The best article I've seen on the Cuban Missile Crisis

It's taken decades for the truth about the crisis to get clearer and clearer, gradually revealing who really said what, overcoming some incorrect history in Robert Kennedy's book, revealing a secret deal, the US learning the danger had been far higher than imagined, myths appearing that it wasn't as dangerous as it was, and more. Here's the best article I've seen summarizing these issues, recommended history:

The Cuban Missile Crisis at 55 | The Nation

No interest in the historical topic I guess. Wonder if anyone read it.

I could not get it to load. But I do find a most recent argument that Castro was quite willing to sacrifice his entire island nation to the concept of taking down the number one liberal democracy and capitalist nation as a means to advance Communism as frightening. I don't know if that is in the piece you linked.

Remembering the Castro of that time, I find the idea believable. I do not believe Castro was geopolitically attuned to the the environment to have understood that the whole world would have likely been engulfed in nuclear holocaust, not just his island nation and the US. Not sure the Russians knew who they were dealing with in Castro and realized late that depending on him with regard to nuclear weaponry was a WHOOPS!

A Russian sub captain who was forced to make a decision to either fire a nuke torpedo or back down.
He decided to back down. No WWIII.

I've studied the Cuban Missile Crisis thoroughly. The U.S. would've destroyed Cuba and the U.S.S.R. and suffered relatively lightly in retaliation as the Soviets had few nuclear weapons that could hit targets in the U.S.

The idea that the "world would've been engulfed in a nuclear holocaust" is patently false.

Craig234 said:

No interest in the historical topic I guess. Wonder if anyone read it.

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I read the bulk of it. Yes it's interesting, but in the end mostly speculation, shoulda, coulda, woulda, on both sides.

As a youngster in Florida living near the railroad tracks, I can remember the many long trains headed south to Miami, trains loaded with military hardware of all sorts.

It's easy to understand how Castro thought the US intended to attack Cuba. The US had 15 years earlier used the nuclear option against Japan. Years before that it had invaded many small countries in Central and South America, overthrowing legitimate governments to advance imperialistic goals.

It's also easy to understand how the US did not appreciate how Russia and Cuba were ready to defend themselves with tactical nuclear weapons.

JFK paid the ultimate price for facing up to the Dulles brothers.

jnug said:

I could not get it to load. But I do find a most recent argument that Castro was quite willing to sacrifice his entire island nation to the concept of taking down the number one liberal democracy and capitalist nation as a means to advance Communism as frightening. I don't know if that is in the piece you linked.

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Sorry you couldn't get it to load; try some other things. If nothing else, google on "The Nation The Cuban Missile Crisis at 55". That is in the piece; I'll quote it:

What did Castro learn? During the event, he believed for good reason that Cuba’s fate was sealed: The US attack was virtually inevitable, probably imminent, and likely nuclear. Here is what he told McNamara at the 1992 Havana conference:

Now, we started from the assumption that if there was an invasion of Cuba, nuclear war would erupt. We were certain of that. If the invasion had taken place in the situation that had been created, nuclear war would have been the result. Everybody here was simply resigned to the fate that we would be forced to pay the price, that we would disappear.

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With this in mind, Castro wrote a now-famous letter on October 26, 1962, requesting that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev order a nuclear attack on the United States if, as expected, the Americans first attacked and invaded Cuba. (Castro declassified and released that letter in November 1990, during the run-up to a preparatory US-Cuban-Russian conference we organized in Antigua in January 1991.) The Cuban leader was worried about what he believed was a regrettable Russian tendency to delay (as Stalin had done in the hours immediately following the Nazi invasion). It may be asked: How could any factual revelations about the Cuban missile crisis have “haunted” a leader who seems to have expected, and to have faced defiantly, the total obliteration of his country?

What haunted Fidel Castro was the knowledge, derived in that document-rich discussion with McNamara and others from the Kennedy administration, that he was dead wrong about his most fundamental and unshakeable assumption: that a decision had been made in the Kennedy White House to destroy the Cuban Revolution, liquidate its leaders, and reestablish Cuba as a quasi-colony of the United States, with a government willing to follow orders from Washington. Every important foreign-policy decision Castro made in the 18 months following the abortive, CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 was based on this assumption: Cuba is toast; Kennedy must destroy us in order to preserve his political life; and any attack by the United States against Cuba will involve the use of US nuclear weapons, because of Kennedy’s desperation to destroy the Cuban regime. As Castro told us in January 1992, he believed “we would disappear.”

