improving for the beleaguered Soviet leader. Over the course of the previous year, the US had deployed its PGM-19 Jupiter, its (then) remarkably accurate medium-range and nuclear-tipped ballistic missile on his global doorstep, so to speak, in Italy and, far more alarmingly in Turkey. The US had already threatened Cuba, the only Soviet ally in the Americas, with the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion, and US leaders never tired of waving sabres at Fidel Castro. To offset these American advantages, the Soviet Union had a total of 20 ICBM capable of reaching the American mainland from within its own borders, all unreliable in both operation and guidance.

In Cuba, Khrushchev thought he had found the means to restore the balance of power. Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Castro asked the Soviet Union to base missiles in Cuba to deter any future American adventurism with respect to the island nation. Khrushchev saw in this proposal a chance to not only booster the safety of a strategic ally, but to also redress somewhat the overwhelming US advantage in the nuclear balance of terror. The two Communist leaders met secretly in July of 1962, and an agreement was made.

On 14 October 1962, an American U-2 piloted by USAF Major Richard S. Heyser return from a Cuban flyover with 928 photographic captures. Skilled CIA analysts poring over the images the following day, finding the telltale traces of medium-range missile silo construction, confirming American suspicions of a Soviet buildup. Secretary of State Dean Rusk received the grim news at 8:30 that evening, Washington D.C. time, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at midnight. The following morning, 16 October 1962, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy briefed the President. The makings of the Cuban Missile Crisis are complete.

U-2 Reconnaissance Photograph Showing Soviet Missile Installations

Most of Kennedy’s advisors urged invasion and occupation of the island. Proponents of this more bellicose response included the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as his most trusted confidant, his younger brother Robert Kennedy. Congressional leaders too advised invasion. After careful consideration, the President rejected the idea as too dangerous. Kennedy was not less skeptical of destroying the missile sites with carefully targeted airstrikes. He was fully cognizant that the flow of events, just like those of August 1914, presented all participants with a limited range of options, and an ill-advised response could well spark a global holocaust. He determined to avoid the mistakes of 1914.

They, no more than we, can let these things go by without doing something. They can't, after all their statements, permit us to take out their missiles, kill a lot of Russians, and then do nothing. If they don't take action in Cuba, they certainly will in Berlin.

Looking for an effective while restrained measure to resolve the growing crisis, Kennedy opted for a naval blockade. This action too entailed considerable risk albeit far fewer than would a military invasion of Cuba or airstrikes. By international law, a blockade was an act of war. The President sought to minimize risk by confining to blockade to international waters and limiting its scope to vessels carrying or supporting Soviet missiles. He also briefed the Soviets on his plan to limit any possibility of their misunderstanding American intentions. He further sought to reduce tensions by avoiding any mention of blockage, instead referring to US actions as a “quarantine.”

On 22 October, Kennedy informed the nation of his plan in a televised address.

To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

America allies were supportive of Kennedy’s approach, but at least one was less than enthusiastic about more aggressive proposals floated by the administration. Like Kennedy, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had read The Guns of August and taken its lessons to heart. But for reasons long predating Tuchman’s narrative, the Great War loomed large in Macmillan’s thoughts. As did so many young English men his age, future prime minister answered the clarion call sounded by the guns of August. His war ended in September 1916 at the Somme where he suffered his third and most severe wound. He would spend the remainder of the war in a hospital, unable to walk. For the remainder of his life, Macmillan endured pain and partial immobility.

In The Guns of August, Tuchman convincingly identifies general mobilization as the final provocation precipitating the First World War. When the United States suggested that our NATO allies mobilize their armed forces least the Soviet Union move on West Berlin in response to the quarantine, Macmillan balked. He had learned the lesson the historian sought to impart. On the very same day Kennedy addressed the nation, Macmillan made an entry in his diary.

Washington, in a rather panicky way, have been urging a NATO 'alert' with all that this implies (in our case, a Royal Proclamation and the call up of Reservists). I told him that we do not repeat not agree at this stage. N. General Norstad agreed with this and said he thought NATO powers would take the same view. I said that 'mobilization' had sometimes caused war. Here it was absurd since the additional forces made available by 'Alert' had no military significance.

The following morning, Washington signaled by way of diplomatic channels that the United States would be receptive to a compromise: In return for the Soviets withdrawing missiles from Cuba, the US military would remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey. This proposal would ignite a different disagreement with a different ally for a different reason. Turkey had cause to distrust the Soviet Union. Russia had been casting covetous glances at the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles Straits for centuries. Turkey felt the American ICBN within its borders an essential deterrent to any expansionist notioned harbored by his eastern neighbor, and resisted any talk of their removal.

