
The Real Cuban Missile Crisis (2013) - ClintEhrlich
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/?single_page=true
======
veddox
I like the comparison to the current China situation at the end of the
article. It's true, China's military power and aggression are always being
hyped, but when you get down to it, when is the last time you heard about a
Chinese cruiser in the Mediterranean, or a Chinese aircraft carrier off
Greenland? And yet the States are moving their naval task forces across the
world all the time.

Perhaps we really are experiencing a similar twisting of the public view of
military politics as happened back then.

~~~
nl
While I agree with your point, accuracy is important even when it undermines
what I'm agreeing with.

 _when is the last time you heard about a Chinese cruiser in the
Mediterranean_

"On the Chinese side, the vessels involved were fewer in number but consisted
of newer models including two Type 054A frigates, the Linyi and Weifang. Type
054A frigates are multirole warships and have been deployed for anti-piracy
operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009. Also, among other tasks, in January
2014, a ship of the same class was sent to escort Syrian chemical weapons
destined for destruction. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) currently
has 18 Type 054A frigates in service. The third Chinese vessel to participate
in Joint Sea 2015 was the Type 903 replenishment ship Weishanhu."[1]

Ok, it was two frigates instead of a cruiser, but still...

 _or a Chinese aircraft carrier off Greenland_. I haven't heard of that. But:

"Five Chinese navy ships are currently operating in the Bering Sea off the
coast of Alaska, Pentagon officials said Wednesday, marking the first time the
U.S. military has seen Chinese naval activity in the area.... “This would be a
first in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands,” one defense official said of
the Chinese ships, which have been operating in international waters. “I don’t
think we’d characterize anything they’re doing as threatening,” the official
said."[2]

[1] [http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/china-and-russia-conclude-
nav...](http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/china-and-russia-conclude-naval-drill-
in-mediterranean/)

[2] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-watches-as-chinese-
navy...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-watches-as-chinese-navy-ships-
sail-in-bering-sea-1441216258)

~~~
Retric
If you look at a globe the Bering sea is close to China. Greenland is easily 4
times as far away.

~~~
nl
I believe the OP's point was about if the Chinese navy was expanding its area
of operations, not specifically if it was operating off Greenland.

------
js2
(2013). This article is a review/excerpt of [http://www.amazon.com/Cuban-
Missile-Crisis-American-Memory/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Cuban-Missile-
Crisis-American-Memory/dp/0804783772/) by Sheldon Stern, a former historian at
the JFK library in Boston.

Two earlier books by the author:

[http://www.amazon.com/Week-World-Stood-Still-
Stanford/dp/080...](http://www.amazon.com/Week-World-Stood-Still-
Stanford/dp/0804750777/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Averting-Final-Failure-Meetings-
Stanfo...](http://www.amazon.com/Averting-Final-Failure-Meetings-
Stanford/dp/0804748462/)

Some of the source material is available here:

[http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/kennedy](http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/kennedy)

------
RodericDay
_In the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy had cynically attacked Richard
Nixon from the right, claiming that the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had
allowed a dangerous “missile gap” to grow in the U.S.S.R.’s favor. But in
fact, just as Eisenhower and Nixon had suggested—and just as the classified
briefings that Kennedy received as a presidential candidate indicated—the
missile gap, and the nuclear balance generally, was overwhelmingly to
America’s advantage._

I'm glad stuff like this would not happen in 2015