But he discovered that he had been wrong. No such decision had been made in Washington, and until the discovery of Soviet missiles on the island, it was highly unlikely that Kennedy would ever have made such a decision. In October 1962, Castro had mistakenly believed that he and Cuba had nothing to lose by acting provocatively, by flinging taunts at Washington, or, in the spring of 1962, by accepting the Russian offer to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba. In this way, due to his ignorance of Washington and the absolute certainty with which he held his convictions, Castro’s behavior during the 18 months before the missile crisis raised the odds sky-high of exactly the catastrophe he wrongly assumed was inevitable.

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Remembering the Castro of that time, I find the idea believable. I do not believe Castro was geopolitically attuned to the the environment to have understood that the whole world would have likely been engulfed in nuclear holocaust, not just his island nation and the US. Not sure the Russians knew who they were dealing with in Castro and realized late that depending on him with regard to nuclear weaponry was a WHOOPS!

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Khrushchev was shocked by Castro's message, and Castro was excluded from any further involvement in the decisions on the missiles, infuriating him. Khrushchev later invited him to the Soviet Union to mend fences.

Thoreau72 said:

I read the bulk of it. Yes it's interesting, but in the end mostly speculation, shoulda, coulda, woulda, on both sides.

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I'm not sure what that means. I think it has a lot of correct information.

As a youngster in Florida living near the railroad tracks, I can remember the many long trains headed south to Miami, trains loaded with military hardware of all sorts.

It's easy to understand how Castro thought the US intended to attack Cuba. The US had 15 years earlier used the nuclear option against Japan. Years before that it had invaded many small countries in Central and South America, overthrowing legitimate governments to advance imperialistic goals.

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Not to mention the Bay of Pigs and the many assassination attempts. Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron claim JFK had another invasion ready to launch just before his assassination, even as he was also exploring peace with Castro - he did want progress on Cuba before the election. I haven't reached an opinion on the invasion claims, but Castro had huge reason to suspect that.

It's also easy to understand how the US did not appreciate how Russia and Cuba were ready to defend themselves with tactical nuclear weapons.

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The US did not know about that until decades later.

JFK paid the ultimate price for facing up to the Dulles brothers.

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Perhaps. There was only one Dulles brother then; early in JFK's presidency, he opposed naming the Washington airport for John Foster Dulles, but lost that battle.

Grandpappy said:

A Russian sub captain who was forced to make a decision to either fire a nuke torpedo or back down.
He decided to back down. No WWIII.

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It's even closer than that. The captain wanted to fire it. The sub required the captain, the XO, and the political officer to agree. It was the political officer who refused to agree and prevented nuclear war. He was neither rewarded nor punished for his action.

It's one of the reasons I say most don't appreciate just how close we came.

Craig234 said:

I'm not sure what that means. I think it has a lot of correct information.



Not to mention the Bay of Pigs and the many assassination attempts. Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron claim JFK had another invasion ready to launch just before his assassination, even as he was also exploring peace with Castro - he did want progress on Cuba before the election. I haven't reached an opinion on the invasion claims, but Castro had huge reason to suspect that.



The US did not know about that until decades later.



Perhaps. There was only one Dulles brother then; early in JFK's presidency, he opposed naming the Washington airport for John Foster Dulles, but lost that battle.

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I agree that the information was correct, but the speculation is about what might have happened.

According to Robert McNamara in the documentary The Fog Of War, some of our top military leaders wanted to start a limited nuclear war.

Dayton3 said:

I've studied the Cuban Missile Crisis thoroughly. The U.S. would've destroyed Cuba and the U.S.S.R. and suffered relatively lightly in retaliation as the Soviets had few nuclear weapons that could hit targets in the U.S.

The idea that the "world would've been engulfed in a nuclear holocaust" is patently false.

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Really ....well there is this stuff called FallOut and it goes where the wind takes it for one thing. For another, once you have the two main nuclear powers in the world shooting ICBM's Medium Range Nuclear missiles at each other, the NATO allies would kick in one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other. I don't have any idea what you are talking about.