The world inched ever closer to war. By 26 October both the United States and the Soviet Union seemed to have exhausted all peaceful options. The fear was palpable. Allies and advisers in both camps urged leaders to undertake more aggressive or, alternatively, less provocative measures. Reluctantly, Kennedy prepared to issue orders for the invasion of Cuba.

Herblock for the Washington Post, October 1962

One hour after noon that day in Washington D.C., Alexander Feklisov, the local KGB station chief operating from the Soviet Embassy met for lunch with ABC News correspondent John A. Scali. The Soviet spy asked the American newsman to relay a message to the US State Department: Should the Soviets would withdraw all missiles and Castro publicly promise that no further missile installations were to be permitted, would the United States renouncing plans to invade Cuba,

Feklisov apparently acted on his own initiative and without authorization from Moscow, a fact unknown to Washington. Even so, his suggestion offered a path both the Soviet Union and the United States would pursue with all the urgency of drowning men seizing at life preservers. With the planned invasion only hours away, the State Department asked Brazil to signal Castro that the United States would “unlikely to invade” were the missiles removed. As with Turkey, Castro viewed the presence of nuclear-capable missiles as deterrent against the belligerence of a powerful neighbor. Khrushchev, however, realized the current status quo was untenable.

At 6:00 PM in Washington, the White House received “a very long and emotional” letter apparently written by the Communist Chairman himself. Unfortunately for himself, his nation, and the world, Khrushchev was notoriously erratic, but he was, at times, surprisingly insightful. No stranger to world war, Khrushchev described the dangers facing them:

Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose.

Consequently, if there is no intention to tighten that knot and thereby to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.

Khrushchev proposed a settlement reflecting that first advanced by Feklisov.

I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear.

Just as in August of 1914, events continued to spiral out of control. The efforts of both the United States and Soviet Union to avert war appeared futile. World War III seemed imminent. An American reconnaissance plane was downed by a Soviet anti-air battery in Cuba, killing pilot USAF Major Rudolf Anderson. An apparently accidental 90-minute flight by a US spy plane over the far-east Soviet coastline. resulted in both American and Soviet fighters being scrambled. Meanwhile in Moscow, Khrushchev received from Castro the infamous “Armageddon Letter.” Should the United States actually launch the planned attack, Castro begged the Soviet leader to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.

I believe the imperialists' aggressiveness is extremely dangerous and if they actually carry out the brutal act of invading Cuba in violation of international law and morality, that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be.

Then, at the very verge of extinguishing civilization, humanity stepped back from the brink. On 28 October, Kennedy and his advisors discussed a proposed settlement requiring the removal of US missiles from Turkey. Only Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson supported such an arrangement. Kennedy’s remaining advisors objected. The president measured his options and made his decision:

We can't very well invade Cuba with all its toil and blood when we could have gotten them out by making a deal on the same missiles on Turkey. If that's part of the record, then you don't have a very good war.

Kennedy responded to his Soviet counterpart by letter.

The US will make a statement in the framework of the Security Council in reference to Cuba as follows: it will declare that the United States of America will respect the inviolability of Cuban borders, its sovereignty, that it take the pledge not to interfere in internal affairs, not to intrude themselves and not to permit our territory to be used as a bridgehead for the invasion of Cuba, and will restrain those who would plan to carry an aggression against Cuba, either from US territory or from the territory of other countries neighboring to Cuba.

The compromise included a secret agreement by the United States to remove all Jupiter missiles from Turkey and southern Italy, a concession that cost Kennedy nothing since the withdrawn weapons had already been rendered obsolete by the rapid pace of American technological progress.

There was, of course, considerable fallout from the events described and the aftermath merits must consideration. But that is a task for another day. Today we have music to discuss.

That fearful October as the world toddled on the precipice, Noël Regney watched mothers push babies in strollers on New York sidewalks while televisions and radios and newspapers warned of impending nuclear holocaust. Seized by emotion, Regney wrote what would become one of the all time popular Christmas songs. His wife Gloria Shayne composed the music.

"Do You Hear What I Hear?"

Said the night wind to the little lamb,

do you see what I see

Way up in the sky, little lamb,

do you see what I see

A star, a star, dancing in the night

With a tail as big as a kite

With a tail as big as a kite

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,

do you hear what I hear

Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,

do you hear what I hear

A song, a song, high above the trees

With a voice as big as the sea

With a voice as big as the sea

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,

do you know what I know

In your palace warm, mighty king,

do you know what I know

A Child, a Child shivers in the cold

Let us bring Him silver and gold

Let us bring Him silver and gold

Said the king to the people everywhere,

listen to what I say

Pray for peace, people everywhere!

listen to what I say

The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night

He will bring us goodness and light

He will bring us goodness and light