thesis statement on cuban missile crisis

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The Cuban Missile Crisis Richard Ned Lebow * Mershon Center, Ohio State University August 2001 The Cuban Missile Crisis (Full Text, PDF, 31 pages, 49 KB) Page: [1] [2] [3]   Introduction: A critical point in time?. The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is generally regarded as the most serious military confrontation of the Cold War. American destroyers deployed along a picket line to intercept Soviet ships transporting missiles and nuclear warheads to Cuba while American air, ground and naval forces prepared for air strikes against Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba and a follow-up invasion. The Strategic Air Command was put on an unprecedented state of alert – "DEFCON II," only one step away from "war is imminent." On Saturday morning,October 27, President Kennedy and his advisors were pessimistic about their ability to preserve the peace. Robert Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General of the U.S., had "the feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling." 1 In Moscow, the tension was "phenomenal." On Sunday morning, General Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev and his advisors worried "that Kennedy intended to declare war, to launch an attack" against the Soviet Union. 2 That same day, the two leaders reached an accommodation that, in retrospect, turned out to be one of the key turning points of the Cold War.   Overview 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 helping Castro, whom he viewed as "a modern-day Lenin," Khrushchev thought he was doing something of historical importance. 3 Moscow also had more practical reasons for supporting Cuba; the triumph of socialism in Cuba made good propaganda elsewhere in Latin America and demonstrated to Beijing that the Soviet Union was not a "paper tiger." The fall of Castro, were it to occur, was expected to have "a devastating effect on the revolutionary world movement." 4 The prospect of a second American invasion troubled Khrushchev and his advisors throughout the summer and fall of 1961. The Cubans were even more worried, and kept Moscow fully informed of American covert operations and military preparations. In the spring of 1962, Khrushchev decided that as the Soviet Union was too far away to save Cuba by conventional means, a second invasion could only be deterred by deploying nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States on the island. They "would force Kennedy to choose between accepting Cuba or fighting a nuclear war." And, as the American President was a reasonable man, he would choose the former. 5 Khrushchev’s decision also seems to have been influenced by his desire to establish the psychological basis for political equality with the United States. After the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, the Eisenhower Administration sought to reassure its allies by deploying intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Europe. Turkey and Italy agreed to accept the missiles, but President Eisenhower had second thoughts about the political wisdom of the deployment; he worried that Khrushchev would regard them as extraordinarily provocative, "just as we would if he put missiles in our backyard." 6 Against Khrushchev’ advice, President Kennedy decided to persevere with the installation of Jupiter missiles in Turkey, and Khrushchev was furious. He complained at length to Kennedy about the missiles at the June 1961 Vienna Summit, as well as about other efforts the United States was making "to surround the Soviet Union with bases." 7 During the 1962 crisis, Khrushchev wrote a private letter to Kennedy suggesting that the Cuban missiles were an appropriate tit-for-tat response to the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. 8 Khrushchev appears to have decided to send missiles to Cuba in May 1961 after a trip to Bulgaria. He confided his intention to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Deputy Prime Minister Anastas I. Mikoyan, both of whom doubted that missiles could be deployed secretly and warned that their discovery might provoke a crisis with the United States. 9 Khrushchev nevertheless persevered, and compelled a reluctant Presidium to vote its support for the missile deployment after he had gained the acquiescence of Fidel Castro. Defense Minister Rodion Ya. Malinovsky, who also had doubts about the wisdom of the deployment, was put in charge of operational planning. The most enthusiastic supporter was Marshal Sergei S. Biryuzov, recently appointed commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, who maintained that the rockets "would look like palm trees" to American reconnaissance aircraft. 