Further you seem to forget that Kennedy had already announced to the entire world that any nuclear attack by the Soviet Union from Cuba on the United States or any US ally or any country in this hemisphere be considered an act of war y the United States requiring a full nuclear response by the United States upon the Soviet Union. What the hell do you think "full nuclear response" means? Do you actually think Kennedy could have backed down after that statement?

We probably need more above ground testing because apparently we are a few generations past understanding what the big MERV nukes of that time were capable of doing and that is really all we had then other than a few tactical nukes.

jnug said:

Really ....well there is this stuff called FallOut and it goes where the wind takes it for one thing. For another, once you have the two main nuclear powers in the world shooting ICBM's Medium Range Nuclear missiles at each other, the NATO allies would kick in one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other. I don't have any idea what you are talking about.

Further you seem to forget that Kennedy had already announced to the entire world that any nuclear attack by the Soviet Union from Cuba on the United States or any US ally or any country in this hemisphere be considered an act of war y the United States requiring a full nuclear response by the United States upon the Soviet Union. What the hell do you think "full nuclear response" means? Do you actually think Kennedy could have backed down after that statement?

We probably need more above ground testing because apparently we are a few generations past understanding what the big MERV nukes of that time were capable of doing and that is really all we had then other than a few tactical nukes.

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MIRVs had not been deployed by anyone at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Craig234 said:

It's even closer than that. The captain wanted to fire it. The sub required the captain, the XO, and the political officer to agree. It was the political officer who refused to agree and prevented nuclear war. He was neither rewarded nor punished for his action.

It's one of the reasons I say most don't appreciate just how close we came.

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I doubt the U.S. was going to launch a nuclear conflict over just one carrier and its escorts being destroyed.

Dayton3 said:

MIRVs had not been deployed by anyone at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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Even better....all we had then was the big stuff plus bombers plus subs and tactical nukes. Kennedy could not have backed down if the Soviets launched particularly in the geopolitical environment of that time.

That said IMO the real threat represented by nukes in Cuba was whack job Castro plus the likelihood of one side or the other making a mistake, slipping on a banana peel into a nuclear exchange.

The sequence of events would go more or less like this:

1) The U.S. invades Cuba with conventional forces.
2) The Soviet forces in Cuba launch tactical nuclear warheads at the invading U.S. troops and their ships off shore, killing thousands of Americans. The Soviets also begin fueling the nuclear missiles in Cuba. This takes several hours. Due to the corrosive nature of the liquid rocket fuel of that time they can't remain fueled continually.
3) With thousands of Americans killed and the nuclear threshold crossed, JFK orders a massive nuclear strike on the missile sites in Cuba. This would be done by B-47 bombers based in the southern U.S. Despite being heavily laden with four nuclear bombs each, The B-47s could reach Cuba in minutes and air defenses in Cuba were completely inadequate to deal with a massive bomber attack.
4) Simultaneously JFK orders a major nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact bases. U.S. IRBMs in Turkey, Italy, and England are launch against major urban targets in the Soviet Union including Moscow and Leningrad. Simultaneously, American sea launched ballistic missiles (Polaris) launch against Soviet bases in Eastern Europe and bases in the USSR itself.
5) Hours after these attacks, American B-52s and B-58s arrive from the U.S. and attack whatever is left in the Soviet Union that looks the least bit threatening.
6) The only possible nuclear threat to the U.S. are any Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba that might've been missed by the B-47 attack. This would likely be only a handful at most 2-6 is the most likely. Assuming they launch against the U.S. and work properly, the U.S. loses 2-6 cities at most.

War over. U.S. wins. Soviet Union gone forever.

The Russians pulled their nukes out of Cuba.

What is little known is that the Americans pulled their nukes out of Turkey a few months later.

