Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis Gooney was a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis began on October 14, 1962 and lasted for 38 days until November 20, 1962. It is regarded as the moment when the Cold War was closest to becoming nuclear war, and which could have turned to world war three.

Prelude

American missile sites in Turkey

The U.S. had begun to deploy fifteen Jupiter IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) nuclear missiles near Izmir, Turkey, which directly threatened cities in the western sections of the Soviet Union. The Jupiter missiles were regarded by President Kennedy as being of questionable strategic value, as the nuclear submarine was capable of providing the same cover with superior firepower. On taking office in 1961, Kennedy ordered that the Jupiter missiles be removed.

Soviet technology was well developed in the field of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), as opposed to ICBMs. The Soviets did not believe they could achieve parity in ICBMs before 1970, but saw that a certain kind of equality could be quickly reached by placing missiles in Cuba. Soviet MRBMs on Cuba, with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 statute miles), could threaten Washington, DC and around half of the U.S. SAC bases (of nuclear-armed bombers) with a flight time of under twenty minutes. In addition, the U.S. radar warning system was oriented towards the USSR and would provide little warning of a launch from Cuba.

Khrushchev had devised the plan in May of 1962, and by late July over sixty Soviet ships were en-route to Cuba, with some of them carrying military material. John McCone, director of the CIA, warned President Kennedy that some of the ships were probably carrying missiles but a meeting of John and Robert Kennedy, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara decided that the Soviets would not try such a thing. Kennedy's administration had received repeated claims from Soviet diplomats that there were no missiles in Cuba, nor any plans to place any, and that the Soviets were not interested in starting an international drama that might impact the American elections in November.

Soviet strategy

The Soviet government determined in 1959 that any future war would be largely nuclear and would likely be a world-wide war. In that same year the Strategic Rocket Forces were founded. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet government focused increasingly on rockets and missiles instead of conventional military forces, in response to the new administration of Kennedy and his accompanying rearmament program. The Soviets decided to install nuclear weapons, in the form of medium and short range ballistic missiles, in Cuba, a Caribbean nation off the coast of Florida with a Communist government under Fidel Castro. Castro had sought Soviet support after the collapse of its relations with the U.S. due to the Cuban Revolution. Soviet reasoning was two-fold Ð'-- first, to defend this new Communist state from an American or American-sponsored invasion, and second, to restore the nuclear balance of power putting American cities directly within the range of Soviet missiles.

The U-2 flights

A U-2 flight in late August photographed a new series of SAM sites being constructed, but on September 4 Kennedy told Congress that there were no offensive missiles in Cuba. On the night of September 8, the first consignment of SS-4 MRBMs was unloaded in Havana, and a second shipload arrived on September 16. The Soviets were building nine sites Ð'-- six for SS-4s and three for SS-5s with a range of 4,000 km (2,400 statute miles). The planned arsenal was forty launchers, an increase in Soviet first strike capacity of 70%.

A number of unconnected problems meant that the missiles were not discovered by the Americans until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of an SS-4 site near San Cristobal. The photographs were shown to Kennedy on October 16 http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/colc.html. By October 19 the U-2 flights (then almost continuous) showed four sites were operational. Initially, the U.S. government kept the information secret, telling only the fourteen key officials of the executive committee. The United Kingdom was not informed until the evening of October 21. President Kennedy, in a televised address on October 22, announced the discovery of the installations and proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union and would be responded to accordingly. He also placed a naval "quarantine" (blockade) on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of military weapons from arriving there. The word quarantine was used rather than blockade for reasons of international law and in keeping with the Quarantine Speech of 1937 by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

American response

The officials had discussed the various options - an immediate bombing strike was dismissed early on, as was a potentially time-consuming appeal to the UN. The choice was reduced to either a naval blockade and an ultimatum, or full-scale invasion. A blockade was finally chosen, although there were a number of hawks (notably Paul Nitze, and Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor) who kept pushing for tougher action. An invasion was planned, and troops were assembled in Florida (although with over 40,000 Russian soldiers in Cuba, complete with tactical nuclear weapons, the proposed invading force would have faced considerable difficulties).

There were a number of issues with the naval blockade. There was legality - as Fidel Castro noted, there was nothing illegal about the missile installations; they were certainly a threat to the U.S., but similar missiles aimed at the USSR were in place in Europe (sixty Thor IRBMs in four squadrons near Nottingham, in the United Kingdom; thirty Jupiter IRBMs in two squadrons near Gioia del Colle, Italy; and fifteen Jupiter IRBMs in one squadron near Izmir, Turkey.) Then there was the Soviet reaction to the blockade - would a conflict start out of escalating retaliation?

Kennedy spoke to the U.S. people (and the Soviet government) in a televised address on October 22. He confirmed

...