10 A Soviet delegation, led by Marshal Biryuzov, was sent to Havana in late May to consult with the Cuban government. The Cuban Central Committee thought their defense would be better served by conventional weapons, and feared that the missile deployment would damage their reputation in Latin America by turning Cuba into "a Soviet military base." They nevertheless felt they had no choice but to accept the missiles because of the material assistance they were receiving from the Soviet Union. 11 On July 2, Raúl Castro arrived in Moscow for talks and to negotiate a draft treaty. In early August, Fidel Castro sent Che Guevara and Emilio Aragonés back to Moscow to plead with Khrushchev to deploy the missiles openly. The Cubans feared that Kennedy would react violently to a secret fait accompli. 12 Khrushchev made light of their concerns, and brushed aside the continued misgivings of Mikoyan, Gromyko and Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had been let in on the secret earlier in the summer. 13 Khrushchev had initially intended to send only a small number of missiles, but the Ministry of Defense plan called for 24 R-12 launchers with 36 SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and 6 training missiles, 16 launchers with 24 SS-5 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), and nuclear warheads for all the operational missiles. Also to be sent were four motorized rifle regiments, two air-defense missile divisions comprising 24 missile sites, two regiments of tactical cruise missiles, a regiment of 40 MiG-21 aircraft, a regiment of 33 IL-28 light bombers, an Mi-8 transport helicopter regiment, a transport air squadron, and a coastal defense force consisting of land-based missiles, a squadron each of surface ships and submarines, and a brigade of missile-launching patrol boats. By mid-October, the total deployment would reach forty-two thousand of the planned forty-five thousand men. 14 From Washington’s perspective, the Cuban missile crisis was the result of the Soviet Union’s nearly successful attempt to deploy nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba that were capable of reaching targets in the United States. The deployment challenged the strategic status quo (which at the time was overwhelmingly favorable to the United States), made it appear that Khrushchev did not respect American resolve, and threatened the domestic standing of the President and the Democratic Party on the eve of Congressional elections. President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara were less worried by the strategic than by the political implications of the deployment. They reasoned that the Soviet Union would sooner or later deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting targets anywhere in North America. The President believed that, "The Soviet move had been undertaken so swiftly, so secretly and with so much deliberate deception – it was so sudden a departure from Soviet practice – that it represented a provocative change in the delicate status quo." 15 Kennedy and his advisors reasoned that if Khrushchev succeeded with the missile deployment, he would raise doubts in Europe about America’s defense commitment and launch a new political offensive against the Western position in Berlin, perhaps demanding a retreat from that city in return for withdrawing Soviet missiles from Cuba. 16 Kennedy had been under great public pressure to take a firm stand against Castro; senators from his own party had joined Republicans in calling for an invasion of Cuba. 17 He had sought to deflect these pressures and avoid a crisis with the Soviet Union by walking a fine line on the Cuban question. 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 wrong; you said you would know how to stop it if it did happen, and you were wrong; and now you say it doesn’t matter, and it does." 19 The Cuban missile crisis began for the United States on the morning of October 16, when President Kennedy was informed of the discovery of missile sites in Cuba by U-2 surveillance aircraft. Kennedy convened an informal group of cabinet officials and top civilian and military advisors (the Ex Comm) to consider and plan an appropriate response. "Hawks" on the Ex Comm pushed for an air strike or an invasion, and at first, the President was receptive to the idea of an air strike. After several days of deliberation, his preferences changed, and he opted for a "naval quarantine"; it signaled resolve to Khrushchev while avoiding the kind of military action that might compel Soviet retaliation and escalate to a conventional or nuclear war. On the evening of Monday, October 22, the President having previously secured the support of key allies, announced the discovery of the missiles and the imposition of a blockade of Cuba to the nation and the world. 20 By then, American destroyers and submarines were strung out on a picket line five hundred miles distant from Cuba waiting to interdict any ships carrying weapons and military supplies to that island. 