The Cuban Missile Crisis

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

The “Caribbean crisis,” as it was known in the former Soviet Union, was attributed to the Kennedy administration’s unwillingness to accept the status quo in Cuba. Unalterably opposed to Fidel Castro, the administration organized an ill-fated invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro refugees in April 1961. After the “Bay of Pigs” fiasco, the Central Intelligence Agency tried to assassinate Castro and sponsored covert operations against Cuba, the Department of State organized an economic and political boycott of the country, and the Pentagon prepared and rehearsed a full-scale invasion of Cuba. The Soviet Union had become deeply involved with the Castro regime, and was especially pleased by its turn toward socialism. By
In September 1962, he publicly committed his administration to oppose the introduction into Cuba of “offensive weapons” — defined to include missiles — and thus to deflect Republican charges that he was “soft” on Cuba. By drawing the line here, he in effect told Khrushchev that he would not oppose the continuing buildup of Soviet conventional forces in Cuba, a major concession given the state of American public opinion. Presidential counsel and advisor Theodore Sorensen later admitted that this strategy was based on the assumption that the Soviet Union had no intention whatsoever of sending missiles to Cuba.18 If Kennedy had now accepted the missiles, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy reasoned, Republican opponents would have a triple indictment against him: “You said it wouldn’t happen, and you were
Khrushchev added the new demand about the Jupiters because he had been advised by the Washington embassy that the administration was prepared to remove them. He had no inkling of the consternation that his Saturday cable would cause in Washington and Havana.32 Nor was he aware of most of the incidents that had raised concerns in the Ex Comm that the two countries were close to war. He knew about the U-2, which Castro claimed credit for having shot down, a story the Soviet military did nothing to discredit because they had shot down the plane in violation of standing orders from Defense Minister Malinovsky.33 At 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning, local time, Khrushchev summoned key officials to his dacha for a meeting that later moved to a government mansion on the outskirts of Moscow. According to participants, the tension was “phenomenal.” Soviet and Cuban intelligence had reported that American armed forces were ready to invade Cuba, and some officials worried that they would attack the Soviet Union as well with nuclear weapons. They were in