~~~
fredkbloggs
> I'm glad stuff like this would not happen in 2015

There is one thing that would never happen today: a Democrat attacking from
the right, or for that matter talking about military strategy at all. Of
course, the Republicans don't seem interested in talking about China, either.
It's the new third rail of American politics.

~~~
arethuza
Kennedy was sensitive to the accusation that he was an "appeaser" as his
father has been US ambassador to the UK at the time of the Munich agreement
and had supported a policy of appeasing the Nazis.

General Curtis Le May even said to Kennedy "It will lead right to war. This is
almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich."

------
ClintEhrlich
I submitted this piece to HN because it exemplifies how useful falsehoods can
permeate a free society. We laugh at North Korean propaganda, and rightly so.
But if a well informed Russian watched _Thirteen Days_ , I'm sure he would
find it a laugh-inducing example of American nationalist indoctrination.

All of us think we know the story, but few Americans have ever had occasion to
consider some basic questions, such as: Why was it acceptable for America to
place nuclear missiles near Russia, but not for Russia to respond by placing
nuclear missiles near America?

The Cuban Missile Crisis also offers a humbling illustration of how American
democracy rarely passes accurate judgment on the performance of the president.
No matter how many justifications or excuses one makes for Kennedy's choices,
there remains one inescapable fact: He brought the world as close to nuclear
annihilation as it has ever come.

The successful "quarantine" that hagiographies of J.F.K. recount as his
greatest diplomatic achievement almost destroyed the world, when American
destroyers began dropping depth charges near a Soviet submarine in
international waters. The submarine's captain ordered the launch of a nuclear
torpedo, and his decision was affirmed by the sub's political officer — which
normally would be enough to authorize the use of a nuclear weapon.

Why wasn't the world transformed into a sphere of radioactive ice? Pure
Serendipity. The commander of the Soviet flotilla happened to be present on
the submarine, and he was able to convince his comrades to stand down.

Thus, the man we owe our lives to is not Kennedy, our national icon, but
rather a guy named Василий Архипов, whom most Americans will never hear about.
I named my cat "Vasili" in his honor.

Sometimes, when I'm petting him, I think about the constant gulf between
perception and reality that I have witnessed firsthand. How often do we think
that the right people receive credit or blame when software breaks or
corporations implode? Why would we expect verism to prevail in even higher
stakes domains, like world history?

I stand by what I wrote a couple years ago: "[T]he highest entropy fields are
also the ones with the highest stakes for society. For example, what were the
consequences of American intervention against the Central Powers in World War
I? They are difficult to fathom precisely because they were so immense. The
problem is a combination of 'causal density' and 'holistic integration.' The
more variables a decision affects, the harder it is to untangle the resulting
chain of cause and effect. And if its consequences are far reaching, then
there is rarely an opportunity to perform controlled experiments.

Thus, the experts who offer opinions about the momentous issues of our times
are precisely those in whom we should have the least confidence. Their fields
may appear prestigious because they involve matters of global importance, but
there is a corollary decrease in the reliability of their insights."

~~~
dingaling
> The submarine's captain ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo, and his
> decision was affirmed by the sub's political officer — which normally would
> be enough to authorize the use of a nuclear weapon.

It sounds scary, but in fact there was quite a lot of procedural tolerance for
the use of underwater nuclear devices; they wouldn't have crossed the NATO
'tripwire', for example, whereas using a tactical nuke of the same yield on
land would have done so.[0]

Hence it doesn't automatically follow that the release of a nuclear torpedo
would have escalated beyond the tactical level.

 _[0] In fact just months after the Cuban crisis the Canadian forces began an
investigation as to whether they should up-gauge to nuclear anti-submarine
weapons, simply to overcome targeting and effectiveness problems._

~~~
ClintEhrlich
I think it was pretty damn scary, and I would be very interested to see any
sources you know about that suggest otherwise. I'm not being sarcastic, I
really would appreciate a link if you have one. I have read some arguments
about why the Russian submarine captain was not actually committed to using
the nuclear torpedo, but nothing about the risk of escalation having been low.

Based on my memory of the Cold War literature, there was quite a bit of
concern about a naval nuclear exchange triggering strategic nuclear war. A
quick search seemed to confirm my recollection: "[T]he doctrines and
operational procedures associated with sea-based nuclear weapons are subject
to less well-defined thresholds and, in some cases, are quite provocative.
Moreover, there are good reasons for believing that the first use of nuclear
weapons could take place at sea, and for concern that the escalation dynamics
of nuclear warfare in this theater are far less constrained than those that
would attend nuclear operations on land." (Ball, Desmond. "Nuclear war at
sea." _International Security_ (1985): 3-31.)

The risk of escalation would have been intensified during the missile crisis,
because the underlying dispute involved strategic weapons. If a Soviet nuclear
weapon destroyed an American carrier battle group, at minimum the U.S. would
have retaliated with tactical nuclear weapons. And there would be significant
pressure to target land-based military installations in order to achieve a
proportionate response, because the Soviets were so much less dependent on
their Navy than the U.S. At that point, all bets are off, particularly given
the Soviet's proclivity for interpreting any American action in the worst
possible light.

Escalation to extinction-level global nuclear war was certainly not
guaranteed, but it was arguably the most probable outcome. One cannot
reasonably dispute that it was well within the realm of possibility.

------
tome
The leap from the specific to the general is _enormous_ here. It's certainly
an interesting account of how the Cuban missile crisis became a crisis because
of the Kennedys' political aspirations, not because of the machinations of the
Soviets. However, there is then what seems to be a completely unjustified jump
to the criticism of American global military strategy in general and I can't
see how that's warranted.

EDIT: BTW, there are lots of interesting dissenting opinions in the comments
section of the article.

------
Shtirlic
it's interesting, because they are doing it again via placing missile defense
complexes with attacking potential in Europe.