21 The armed forces also prepared for possible military action, and assembled an invasion force of more than 140,000 troops and 579 ground- and carrier-based combat aircraft. The Strategic Air Command sent a maximum number of bombers aloft and brought as many ICBM silos as possible to full alert status. 22 The blockade put Khrushchev in a thoroughly unenviable position. The Soviet missiles in Cuba were vulnerable to American attack, as was the Castro regime. Prudence dictated accommodation, but withdrawal of the missiles under American pressure would involve serious domestic and foreign policy costs, and would require Castro’s acquiescence. Khrushchev had Soviet work crews in Cuba step up the pace of construction at the missile sites. He instructed one ship, not carrying any proscribed cargo, to challenge the blockade, fully expecting the Americans to fire on it. He did not want to run the blockade, but felt he had to make a symbolic challenge to preserve national honor and his political standing. 23 To minimize the risks of confrontation, he ordered Soviet ships en route to Cuba to stop, and the sixteen ships carrying arms to return to the Soviet Union. As much by default as design, Khrushchev pursued a two-pronged strategy. By appearing tough and uncompromising, he tried to extract concessions from Kennedy in return for withdrawing the missiles. At home, he sought to convince his Presidium colleagues that failure to remove the missiles would provoke an American invasion of Cuba. 24 Kennedy and his advisors breathed a sigh of relief when the Soviet ships carrying weapons to Cuba halted before the blockade line. But they recognized that the blockade did nothing to prevent construction on the missile sites, and more and more missiles reached a state of readiness as the week wore on. 25 The hawks pressed for an air strike, convinced the Soviets would not dare to retaliate because the United States possessed overwhelming strategic nuclear superiority and equally great conventional military advantages in and around the Caribbean. President Kennedy and Secretary of State McNamara resisted these pressures, convinced that even a limited strike against the Soviet missiles bases in Cuba would provoke a counter-strike against the American missile bases in Turkey. 26 The first real break in the crisis came on Friday evening, when the State Department received a letter from General Secretary Khrushchev addressed to the President stating his willingness to cease military shipments to Cuba and withdraw the forces already there if the United States committed itself not to invade or support any invasion of Cuba. 27 Optimism gave way to pessimism on Saturday morning in response to a series of incidents that suggested to Ex Comm members, in the words of Robert Kennedy, that "the noose was tightening on all of us." 28 The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that the previous evening Soviet diplomats in New York had prepared to destroy sensitive documents in the expectation that war was imminent. The latest CIA and military intelligence indicated that a Soviet ship was approaching the blockade line and that Soviet construction crews were still working round-the-clock at the missile sites. At 10:17 that morning, the news ticker began to print out a message from Khrushchev demanding withdrawal of the American missiles in Turkey as a precondition for the removal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. A few minutes later, the Ex Comm learned that an American U-2 had been shot down over Cuba, probably by a Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM). The Soviet air-defense network in Cuba was apparently operational, and Moscow seemed to have no compunction about shooting down unarmed American aircraft. To the annoyance of the hawks, the President refused to authorize a retaliatory air strike. Instead, he decided to respond positively to Khrushchev’s letter of the night before, ignoring the message of that morning that had insisted on the additional condition of the missile swap. 29 After the Ex Comm adjourned, the President met early in the evening with key advisors – none of them hawks – to discuss the content of an oral message Robert Kennedy would convey to the Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Anatoliy Dobrynin: the United States would not enter into any agreement about the Jupiter missiles, but would withdraw them sometime after the Soviet missiles were removed from Cuba. 30 Secretary of State Dean Rusk remained behind for a private talk with the President, and the two men worked out a fall-back position if the offer to Dobrynin did not resolve the crisis. Rusk suggested, and Kennedy agreed, that a request from United Nations’ Secretary General U Thant to both superpowers to withdraw their respective missiles from Cuba and Turkey would provide a face-saving way for the United States to accept a public missile trade. Rusk was authorized to prepare the initiative in case it became necessary. 