This October is the sixty-second anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and today, October 22, marks the anniversary of Kennedy’s televised address to the nation, announcing that US spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. (You can watch the uncut speech below.) These missile sites—under construction but nearing completion—housed medium-range missiles capable of striking several major cities in the United States, including the nation’s capital.
Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval “quarantine” of Cuba, asserting that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a “clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace.”
Four Cold War Studies posts provide an introduction to the crisis.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, to some the most intense confrontation of the Cold War, developed shortly after the discovery that Soviet missiles were on the ground in Cuba. While Khrushchev insisted that there were no offensive intentions against the United States, the Kennedy administration demanded that the missiles be dismantled and removed. Read an overview here.
Why Did the Soviet Union Place Missiles in Cuba?
Like many of you, I still am wondering why on earth Nikita Khrushchev thought it would be a good idea to put missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles away from the American mainland.
This post considers that question, asking: Why did the Soviet Union place missiles in Cuba? And why didn’t they hide them? They were well aware of U-2 reconnaissance flights over the island.
Graham Allison’s well-regarded analysis, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, employs three explanatory models to explore the crisis: a rational actor or classical model, an organizational process model, and a governmental politics model. The focus here is on the ‘rational actor model’ because it presents the most information on the overarching question: Why did the Soviet Union place missiles in Cuba?
The model presents five possibilities or hypotheses. Read about them here.
The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Superpower Involvement Cements the Cuban Revolution
At the same time that Castro was consolidating and radicalizing the Cuban revolution on the homefront, the Central Intelligence Agency was organizing Cuban exiles in the US for an invasion of the island. An easy victory was expected, but, instead, the invasion played into the hands of the revolutionary government, reinforcing nationalism, creating a new set of heroes, and helping to crystallize popular support for the regime. You can read the article here.
The Cuban Missile Crisis and Its Aftermath: The Kennedy Approach to Nationalism
This post discusses America’s policy in the Third World in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. The United States became determined to counter “wars of liberation” before emerging nationalist leaders could exploit them. Read the post here.
More to Read or Watch
If you like to read and want more detailed information about the crisis check out Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy and Arthur Meier Schlesinger. Amazon writes: “In this unique account, he (RFK) describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F. Kennedy.
If you want to watch, stream Thirteen Days starring Kevin Costner as Ken O’Donnell, the special assistant and appointments secretary to President John F. Kennedy from 1961 until Kennedy’s assassination. From Roger Ebert’s review:
The movie’s taut, flat style is appropriate for a story that is more about facts and speculation than about action. Kennedy and his advisers study high-altitude photos and intelligence reports, and wonder if Khrushchev’s word can be trusted. Everything depends on what they decide. The movie shows men in unknotted ties and shirt-sleeves, grasping coffee cups or whiskey glasses and trying to sound rational while they are at some level terrified. What the Kennedy team realizes, and hopes the other side realizes, is that the real danger is that someone will strike first out of fear of striking second.
The movie is for rent on all the usual platforms
