Thirteen Days (8 page)

In Dakar, Ambassador Philip M. Kaiser had a close personal relationship with President Leopold Senghor, who a
short time before had had a very successful visit to Washington. He, too, quickly perceived the danger and agreed not to permit Russian planes to land or refuel in Dakar.

In short, our friends, our allies, and, as Thomas Jefferson said, a respect for the opinions of mankind, are all vitally important. We cannot be an island even if we wished; nor can we successfully separate ourselves from the rest of the world.

Exasperation over our struggle in Vietnam should not close our eyes to the fact that we could have other missile crises in the future—different kinds, no doubt, and under different circumstances. But if we are to be successful then, if we are going to preserve our own national security, we will need friends, we will need supporters, we will need countries that believe and respect us and will follow our leadership.

T
HE FINAL LESSON
of the Cuban missile crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country's shoes. During the crisis, President Kennedy spent more time trying to determine the effect of a particular course of action on Khrushchev or the Russians than on any other phase of what he was doing. What guided all his deliberations was an effort not to disgrace Khrushchev, not to humiliate the Soviet Union, not to have them feel they would have to escalate their response because their national security or national interests so committed them.

This was why he was so reluctant to stop and search a Russian ship; this was why he was so opposed to attacking the missile sites. The Russians, he felt, would have to react militarily to such actions on our part.

Thus the initial decision to impose a quarantine rather than to attack; our decision to permit the
Bucharest
to pass; our decision to board a non-Russian vessel first; all these and many more were taken with a view to putting pressure on the Soviet Union but not causing a public humiliation.

Miscalculation and misunderstanding an escalation on one side bring a counterresponse. No action is taken against a powerful adversary in a vacuum. A government or people will fail to understand this only at their great peril. For that is how wars begin—wars that no one wants, no one intends, and no one wins.

Each decision that President Kennedy made kept this in mind. Always he asked himself: Can we be sure that Khrushchev understands what we feel to be our vital national interest? Has the Soviet Union had sufficient time to react soberly to a particular step we have taken? All action was judged against that standard—stopping a particular ship, sending low-flying planes, making a public statement.

President Kennedy understood that the Soviet Union did not want war, and they understood that we wished to avoid armed conflict. Thus, if hostilities were to come, it would be either because our national interests collided—which, because of their limited interests and our purposely limited objectives, seemed unlikely—or because of our failure or their failure to understand the other's objectives.

President Kennedy dedicated himself to making it clear to Khrushchev by word and deed—for both are important—that the U.S. had limited objectives and that we had no inter
est in accomplishing those objectives by adversely affecting the national security of the Soviet Union or by humiliating her.

Later, he was to say in his speech at American University in June of 1963: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to the choice of either a humiliating defeat or a nuclear war.”

During our crisis talks, he kept stressing the fact that we would indeed have war if we placed the Soviet Union in a position she believed would adversely affect her national security or such public humiliation that she lost the respect of her own people and countries around the globe. The missiles in Cuba, we felt, vitally concerned our national security, but not that of the Soviet Union.

This fact was ultimately recognized by Khrushchev, and this recognition, I believe, brought about his change in what, up to that time, had been a very adamant position. The President believed from the start that the Soviet Chairman was a rational, intelligent man who, if given sufficient time and shown our determination, would alter his position. But there was always the chance of error, of mistake, miscalculation, or misunderstanding, and President Kennedy was committed to doing everything possible to lessen that chance on our side.

The possibility of the destruction of mankind was always in his mind. Someone once said that World War Three would be fought with atomic weapons and the next war with sticks and stones.

As mentioned before, Barbara Tuchman's
The Guns of August
had made a great impression on the President. “I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write
a comparable book about this time,
The Missiles of October
,” he said to me that Saturday night, October 26. “If anybody is around to write after this, they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to move. I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary.”

After it was finished, he made no statement attempting to take credit for himself or for the Administration for what had occurred. He instructed all members of the Ex Comm and government that no interview should be given, no statement made, which would claim any kind of victory. He respected Khrushchev for properly determining what was in his own country's interest and what was in the interest of mankind. If it was a triumph, it was a triumph for the next generation and not for any particular government or people.

At the outbreak of the First World War the ex-Chancellor of Germany, Prince von Bülow, said to his successor, “How did it all happen?” “Ah, if only we knew,” was the reply.