~~~
sgt101
How can missile interceptors be used to attack an enemy power?

~~~
Synaesthesia
They could prevent a retaliatory strike and thus are a first strike weapon.

------
uniformlyrandom
> It is a stance toward the world that can easily doom the United States to
> military commitments and interventions in strategically insignificant places
> over intrinsically trivial issues

Can?

------
curiousjorge
Read this in the book about him, Kennedy also had a "back pain" problem
originating from the time where his patrol boat capsized and he barely lived
through the WW2 war with Japan, and that drove him to stardom when he hit it
off well with the moms who had their sons lost in the war.

The self prescription for Kennedy's back pain? Pussy from many different
women.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was directly on Kennedy's hands, he directed the
bombers and invasion based on his time zone and forgot to adjust it for cuban
which resulted in b-52 bombers being decimated and the entire invasion blowing
up.

~~~
greedo
Sigh. B-52 bombers were not used in Cuba. B-26/A-26 were. Please try to at
least be marginally accurate, lest the rest of your points be ignored.

~~~
D-Coder
Also, I doubt that the President set up the hour-by-hour invasion planning.

------
dpweb
I'm not sure the new revalations here that prove the accusation that Kennedy
caused the crisis. You would have to first, try to understand the cold war
mentality prevalent at the time. Admittedly, the threat of Soviet expansion
was at times exaggerated and grew to a paranoia, but still was a real threat.

We already know that Eisenhower, Nixon, and Kennedy all conspired to
assasinate Castro. Kennedy invaded the country in the US sponsored Bay of
Pigs. We know that the Cold War paranoia was used as a political tool
particularly by Kennedy against Nixon in the 1960 election. We also know both
the US and USSR were making provocative acts against the other.

What strikes me espeically is the argument here that, since McNamera said so,
USSR putting nuclear missles 90 miles off the coast of Florida had no impact
on the balance of power, ie.. not a real new threat - which means Kennedy
should not have opposed that, at the risk of inflaming tensions. I just don't
find that a sensible argument.

~~~
fredkbloggs
So how _did_ it alter the balance of power, then? The only argument I can see
for it is the one the author is railing against.

I don't think the argument here is that Kennedy shouldn't have done anything
about the missiles in Cuba. Clearly, for political reasons if nothing else, it
was necessary. But as pointed out, he could have scored just as many points by
agreeing publicly to a mutual reduction instead. Then he can not only go on TV
and tell Americans that his stalwart determination rescued America from a
grave threat, but he can also claim to have reduced overall tensions. If he
wants to, he can even claim that the entire purpose of the Jupiters all along
was to serve as a bargaining chip should such a situation arise (if you're
going to lie, you may as well tell the lies that help you most). It would have
been a fitting prelude to Reagan.

~~~
arethuza
Reagan at least had the sense to realize that, in the aftermath of the Able
Archer 83 debacle, that if you are dealing with completely paranoid Soviet
leaders who think that _they_ are the ones who are going to be attacked at any
moment then it is wise to tone down the "evil empire" rhetoric a bit.

