Prelude
As the spring and summer of 1962 unfolded, Kennedy came under increasing domestic political criticism. The failed invasion of Cuba by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed anti-Castro force at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 represented a massive political failure and military defeat for the United States. Kennedy was widely criticized for refusing to provide air support to protect the force, including leaks to the press from US military officers incensed by the president’s decision and the consequent failure. The White House had vetoed direct combat intervention by US forces.12 Observers have argued Khrushchev’s willingness to take the risk of placing missiles in Cuba was spurred by the Bay of Pigs and the Vienna Summit shortly after that, where the Soviet leader sized up the young and inexperienced American president as a weakling.13
Both general and specific considerations were involved in the criticism and concern. The Cold War had been intense but predicated on the idea that both sides were “rational actors,” and the actions of the two sides likely would be limited. Ideology and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, focused on Europe and made global by the Korean War, had possessed relative geographic stability. Each side had been reluctant to engage in large-scale strategic moves. The boundaries of conflict seemed known and relatively limited. Shifts were minor (such as the neutralization of Austria in 1955 and the movement of Yugoslavia toward an independent and neutral stance vis-à-vis Moscow). The 1949 communist victory in taking control of China created a great political
10. Gribkov and Smith, Operation Anadyr, 6.
11. Serhii Plokhy, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2021), 259.
12. Jim Rasenberger, The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs (New York: Scribner, 2011).
13. Abel, Missile Crisis, 23–25. Abel also speculates the Bay of Pigs experience encouraged Kennedy to doubt reports of missiles in Cuba, in other words “once burned, twice shy,” 28.
and strategic shift, reverberating in the United States in intense, emotional anti-communism, but that development was distinctive.14
Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union threatened the stability of the Cold War in several important ways. First, there was the possibility of Castro’s regime sponsoring communist insurgencies elsewhere in Latin America. Second, as the Soviet military buildup in Cuba proceeded, the danger that the island could become a direct strategic military threat to the United States grew. Senior Kennedy administration officials, however, were convinced Moscow would never introduce nuclear weapons on the island.15
This second graver possibility grew as a topic of concern in the American press and public debate as the Soviet military involvement in Cuba increased in July and August 1962. In July, Havana and Moscow reached their fateful secret accord to emplace strategic nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. Meanwhile, poet Robert Frost returned from a trip to the Soviet Union, quoting Khrushchev and other leaders saying the United States was “too liberal to fight.” The Republican senatorial and congressional campaign committees declared Cuba would be “the dominant issue of the 1962 campaign,” and opinion polls indicated increasing American frustration.16
New York Republican Senator Kenneth Keating derided the Kennedy administration, repeatedly declaring that Soviet troops and missiles were in Cuba before any confirmed evidence existed. Kennedy aide Theodore C. Sorensen brushed off suggestions that the White House was insensitive to the possibility of the missile move. In this regard, the loyal aide was not alone—and the point is fundamental to this analysis.17
As the political atmosphere intensified, Kennedy engaged with the public more directly. Various administration officials had made statements about the distinction between “offensive” and “defensive” missiles, resulting in inconsistency and confusion. In a September 4, 1962, statement and a September 13 press conference, Kennedy defined long-range, ground-to-ground missiles as offensive and unacceptable. U-2 reconnaissance photographs of August 29 indicated the Soviets were installing surface-to-air antiaircraft missile (SAM) sites in Cuba. At this point, Kennedy wisely avoided issuing an
14. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, 2005). See the author’s publications about Ambassador George F. Kennan, architect of containment.
15. Abel, Missile Crisis, 19; and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., *A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House *(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), 798–99.
16. Abel, Missile Crisis, 24; Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 821, argues Frost misinterpreted and misquoted Khrushchev.
17. Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, Bantam Books, 1966), 754–58. Sorensen does credit CIA Director John McCone’s accurate foresight regarding Soviet intentions.
ultimatum. While indicating the United States would tolerate the presence of the surface-to-air antiaircraft missile sites, the president stated that if evidence emerged of “significant offensive capability either in Cuban hands or under Soviet direction,” then “the gravest issues would arise.”18