N
OTE

It was Senator Kennedy's intention to add a discussion of the basic ethical question involved: what, if any, circumstance or justification gives this government or any government the moral right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear destruction? He wrote this book in the summer and fall of 1967 on the basis of his personal diaries and recollections, but never had an opportunity to rewrite or complete it
.

T
HEODORE
C. S
ORENSEN

B
Y
R
ICHARD
E. N
EUSTADT AND
G
RAHAM
T. A
LLISON

T
HE
C
UBAN MISSILE
crisis is important at three distinct levels. First, the crisis stands for something central in our time: we live under the cloud of nuclear weapons. Our imaginations have been dulled by metaphors. But it is nonetheless true that today men control the power to destroy mankind. Second, this crisis is a microcosm of problems of the modern American Presidency. Crises tend to highlight the basic characteristics of an institution. The Cuban missile crisis does this for a number of dilemmas in our governmental system. Third, this event poses dramatically a central constitutional issue for the 1970's: namely, the respective roles of President and Congress in making war. During the Cuban missile crisis,
the President alone decided and disposed. Two hours before his decision was announced to the world, Congressional leaders were
informed
that the United States was responding to the Soviet missiles with a naval quarantine.

Comparable presidential authority has been asserted even where there is no direct threat of nuclear war. Relying on the minimal Congressional consent represented by the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, President Johnson committed American ground forces to what has become the longest war in our history. Relying on inherent powers of the Commander in Chief to protect American troops, President Nixon ordered an invasion of Cambodia. The Constitution calls for Congress to declare war. But in these cases—as with others in our history—Congress has not played a commensurate role. The result is a great argument over the constitutional balance in warmaking. The missile crisis offers some perspective on this argument.

T
HE
N
UCLEAR
P
ARADOX

In October 1962, President John Kennedy chose a path of action that, in his judgment, entailed a one-in-three chance of nuclear war.
^*
Given the potential consequences, how could he possibly have chosen this course? Robert Kennedy participated in the choice, approved of it, and took pride in the Administration's performance. It is a mark of both the man and the times that five years later, recording his memoir of the crisis, he came to wonder about the question: “What, if
any, circumstance or justification gives this government or any government the moral right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear destruction?”

That the United States and Soviet Union could engage in a nuclear war which would effectively destroy both societies (and much of the rest of the world) is a plain but incredible fact about contemporary life. We are now twenty-six years into the nuclear age. For more than a decade, the Soviet Union has been capable of destroying millions of Americans. Yet no war has come. Today who can believe that such a war could come?

How does our nuclear era differ from previous periods? Students of international politics have identified three qualitatively new aspects of the threat and use of force in an era of thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. First, the magnitude of destructive power of thermonuclear weapons is unparalleled. Previously, men have destroyed men by bullets and bombs. Today, the explosive power of a single thermonuclear bomb exceeds the total explosive power of all bombs used in all wars of the past, including those of this century. Second, the suddenness and swiftness with which mass destruction can be inflicted has no precedent. Surprise attacks are not new. But today no point on the globe lies more than minutes away from annihilation by a ballistic missile. Third, because of the first two factors, the meaning has been taken out of “victory” in war. As recently as 1945, victory consisted of disarming the enemy, after which the victor could determine the fate of the vanquished. Today, it is not necessary to defeat a nation's armies before disposing of its citizens. The use of arms and soldiers to prevent occupation of one's country is no longer sufficient to guarantee its citizens against destruction.

In personal and societal terms, what these new conditions mean was stated starkly by one of the participants in the missile crisis, Robert McNamara. The Secretary of Defense testified to Congress in 1964: “In the first hour [of all-out nuclear war] one hundred million Americans and one hundred million Russians would be killed.”

Such hard physical facts are difficult to accept. But even less acceptable, given these conditions, is that nations could
choose
war. The United States and the Soviet Union now live in a world of “mutual superiority,” that is, mutual capability to do unacceptable damage to the other (even after having been struck first). Under such conditions, could the Soviet Union or United States initiate a nuclear war, killing millions of the opponents and suffering in retaliation the destruction of millions of its own citizens? As Thomas Schelling has written, “there is just no foreseeable route by which the United States and Soviet Union could become involved in a major nuclear war.” Since choosing nuclear war would be, in effect, to choose mutual homicide, President Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded, “War is impossible…. there is no alternative to peace.”