Dayton3 said:

The sequence of events would go more or less like this:

1) The U.S. invades Cuba with conventional forces.
2) The Soviet forces in Cuba launch tactical nuclear warheads at the invading U.S. troops and their ships off shore, killing thousands of Americans. The Soviets also begin fueling the nuclear missiles in Cuba. This takes several hours. Due to the corrosive nature of the liquid rocket fuel of that time they can't remain fueled continually.
3) With thousands of Americans killed and the nuclear threshold crossed, JFK orders a massive nuclear strike on the missile sites in Cuba. This would be done by B-47 bombers based in the southern U.S. Despite being heavily laden with four nuclear bombs each, The B-47s could reach Cuba in minutes and air defenses in Cuba were completely inadequate to deal with a massive bomber attack.
4) Simultaneously JFK orders a major nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact bases. U.S. IRBMs in Turkey, Italy, and England are launch against major urban targets in the Soviet Union including Moscow and Leningrad. Simultaneously, American sea launched ballistic missiles (Polaris) launch against Soviet bases in Eastern Europe and bases in the USSR itself.
5) Hours after these attacks, American B-52s and B-58s arrive from the U.S. and attack whatever is left in the Soviet Union that looks the least bit threatening.
6) The only possible nuclear threat to the U.S. are any Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba that might've been missed by the B-47 attack. This would likely be only a handful at most 2-6 is the most likely. Assuming they launch against the U.S. and work properly, the U.S. loses 2-6 cities at most.

War over. U.S. wins. Soviet Union gone forever.

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Two to six cities. Obviously nothing! Why do NATO and the Warsaw Pact not chime in and if they do chime in how much of the world goes up in smoke? Are you claiming that the world economy and environment are not thrown into a calamity? Good luck with that.

Craig234 said:

It's taken decades for the truth about the crisis to get clearer and clearer, gradually revealing who really said what, overcoming some incorrect history in Robert Kennedy's book, revealing a secret deal, the US learning the danger had been far higher than imagined, myths appearing that it wasn't as dangerous as it was, and more. Here's the best article I've seen summarizing these issues, recommended history:

The Cuban Missile Crisis at 55 | The Nation

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Having been immersed in the Cuban Missile Crisis literature in the 1970s, and kept up with some of it since I'll pass on your article. And it doesn't help that it was published in the Nation, a source that is sufficiently untrustworthy that I have to cross check it against the New Republic and National Review.

But yes, the Cuban Missile Crisis continues to fascinate. It is also instructive on how leaders miscalculate based on their ignorance and/or warped understanding of their adversary.

Khrushchev, of course, was the single most important personality in causing this crisis and, arguably, the most pivotal personality in resolving it. In contrast, I believe the Kennedy team, collectively, was the most important governmental decision making body in bringing it to a peaceful conclusion.

Of course, if Kennedy had the backbone to finish the job at the Bay of Pigs and gotten rid of Castro, the Missile Crisis issue would never have developed. Nor would their have been regional support for wars of liberation, Angola, Grenada or a Soviet base and brigade in Cuba (or possibly a Nicaragua and Venezuela).

jnug said:

Two to six cities. Obviously nothing! Why do NATO and the Warsaw Pact not chime in and if they do chime in how much of the world goes up in smoke? Are you claiming that the world economy and environment are not thrown into a calamity? Good luck with that.

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The only deployed nuclear weapons for NATO in 1962 and the Warsaw Pact ever were American and Soviet ones. The Soviet ones would've been destroyed by U.S. nuclear weapons detonating on their bases across Eastern Europe so they are a non factor.

The world economy would be damaged though not as much as you think as the U.S. and Western Europe would be basically intact. The environment would hardly notice that small scale of a nuclear conflict.

gino said:

According to Robert McNamara in the documentary The Fog Of War, some of our top military leaders wanted to start a limited nuclear war.

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That is true as I understand. The thinking was, that a nuclear exchange with the communists was inevitable, and so it was better to have it early when they had few nukes and 'take them out' than to wait until they could destroy more of the US. Of course, there's the infamous 'if there are two Americans and one Russian left, we win' quote.

jnug said:

Further you seem to forget that Kennedy had already announced to the entire world that any nuclear attack by the Soviet Union from Cuba on the United States or any US ally or any country in this hemisphere be considered an act of war y the United States requiring a full nuclear response by the United States upon the Soviet Union. What the hell do you think "full nuclear response" means? Do you actually think Kennedy could have backed down after that statement?

