Cuban missile crisis revisited

 

For me, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was the two weeks of American crisis decision-making detailed by Graham Allison, Bobby Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Ted Sorensen. Now we have a superb account that includes what was happening in Moscow, and on the ground in Cuba.

Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian-American history professor at Harvard, has written Nuclear Folly. Instead of the typical story of smart decisions that avoided nuclear war, Plokhy says he wants to tell about the many mistakes that came close to making that catastrophe a reality. And there were many, at the strategic and operational levels.

Graham Allison explored the bureaucratic behaviors and missteps over U-2 flights that were foolishly cancelled when needed and carried out when they were quite provocative and Navy blockade rules that almost triggered a Soviet nuclear exchange. Plokhy shows the same for the Soviet military.

His basic conclusion is that Kennedy and Khrushchev deescalated the crisis because both feared nuclear war. Both overcame strong pressure to risk actual combat.

Plokhy also details Kennedy’s extraordinary efforts to keep secret the fact that he agreed to withdraw medium-range Jupiter missiles from Turkey as part of the deal. The media seized on the narrative that Kennedy won by being tough while Khrushchev backed down. In fact, there was a deal which gave important concessions to both.