Many observers find in the Cuban missile crisis confirmation for their belief that nuclear war is impossible. The crisis did not explode. The leaders who lived through that crisis felt what it was like to peer over the precipice. Since that time, both governments have exercised extraordinary caution about all things nuclear, circumventing interests in order to avoid fundamental clashes, cooling conflicts that might erupt, and discouraging the nuclear programs of other nations. Today, nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union
is
very unlikely.

But no event demonstrates more clearly than the missile
crisis that with respect to nuclear war there is an awesome crack between
unlikelihood
and
impossibility
. Though many accounts of the crisis downgrade its risks (reflecting the widespread inability to believe that nuclear war could occur), Robert Kennedy's memoir documents how close the United States and the Soviet Union came to making the impossible happen.

How could nuclear war have emerged from this crisis? An alarming number of plausible paths branch off the actual course of events and end in nuclear war. In order to aid the reader, we will summarize what happened in the form of a scenario and then spell out one of the paths that could have led to war. Actual events are represented by eight steps.

1. The Soviet Union puts missiles in Cuba clandestinely (September 6, 1962).

2. U.S. U-2 flight discovers Soviet missiles (October 14, 1962).

3. President Kennedy initiates a public confrontation by announcing to the world the Soviet action, demanding Soviet withdrawal of the missiles, ordering a U.S. quarantine of Soviet weapon shipments to Cuba, putting U.S. strategic forces on full alert, and warning the Soviet Union that any missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as a Soviet missile and met with a full retaliatory response (October 22).

4. Khrushchev orders Soviet strategic forces to full alert and threatens to sink U.S. ships if they interfere with Soviet ships en route to Cuba (October 24).

5. Soviet ships stop short of the U.S. quarantine line (October 25).

6. Khrushchev letter offers withdrawal of Soviet missiles in return for U.S. noninvasion pledge (October 26), followed by a second Khrushchev letter demanding U.S. withdrawal of
Turkish missiles for Soviet withdrawal of Cuban missiles (October 27).

7. U.S. responds affirmatively to first Khrushchev letter but warns that if missiles are not withdrawn by Sunday, October 28, invasion or air strike will follow Monday or Tuesday (October 27).

8. Khrushchev announces withdrawal of the missiles (October 28).

Perhaps the most obvious scenario by which nuclear war might have emerged from the sequence follows the actual course of events through step seven, but then proceeds:

(8) Khrushchev reiterates that any attack on Soviet missiles and personnel in Cuba will be met with a full Soviet retaliatory response (October 28).

(9) U.S. “surgical” air strike against Soviet missiles (destroying all operational ballistic missiles and killing a limited number of Soviet personnel) (October 30).

(10) Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles attack U.S. missiles in Turkey (destroying all ballistic missiles and killing a small number of Americans) (October 31).

(11) In accord with obligations under the NATO treaty, U.S. medium-range missiles in Europe attack bases in the Soviet Union from which missiles that attacked the Turkish bases were launched (October 31).

(12) Soviet Union, fearing additional U.S. attacks on its limited number of ICBMs, attacks the U.S. (November 1).

(13) U.S. ICBMs attack the Soviet Union (November 1).

Alternative scenarios leading to nuclear war could start with the firing of Soviet missiles in Cuba or the sinking of a ship. Moreover, a large number of potential “accidents” might have triggered nuclear war, for example, the Soviet downing of a U-2 aircraft on Saturday, October 27, nearly
precipitated an American attack on Soviet surface-to-air missiles. Robert Kennedy identifies at least five other incidents that could have served as a nuclear fuse.

Given the many possible nuclear dead ends that branch off the path of confrontation, why did President Kennedy start down this path? Need Soviet recklessness have been matched in kind? Could Kennedy not have accepted their missiles in Cuba and announced to the world that Russian roulette was a game he would not play? What consequences of the Soviet move could justify his choice, instead, of countermoves that ran so high a risk of holocaust?

The mind searches for easy answers. Perhaps the President had no alternative. There is more than humor in Robert Kennedy's reply to his brother when, halfway down the confrontation track, John Kennedy wondered how they had ever started: “If you hadn't acted, you would have been impeached.” No doubt, the President felt personally challenged. But none of these considerations suggest why he felt that such a choice was tolerable, rational, justifiable.