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It's a bit complicated. It's true that the Soviets were ramping up their missiles and didn't have that many. While JFK had run on the myth of a 'missile gap' that the Soviets were ahead, when he took office he was informed that our intelligence said they actually had only four missiles. I'm not sure how many they had 2.5 years later. So perhaps they couldn't have completely destroyed the US, only several major cities. Not exactly a great outcome. I also don't have info on the fallout effects from a war at that time.

Had we invaded as Kennedy's government wanted, and the Soviets used their tactical nukes, it seems clear Kennedy would have returned nukes to at least Cuba. Here's where a little more background helps.

Eisenhower had removed conventional forces and made all-out nuclear war our only option to respond to a variety of situations, making the world a very dangerous place. Kennedy saw that hair-trigger for nuclear was as the most dangerous thing in the world and made it his top priority to change.

When he took office, he ordered McNamara to review our nuclear war plans, which were designed and held under the insane Curtis LeMay. Turns out, at the time, the Pentagon felt that the nation's nuclear war plans were 'theirs' and no civilian had ever seen them, and they were not interested in letting their boss, the Secretary of Defense, see them, and they told McNamara no.

McNamara had to go to JFK and have him issue an order to the Pentagon to let him see the plans. When he did, he saw that the only plan was an 'all out' attack destroying not only every decent size city in the Soviet Union, but just because, in China as well.

But there's a little more to the story. Turns out, JFK and McNamara had a real problem with the idea of nuclear war. They made a secret pact that if the a report came in of Soviet missiles launched at the US, JFK would not automatically launch missiles in response. Their thinking was that at that point, deterrence would have failed, and killing that many more people in response would not necessarily be the right thing to do, and that they knew the detection systems were imperfect and they wouldn't trust them; of course, since deterrence was so important, they kept this agreement secret to the two of them. Privately, JFK called himself "almost a peace at any price president" - but as the country demanded a cold warrior at the height of the cold war, he knew to portray that.

So having said all that, it's not quite clear how much the nuclear war would have escalated in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's though it would have been a global exchange - and there's yet another issue to account for. JFK and Khrushchev both had large "hawks" in their military they felt were threatening their control over their countries they couldn't necessarily control. JFK was shown a book, "Seven Days in May", with a story about the military taking control, and told his friends he felt it was possible if there was one more Bay of Pigs type incident where he held the military back; he asked for it to be made into a movie as a warning to the country, and allowed filming in the White House.

He and Khrushchev discussed this danger of not being able to control their militaries (both sides had lower level officers that nearly started a war) and rather became allies against their own militaries. Khrushchev used a metaphor of 'pulling a knot tighter' which they'd be unable to loosen. For that matter, JFK was using 'backchannel' communications to talk to Khrushchev, where Robert Kennedy would meet with a trusted Soviet contact, to keep their communications even from his own government - and the final resolution to the crisis involved a 'secret deal' that would have been politically disastrous for Kennedy if exposed at the time. McNamara was really Kennedy's only trusted military ally at the time, though he tried to improve things a little by bringing in a new Joint Chief of Staffs Chairman, Maxwell Taylor, who had protested Eisenhower's nuclear hair-trigger.

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We probably need more above ground testing because apparently we are a few generations past understanding what the big MERV nukes of that time were capable of doing and that is really all we had then other than a few tactical nukes.

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What are you talking about? Massive atmospheric testing happened by the Soviets at the time threatening harm - that's why JFK fought hard for the limited nuclear test ban treaty, defeating his own Pentagon who fought him, and he felt it was his more important achievement.

If you do some reading on the Soviet testing at the time, it's shocking.

JFK was warned of the dangers, and he made a major initiative to end it, the first step back in the cold war.

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swing_voter said:

The Russians pulled their nukes out of Cuba.

What is little known is that the Americans pulled their nukes out of Turkey a few months later.

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The nukes in Turkey had been a provocation by Eisenhower and were a leading cause of the Soviets seeking parity with nukes in Cuba, one of two causes along with our threat to Cuba.

But they were reportedly obsolete, and JFK had already ordered their removal, which had not been carried out. JFK did not want to be seen 'trading' them, as justified as that would have been to everyone but the rather aggressive American people, and that agreement was kept secret.

Thoreau72 said:

I agree that the information was correct, but the speculation is about what might have happened.

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The speculation is quite reasonable and informed. The main question is around just how far it would have escalated in the nuclear exchange.