31 Khrushchev’s overriding concern was to prevent an invasion of Cuba and a possible attack on the Soviet Union. His Saturday cable was intended to facilitate a settlement by stipulating, which the Friday cable had not, that the Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba. 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 receipt of Ambassador’s Dobrynin’s report, which stressed the urgency of a settlement in order to forestall an invasion. Robert Kennedy had told him that "hot heads" in the government were clamoring for an immediate assault, and the destruction of the U-2 had made it more difficult to resist their demands. Khrushchev had also received a disturbing cable from Ambassador Alekseev in Havana reporting that Fidel Castro had panicked and sought refuge in the underground bomb shelter of the Soviet Embassy in the belief that an attack was imminent. Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States. 34 Khrushchev and his advisors were convinced that Kennedy’s promise to remove the Jupiters, as communicated by Dobrynin, was his "last concession." At 10:00 a.m. he created two working groups to prepare a positive response to Kennedy’s Saturday cable. He took the extraordinary step of having one of these groups prepare a message to be broadcast that afternoon over Radio Moscow to ensure that it would reach the White House before Kennedy was scheduled to address the American people on television that evening. 35 President Kennedy was informed of Khrushchev’s message at 10:00 a.m. in Washington, just before leaving for church. The following day, Ambassador Dobrynin presented Robert Kennedy with a letter from Khrushchev spelling out the missile swap. On instructions from his brother, Robert Kennedy returned the letter to Dobrynin and explained that the administration was committed to the arrangement but did not want any document acknowledging it on file. 36 The immediate crisis was over, but negotiations continued for some months between representatives of the superpowers over the implementation of their understanding. Vice Premier Mikoyan had to travel to Havana to convince a reluctant Fidel Castro to permit withdrawal of the Soviet missiles.   Endnotes Note 1: . Kennedy, Robert, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Missile Crisis , New York: Norton, 1969, p. 97. Back. Note 2: . Oleg Grinevsky, interview by the author, Vienna, October11, 1991; Comments of Oleg Troyanovsky, in Blight, James G.; Allyn, Bruce J. and Welch David A., eds., Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse, New York: Pantheon Books, 1993, p. 43; Oleg Troyanovsky. "The Caribbean Crisis: A View from the Kremlin," International Affairs 4-5 (Moscow) (April-May 1992): 149-50. Back. Note 3: . Alexei Adzhubei, interview by the author, Moscow, May 15, 1989. Back. Note 4: . Khrushchev, Nikita S., Khrushchev Remembers, trans. Strobe Talbott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970, p. 505. Back. Note 5: . Sergei Khrushchev, interview by the author, Moscow, May 17, 1989. Back. Note 6: . "Memorandum of Conference With the President, 16June 1959," 19June 1959, p. 1, in DDEL/WHO, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, State Department Subseries, Box 3; see Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, Ch. 2, for the political-military background of the deployment. Back. Note 7: . "Record of Vienna Summit Meeting, 3 June 1961, 3 P.M., at residence of U.S. Ambassador"; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, p. 567. Back. Note 8: . Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, 27 October 1962. Back. Note 9: . Gromyko, Andrei A.. "Karibskii Krizis: o Glasnosti Teper’ i Skrytnosti Togda," [The Caribbean Crisis: On Glasnnost Now and Secrecy Then] Izvestiya, 15 April 1989, p. 106; Sergo Mikoyan. "The Caribbean Crisis Seen from a Distance," Latinskya Amerika 1 (January 1988): 70-71; Sergei Khrushchev, interview by the author, Moscow, 18 May 1989; see Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War, Ch. 4 for the most complete account of the decision-making process. Back. Note 10: . Anatoliy A. Gromyko, interview by the author, Moscow, 18 May 1989; Mikoyan. "The Caribbean Crisis Seen from a Distance"; Georgiy Korneinko. "Something New About the Caribbean Crisis," unpublished typescript, p. 7;Sergei Khrushchev, interview by the author, Moscow, 17 May 1989: Anatoliy Gribkov, "An der Schwelle zum Atomkrieg," [On the Threshold of Nuclear War] Der Spiegel, 1982, no. 16, p. 147. Back. Note 11: . Mikoyan. "The Caribbean Crisis Seen from a Distance"; Aleksandr I. Alekseev. "The Caribbean Crisis: As It Really Was," Ekho Planety 33 (November 1988): 