Answers to that question go to the heart of what we have termed the nuclear paradox:
in a world of mutual superiority, neither nation can win a nuclear war, but each must be willing to risk losing
. Consider each clause of the paradox. First, if war comes, both nations lose. There is no value for which rational leaders could reasonably choose the deaths of millions of their own citizens. In that sense, conditions make a President Kennedy and a Chairman Khrushchev partners in a game of preventing mutual disaster. But this is the condition of both nations and the leaders of both nations know it. Thus if one nation is unwilling to risk waging (losing) a nuclear war, the opponent can win any objective by threatening to take the dispute to that level of risk. In order to be able
to preserve certain values, the leaders must be willing not to choose destruction, but nonetheless to choose the risk of destruction.

It could be argued that, despite the risk inherent in the course of action President Kennedy chose, any other course would have meant greater risk. If, rather than challenging Khrushchev and demanding withdrawal of the missiles, he simply had accepted Khrushchev's move and minimized its importance, what would the consequences have been? First, the “rules of the precarious status quo” that the President referred to during the crisis would have been seriously jeopardized. Outside the Ex Comm conference room in the State Department there was a sign: “In the nuclear age, superpowers make war like porcupines make love—carefully.” Kennedy had tried to establish rules that would prevent either nation from miscalculating the other's vital interests and stumbling by misunderstanding into a confrontation from which neither could retreat. If Khrushchev's most serious infraction of these rules were disregarded, the rules would wear away. Second, the Soviet action constituted the most blatant breach of confidence and trust between Khrushchev and Kennedy. Kennedy had announced in the firmest terms possible that the United States would not tolerate Soviet offensive weapons in Cuba. Khrushchev had assured Kennedy that the Soviet Union would not place missiles in Cuba. After these promises—both public and private—Khrushchev proceeded to do what he had forsworn. If Khrushchev could so miscalculate the President's meaning and mettle, what line could the President draw that Khrushchev would respect? Third, the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba seemed tied to the Soviet plan for action on Berlin. If the United States simply accepted Soviet action in Cuba, it might not be able to per
suade the Soviet Union that it was willing to run the risk of nuclear war to preserve Berlin. Finally, the fact that the Soviet leaders had taken such a reckless step suggested that they did not appreciate how dangerous and precarious were relations between nuclear superpowers. Until this was rooted in their minds, they might continue to take actions that ran significant risks of nuclear war, hoping that the United States would yield rather than accept such risks. Though dangerous, Cuba was nonetheless likely to be more manageable than Berlin, or the crisis after Berlin. Nowhere outside the continental United States did we enjoy such a comparative advantage in conventional forces.

Thus President Kennedy might have justified his action as the lesser of risky alternatives. To the question that had begun to trouble Robert Kennedy—What right or justification is there for bringing people under such risk?—he might have answered: I did not bring people under such risk; this is simply our present condition. But Robert Kennedy's question seems to ask: what justification can there be for tolerating that condition? What seems immoral and, indeed, irrational and intolerable is that technology forces fallible human beings to make choices about life and death for hundreds of millions of other human beings. Would any reasonable man choose to live in such a world? The nuclear paradox cannot be denied. But can it be accepted?

One way to avoid the bite of Robert Kennedy's question lies in wishing risks away, discounting by denying them, or closing eyes to them. The authors of this Afterword have heard a lot of wishing done by government officials in the aftermath of Cuba. Some men near the Ex Comm but not of it—mainly military officers advising in subordinate capacities—have argued strongly that from the moment President
Kennedy went on the air to publicize American awareness and reaction there was never a substantial risk of nuclear war. Faced by our obvious superiority, both strategic and tactical, the Russians, being rational, were bound to retreat. What then of Kennedy's perception, movingly attested by his brother, that the risk of holocaust was real? These officers dismiss it as “flap in the White House.” Other men, including some who sat around the table, now persuade themselves instead that “toughness pays.” If there was risk, it lasted only until our destroyers, troops, and aircraft were deployed in the Atlantic and in Florida. Thereafter, while we held firm, Khrushchev had no alternative except to turn his ships around and stop construction at the missile sites.