Hits and Myths: The Essence, the Puzzles and the Missile Crisis

Abstract

Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis is recognized more for its general decision-making models than for its historical analysis. The second (1999) edition, co-authored with Philip Zelikow, adopts the same basic models and answers the same three ‘central puzzles’ of the missile crisis: (1) why did the USSR deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba; (2) why did the United States blockade Cuba; and (3) why did the USSR withdraw its missiles? This review article questions the answers Allison and Zelikow provide to each of these questions. In particular, I discuss the importance of the partially secret Khrushchev–Kennedy agreement as a factor in ending the crisis and present new evidence suggesting that Turkey may not, as usually assumed, have been opposed at the time of the crisis to decommissioning its US Jupiter missiles. I also suggest some additional missile crisis questions beyond the three ‘central puzzles’.