27-33; Blight, James G.; Lewis, David and Welch, David A., eds., Cuba Between the Superpowers: The Antigua Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Providence, R.I.: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, 1991, passim. Back. Note 12: . Comments of Cuban participants in the "Moscow Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis," in Blight, Allyn and Welch, Cuba on the Brink, and at "The Antigua conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis," in Blight, Lewis and Welch, Cuba Between the Superpowers. Back. Note 13: . Vadim Bogdanov, interview by the author, Moscow, 15 May 1989. Back. Note 14: . Gen. Dimitri Volkogonov, interview by Raymond L. Garthoff, Moscow, 1 February 1989; General Anatoliy Gribkov. "Operation ‘Anadyr,’" Der Spiegel, 1992, no. 16, p. 154; Lt. Col. Anatoliy Dokuchaev. "Operatsiia Anadyr [Operation Anadyr]," Krasnaya Zvezda [Red Star], 21 October 1992, p. 3. Back. Note 15: . Sorenson,Theodore C., Kennedy , New York: Harper & Row, 1965, p. 683. On the American reaction to the missiles, see Bundy, McGeorge, Danger and Survival: Choice About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years , New York: Random House, 1988, pp. 391-98; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War, Ch. 5; and May, Ernest R. and Zelikow, Philip D., eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis , Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Back. Note 16: . Sorensen, Kennedy, pp. 677-78; Comments of Dean Rusk in the "11:50 a.m. Ex Comm Meeting of 16 October," in May and Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes, pp. 60-61. Back. Note 17: . See Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , Ch. 5, for the influence of domestic politics on the framing of the missile deployment. Back. Note 18: . Comments of Theodore Sorensen, in Welch, David A., ed., Proceedings of the Hawk’s Cay Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis , 5-8 March 1987, Cambridge: Harvard University, Center for Science and International Affairs, Working Paper 89-1, 1989, p. 51; and Welch, David A., ed. Proceedings of the Cambridge Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 11-12 October 1987, Cambridge: Harvard University, Center for Science and International Affairs, Working Paper, April 1988, pp. 60-61. Back. Note 19: . Bundy, Danger and Survival, pp. 394, 411-12. Back. Note 20: . May and Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , Ch. 5. Back. Note 21: . Atlantic Command, Headquarters of the Commander in Chief, CINCLANT, "Historical Account of Cuban Crisis-1963," 29 April 1963 (Author: Who is the publisher of this document?); Bouchard, Joseph F., Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies , New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, Ch. 4. Back. Note 22: . Office of the Secretary of Defense. "Department of Defense Operations During the Cuban Crisis," 12 February 1963, pp. 6, 12-24; Atlantic Command, "Historical Account of Cuban Crisis-1963"; USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, Headquarters USAF, "The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis," December 1962. Back. Note 23: . Sergei Khrushchev, interview by the author, Moscow, 17 May 1989. Back. Note 24: . Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , Ch. 6. Back. Note 25: . Central Intelligence Agency, "Report on the Construction of Missile Sites in Cuba," 19 October 1962; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , pp. 106-08. Back. Note 26: . May and Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes, passim; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , Ch. 6. Back. Note 27: . "Letter from Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, 26 October 1962," Department of State Bulletin 69, no. 1795, 19 November 1973, pp. 640-43. Back. Note 28: . Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days , p. 97. Back. Note 29: . May and Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes , "Meeting of Saturday, October 27, 10:00 A.M.," pp. 492-518; Kennedy, Thirteen Days ; Hilsman, Roger, To Move A Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy , Garden City: Doubleday, 1967, p. 220; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , Chs. 6 & 12. Back. Note 30: . Dean Rusk, interview by James Blight, Athens, GA, 18 May 1987; Dean Rusk, interview by the author, Athens, GA, 21 September 1987; Rusk, Dean as told to Rusk, Richard, As I Saw It , New York: Norton, 1990, p. 240; Bundy, Danger and Survival , pp. 432-33; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , pp. 125-26. Back. Note 31: . Ibid. Back. Note 32: . "Letter from Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, 27 October 1962," Department of State Bulletin 69, pp. 741-43; Troyanovsky, "The Caribbean Crisis"; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , pp. 132-35. Back. Note 