Cuban Missile Crisis Notes

Bureaucratic Politics Model

  • Graham Allison's bureaucratic politics model is a well-known midrange theory of international relations.
  • The lecture will cover the theory, apply it to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and assess its ability to explain the crisis.
  • Anomalies in the Cuban Missile Crisis are hard to explain without using a midrange theory.

Background: Cuban Missile Crisis

  • The Cuban Missile Crisis is also known as the October Crisis (in Cuba) and the Missile Crisis (in the Soviet Union).
  • It was one of the most important events in human history, arguably the closest the world came to a full-scale nuclear war.
  • During the crisis, U.S. President John F. Kennedy estimated the chances of avoiding war at only 1 in 3 or even.
  • A war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union could have escalated to a nuclear exchange, potentially killing 100+ million people on each side, with further casualties from disrupted agriculture, supply lines, disease, and famine.
  • A school of thought suggests that nuclear weapons produce deterrence by preventing nations from going to war because of the devastating consequences.
  • Nuclear weapons are also essential for the survival of some regimes, such as North Korea's Kim dynasty.
  • If one country has nuclear weapons, others will want them to deter potential adversaries, leading to a cycle of nuclear proliferation.

Context: The Cold War

  • The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred within the context of the Cold War, a global conflict between the U.S. and the West versus the Soviet Union and the communist bloc.
  • Cuba was a close ally of the Soviet Union, making it one of the many flashpoints where the East and West confronted each other.
  • Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev secretly decided to deploy Soviet long-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuba in the fall of 1962.
  • This deployment was a surprise to the U.S., as the Soviets had promised they would not take such actions, both publicly and privately.
  • In addition to the missiles and warheads, the Soviets also sent anti-aircraft defenses (SAM missile batteries), combat troops, and naval forces to Cuba.
  • The missiles were strategic nuclear weapons with a relatively long range and large destructive footprint.
  • If placed in Cuba, these missiles could reach the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, military bases, missile silos, and command centers.
  • The U.S. feared that the missiles were intended for a first strike, potentially devastating the country before the U.S. could respond effectively.

Discovery of the Missiles

  • The crisis began to break on October 14, 1962, when an American U-2 spy plane on a reconnaissance mission over Cuba took high-resolution film.
  • The film was developed and analyzed at the Stewart Building in Washington, D.C., where analysts manually examined each inch of the film, looking for changes.
  • Analysts identified new developments, such as tents, convoys of trucks, and long objects that were later identified as missile components.
  • The process of analyzing the film took about two days.
  • President Kennedy was informed of the findings early in the morning on October 16, 1962, marking the official beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the Thirteen Days (October 16-28).

Briefing President Kennedy

  • President Kennedy was shown a poster board illustrating the estimated missile ranges from Cuba. The poster showed that the missiles could hit major U.S. cities.
  • Oxford, Mississippi, was included on the map as an example of gallows humor: laughing in the face of death.
  • At the time, President Kennedy was dealing with a major domestic political crisis involving the desegregation of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford.
  • The inclusion of Oxford was a dark joke suggesting that the Soviets could destroy Oxford, Mississippi, thus resolving the segregation crisis for the Kennedy administration.
  • This anecdote illustrates the human side of the abstract world events and shows how individual psychological factors, such as humor, can play a role in international relations.

Options Considered by the Kennedy Administration

  • Do Nothing:
    • The U.S. still had a significant advantage over the Soviets, even with missiles in Cuba.
    • However, doing nothing would be politically unacceptable, damaging the president's credibility and making the U.S. appear weak.
  • Apply Diplomatic Pressure:
    • This was dismissed as unlikely to accomplish anything and would have the same negative consequences as doing nothing.
  • Trade Missiles:
    • The U.S. could remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy in exchange for the Soviets removing their missiles from Cuba.
    • This was unfavorable because it effectively rewarded the Soviets for their bad behavior and made the U.S. appear to be an unreliable ally.
  • Air Strikes:
    • The U.S. could launch air strikes to destroy the Soviet missile sites.
    • President Kennedy and his advisors were morally uncomfortable about doing a reverse Pearl Harbor on Cuba.
    • Airstrikes would take too long to prevent at least some missiles from being launched and were unlikely to destroy all of the missiles.
    • The U.S. did not know the location of all the Soviet missiles. Intelligence only indicated the location of 33 of 42 ballistic missiles.
    • There was no guarantee that the Soviets would accept the attack without retaliating, potentially starting World War III.
    • Intercepting the missiles after launch was not possible at the time because the technology did not exist.
  • Invasion of Cuba:
    • Taking over the island would ensure the discovery of all Soviet missiles, but it would take time could trigger WWIII & some could be launched before the invasion was complete.
  • Blockade Cuba:
    • A blockade would prevent additional missiles from reaching Cuba but would do nothing to address the missiles already present.
    • It could easily lead to war if the Soviets tried to run the blockade, and is technically an act of war.

Kennedy's Decision: Quarantine

  • President Kennedy, on the advice of the ex-com, chose to impose a quarantine around Cuba.
  • He announced to the American public and the world that no weapons, nuclear or otherwise, would be allowed into Cuba, and the U.S. Navy would stop and search any ship headed for Cuba, searching for contraband.
  • The quarantine line was enforced by a large deployment of American naval forces.
  • The Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the American military to go to DEFCON 3.
  • A quarantine is spelled with a "Q" whereas a blockade doesn't have the letter "Q" in it but are exactly the same. By calling what they were doing a quarantine as opposed to a blockade, they were trying to win the public relations battle that's also part of the Cuban missile crisis battle itself.
  • The Soviets responded by putting some of their forces in Cuba on alert and vowing to run the blockade. Still, it was almost certainly a bluff.
  • The danger of an accident, misunderstanding, or mistake that leads the two sides into a war was very real. However, neither side wanted to go to war.