Cuban Missile Crisis

 

Americans feared that the Soviet Union would expand communism or socialism. The US and the USSR were the main parties in the Cold War that began in 1945. The US did not want a country in the Caribbean to be openly allied with the USSR. That would also make the Monroe Doctrine useless, which kept powers in Europe from getting involved in the Americas.

The US had been embarrassed publicly by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961, which had been launched under President John F. Kennedy by CIA-trained forces of Cuban exiles. Afterward, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower told Kennedy that "the failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do".^[2] The Bay of Pigs invasion left Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers with the impression that Kennedy was indecisive. One Soviet adviser wrote that he was "too young, intellectual, not prepared well for decision making in crisis situations... too intelligent and too weak".^[2]

In late 1961, Kennedy launched a number of covert operations against Castro's government. Named Operation Mongoose, they were unsuccessful.^[3] In February 1962, the US started an economic embargo against Cuba.^[4]

In September 1961, the Cuban government thought the US would invade because of a resolution by the US Congress to allow military force if the interests of the US in Cuba were threatened.^[5] The US also announced a military exercise in the Caribbean to be held the following month.

Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to place secret strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba in case the US invaded. Like Castro, Khrushchev thought that the US would invade Cuba soon. If Cuba were to stop being a Communist country it would hurt Khrushchev's reputation around the world, especially in Latin America. He said that he wanted to confront the Americans "with more than words.... the logical answer was missiles".^[6]

Tensions were at their highest from October 8, 1962. On October 14, United States reconnaissance saw the missile bases being built in Cuba. The crisis ended two weeks later on October 28, 1962, when the President of the United States John F. Kennedy and the United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with the USSR to destroy the missiles in Cuba if the US agreed not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev wanted the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey to be removed. The US removed them but forced Khrushchev to keep that a secret.^[7]

 

In Cuba, Fidel Castro took power from General Batista on January 1, 1959. From 1952 to 1959, Batista was a military dictator in Cuba. He was very right-wing, and had Mafia connections and the support of the Eisenhower administration. The United States was interested in Cuba because of the many businesses that they had there, even though the country was a dictatorship. The countries were also military friends. This was shown by the US base at Guantánamo Bay.

When Castro came to power in Cuba, he nationalized American companies in Cuba, meaning he took the private property from those companies and made it the property of Cuba.^[8] The United States decided to break off economic relations with Cuba^[9] (which means that they would stop buying things from them). They stopped American foreign aid going to Cuba, and stopped buying Cuban sugar (which was Cuba's main export). This was a disaster for Castro, because America bought the most Cuban sugar. However, Russia saved the Cuban economy by buying Cuban sugar for high prices.

Castro turned to the USSR, a great power. He signed a contract with Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian chairman at the time. The contract said that the USSR would buy 1 million tons of Cuban sugar per year, in exchange for Castro's communist support. He declared himself a Marxist-Leninist on December 2, 1961.

The reasons that Khrushchev wanted to help Cuba were:

• He wanted a Communist state close to United States;
• He wanted to test the new US president, John F. Kennedy;
• He wanted a chance to get the American missile sites out of Turkey, which was close to Russia.

Castro wanted to feel safe from the United States. He knew that if a second attack was made from the United States, Cuba might lose and he would be removed from power. Castro asked Khrushchev for the missile sites to be built on Cuba so that he could defend himself against any American threat. The USSR agreed to this and started building missile sites on Cuba. These missiles could hit any major city in the United States

Kennedy found out about the missile sites on October 16,^[10] by sending a United States Navy U-2 Spy Plane to take pictures of Cuba,^[11] he saw the missile sites and thought the worst: that Cuba was preparing to attack the United States.

The US was angry when they found out about the missile sites. Kennedy's advisers did not think that the missiles were ready when they first saw the pictures but thought that they would be ready in less than two weeks (that gave the name of the movie and the book, called 13 Days).

Kennedy had to act fast. At first, he did not know what he could do. Options were not clear so he started EXCOMM (Executive Committee of the National Security Council) to give him some options:

On October 20, Kennedy chose to blockade Cuba to stop all ships going there, rather than listen to his advisers, who wanted to attack.^[12]

The USSR's first ships arrived at the blockade on October 25 and were prevented by the US Navy from reaching Cuba.

Nikita Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy on October 26. Kennedy's advisers said that the letter looked like it had been written by Khrushchev himself and not his official writers, who would normally write it. They also said that it seemed to be written by a man who was under stress. In a paper called "Forty Years After 13 Days," Robert McNamara quoted part of the letter from Khrushchev:

Khrushchev was saying that he would remove the missile sites if President Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba. An invasion of Cuba would make Khrushchev look bad and could also lead to a nuclear war. This was the reaction that Kennedy wanted.

The very next day, a second letter was sent from Russia to Kennedy. This one looked more official than the first. It also said that the US must take its nuclear missiles out of Turkey if they wanted Russia to take their missiles out of Cuba. This would have been a fair trade because the US missiles in Turkey were close enough to Russia that they could reach most of the important cities and Cuba was close enough to the US that the Russian missiles would reach most of the important US cities. The problem for Kennedy was that he could not publicly agree to remove the US missiles from Turkey because Turkey would then not be protected and would not be happy.

Another problem was that Kennedy and his advisers did not know if Khrushchev was still in power. They thought that someone in the Russian government might have overthrown Khrushchev. They thought this because the second letter was so different from the first. Kennedy decided to send a secret message to Khrushchev saying that they would remove the missiles from Turkey in a few months as long as they did not tell the public about it. Kennedy then sent an official letter to Khrushchev agreeing to the conditions of the first letter and not mentioning the second.

Khrushchev agreed to the secret message.

On November 1, the missile sites were removed, and the problems were over.

Khrushchev's goals in the crisis had various results:

1. A communist country was closer to the United States. Cuba came out of the crisis still a communist country.
2. Kennedy was pushed in the crisis. In the end, his desire for peace was important to ending the crisis.
3. The missile sites in Turkey were removed, but not in the way that Khrushchev had wanted.

The United States saw Kennedy as the hero who had fought Communism and won.

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For students' use

• 14 Days in October: The Cuban Missile Crisis Archived 2006-04-28 at the Wayback Machine - a site geared toward high-school students
• Cuban Missile Crisis on BBC Archived 2008-01-18 at the Wayback Machine
• Cuban Missile Crisis at Spartacus schoolnet Archived 2010-12-06 at the Wayback Machine

Complex

• IV. Chronology of Submarine. Contact During the Cuban Missile Crisis. October 1, 1962 - November 14, 1962. Prepared by Jeremy Robinson-Leon and William Burr.
• CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 Archived 2007-05-09 at the Wayback Machine (.pdf, 354 pgs.) U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, McAuliffe, M. ed., CIA History Staff, 1992.
• Declassified Documents, etc. - Provided by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University.
• Tapes of debates between JFK and his advisors during the crisis
• President Kennedy's Address to the Nation on the Soviet Arms Buildup in Cuba Archived 2011-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
• Nuclear Files.org Archived 2011-07-27 at the Wayback Machine Introduction, timeline and articles regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis
• Cuba Havana Documentary Archived 2010-09-04 at the Wayback Machine Bye Bye Havana is a documentary revealing what Cubans are thinking about today
• October, 1962: DEFCON 4, DEFCON 3, DEFCON 2
• Cuban Missile Crises -Citizendium