33: . Oleg Grinevsky, interview by the author, Stockholm, 26 April 1992; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, p. 499; Alekseev, "The Caribbean Crisis"; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , pp. 300-09. Back. Note 34: . See Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , pp. 132-41, for the Soviet discussions, and pp. 523-26 for the text of Dobrynin’s cable reporting on his meeting with Robert Kennedy. Fidel Castro to Nikita S. Khrushchev, 27 October 1962, Granma, 2 December 1990; Comments of Aleksandr Alekseev and Jorge Risquet at "The Antigua conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis," in Blight, Lewis and Welch, Cuba Between the Superpowers. (Author: see query in note 12) Back. Note 35: . Oleg Grinevsky, interview by the author, Vienna, 11 October 1991; Leonid Zamyatin and Georgiy Kornienko, interviews by the author, Moscow, 16-17 December 1991; Kornienko, "Something New About the Caribbean Crisis"; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , pp. 136-43. Back. Note 36: . "Khrushchev Confidential Message of 28 October 1962 to John F. Kennedy"; Troyanovsky, "Something New About the Caribbean Crisis"; Georgiy Kornienko, interview by the author, Moscow, 17 December 1991; Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War , p. 143. Back. Note *: Richard Ned Lebow is director of the Mershon Center and professor of political science, history and psychology at The Ohio State University. His most recent books are We All Lost the Cold War (1994), co-authored with Janice Gross Stein, and The Art of Bargaining (1996). He has a novel ( Play It Again Ilse ) and two co-edited books forthcoming : Unmaking the West: Counterfactual and Contingency , and Learning from the Cold War .   Back.

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Ubc theses and dissertations, the american political discourse on the cuban missile crisis guttieri, karen rochelle --> -->.

This thesis examines and critiques the American political discourse on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The event itself is past, yet words used to describe and explain the missile crisis capture and give meaning to the experience. The meaning of the crisis begins in a basic sense, then, with the discourse. The increasing availability of material evidence has reinvigorated the discourse on the missive crisis. Where relevant, recent evidence will be employed to critique previous and recent interpretations of the this seminal event. Consensus and debate are both to be found in the discourse on the Cuban crisis. First, there is a large body of shared understanding, or conventional wisdom, on the crisis. Secondly, there is disagreement as to the meaning of the crisis in recent manifestations of the discourse. The essay will use a propaganda model lo examine the politically necessary mythology embodied in the conventional wisdom. This thesis will use a tendency analysis approach to organize the debate on the missile crisis, along the lines of ideological schools of thought, and within the context of a larger American nuclear debate. The propaganda and the tendency analyse models complement the general approach of discourse. These models have been developed specifically for the study of politics, yet the methodology of each is statement analysis; as such these models are rooted in language, ana so conform with the general discourse approach. Security is the common referent of both the conventional wisdom and the current debate. In particular, the President, as the custodian of nuclear weapons, is the principle actor responsible for national security. The powerful image of the President dominates the conventional wisdom, and retains significance in the contemporary ideological debate on the lessons of the missile crisis. The nuclear arsenal at the disposal of the President endows him with great, but double-edged power. The paper concludes with some general observations on the special significance of Presidential leadership as represented in the discourse on the missile crisis, and as necessitated in confronting crises in general. First, in crisis, there is little time for the President to make difficult decisions. Secondly, there may be greater devolution of authority to the military forces deployed to convey the credibility of American deterrence. As such, the subordination of force to policy must remain sound. The image of the President is, of necessity, an image which combines prudence and strength. Manufactured images are not enough however. Policy must be tested in terms of its alleged purpose. Likewise, doctrine must be evaluated in terms the purpose of the policy it is designed to support.

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Permanent URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0107125

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