'One Hell of a Gamble': Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964

1. Introduction, Len Scott, David Gioe, and Christopher Andrew 2. 'Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis', Christopher Andrew 3. 'Intelligence and the Risk of Nuclear War', Len Scott 4. 'The BBC Public Service and Private Worlds: How the Corporation Informed the Public, Related to Government and Understood the Cuban Missile Crisis', Jean Seaton and Rosaleen Hughes 5. 'Modifying 'A Very Dangerous Message: Britain, the Non-Aligned, and the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis', Peter Catterall 6. 'The Joint Intelligence Committee and the Cuban Missile Crisis', Michael S. Goodman 7. 'Trial By Fire: A New Perspective on Military Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis', Michael B. Petersen 8. 'Handling HERO: Joint Anglo-American Tradecraft in the Case of Oleg Penkovsky', David Gioe 9. 'What Really Happened in R.A.F. Bomber Command during the Cuban Missile Crisis?', Robin Woolven 10. 'Leading from Behind: Anglo-American Diplomacy and Third Party Mediation during the Cuban Missile Crisis', Toshihiko Aono 11. 'The Australian Government and the Cuban Missile Crisis: An Antipodean Perspective', Laura Stanley 12. 'Italian Political Reactions to the Cuban Missile Crisis', Leonardo Campus 13. 'The Fourth Question: Why Did John F. Kennedy Offer Up the Jupiters in Turkey?', Don Munton 14. Perception of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Russia Today, Neil Kent and Yan Naumkin

1. The Cuban missile crisis: what can we know, why did it start, how did it end? Robert Jervis 2. Examining The Fourteenth Day: studying the neglected aftermath period of the October Cuban missile crisis, and underscoring missed analytical opportunities Barton Bernstein 3. Prime Minister and President: Harold Macmillan's accounts of the Cuban missile crisis, Peter Catterall 4. Reform or revolution? Scott Sagan's Limits of Safety and its contemporary implications Campbell Craig 5. The 'Best and the Brightest': the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy administration and the lessons of history R. Gerald Hughes 6. The three puzzles: Essence of Decision and the missile crisis Don Munton 7. We all lost the 'Cuban missile crisis': revisiting Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein's landmark analysis in We All Lost the Cold War Benoit Pelopidas 8. On hedgehogs and passions: history, hearsay, and hotchpotch in the writing of the Cuban missile crisis Sergey Radchenko 9. Beyond the smoke and mirrors: the real JFK White House Cuban missile crisis, Sheldon M. Stern 10. 'The only thing to look forward to's the past': reflection, revision and reinterpreting reinterpretation Len Scott

Playa Girón: Bay of Pigs: Washington’s First Military Defeat in the AmericasThe Missile Crisis in Cuba

Reviewed by: Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis, and: Democracy Delayed: The Case of Castro's Cuba, and: Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989-2001 Michael Erisman James G. Blight and Philip Brenner. Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. 352 pp. Juan J. López . Democracy Delayed: The Case of Castro's Cuba. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 232 pp. Morris Morley and Chris McGillion. Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989–2001. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 253 pp. According to Webster's Universal Unabridged Dictionary, "asymmetry" is best defined as "the want of proportion between the parts of a thing." In a political sense, however, the term is commonly used to refer to a relationship wherein there are major inequities (e.g., in power) between the parties involved, and it is this concept that provides the common thread linking the three books under consideration here. In other words, the three studies exhibit a thematic convergence in the sense that all of them, despite differences in their analytical emphases and priorities, are examining the dynamics of the asymmetries in the Cuban Revolution's foreign relations. As might be expected, there are significant variations in their attitudes toward these asymmetries; both the Blight-Brenner and the Morley-McGillion volumes are basically sympathetic with regard to the difficulties that Havana has confronted while López is quite forthright in his desire to see Washington take full advantage of the situation to destroy Castro's government. Undoubtedly the Blight-Brenner effort is the most conceptually ambitious and analytically elegant of the three books. Its main thrust focuses on Cuba's perceptions of and reactions to its asymmetrical association with the USSR and the implications thereof with respect to current U.S.-Cuban relations. Within this context the authors emphasize the 1962 Missile Crisis as an extremely traumatic primal event that triggered well-established and deeply rooted Cuban fears about the dangers inherent in any asymmetrical relationship. It is, they stress, very important to understand that there inevitably were tensions between Moscow and Havana—the Missile Crisis did not create them, but rather they were inherent in the relationship because of its asymmetrical nature and would have had a negative impact in any case. What the crisis did was to function as a catalyst that brought these preexisting strains to the surface and severely exacerbated them. Among the Soviet actions during the crisis that infuriated the Cubans were such moves as reaching an agreement with the United States to end the crisis without ever consulting Havana about the terms of the settlement or even informing the Cubans that a deal had been made. Likewise Moscow's decision, in response to pressure from Washington, to withdraw bombers and troops from Cuba was seen in Havana "as tantamount to inviting a U.S. invasion, because it demonstrated to the United States that the Soviet Union would not stand with Cuba in the face of U.S. threats" (31). These developments generated, say Blight and Brenner, a poisoned climate wherein Havana would never again really trust Moscow. In other words, the relationship would never escape the pall cast over it by the Cubans' conviction that they had been betrayed by the USSR at the height of the Missile Crisis. Indeed the basic lesson that the authors believe the Cubans took away from the Missile Crisis was that they could not trust and had to protect themselves against both of the superpowers, and that henceforth their cold war foreign policy became characterized by an [End Page 143] effort to maximize the political maneuvering space available to them within the context of these two asymmetrical relationships. This analysis of the Missile Crisis's legacy works very well when dealing with the cold war period. The epilogue then tries to incorporate the contemporary U.S.-Cuban relationship into this framework, arguing that the essential nature of the cold war Cuban-Soviet relationship that flowed from the crisis (i.e., serious tensions rooted in a mutual lack of empathy) is...

The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy: Volumes 1–3, The Great Crises. Edited by Phillip D. Zelikow, Timothy Naftali, and Ernest R. May. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001; pp xxiv + 691 (vol. 1), pp xxiv + 642 (vol. 2), pp xxiv + 549 (vol. 3). $165.00 cloth. Averting 'The Final Failure': John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings. By Sheldon M. Stern. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003; pp xxx + 459. $35.00 cloth. Awaiting Armageddon: How America Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis. By Alice L. George. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; pp xxiii + 238. $29.95 cloth. October Fury. By Peter A. Huchthausen. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2002; pp v + 281. $17.47 cloth. Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers After the Missile Crisis. By James G. Blight and Philip Brenner. Lanham, Md.: Bowman and Littlefield, 2002; pp xxvii + 324. $29.95 cloth. The fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis has produced a wealth of thought-provoking works that examine "the event that might have triggered WWIII." In October 1962, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane recorded photographs of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Ongoing tension between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev concerning both Berlin and the placement of Soviet weapons in Cuba motivated the president to act. He selected a group of seasoned advisors, referred to as the Executive [End Page 133] Committee (ExComm). ExComm, with the participation and leadership of President Kennedy, created the strategies and tactics of diplomacy that averted potential nuclear catastrophe. This review essay offers a collection of variegated viewpoints. First, The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy: Volumes 1–3, The Great Crises, edited by Philip D. Zelikow, Timothy Naftali, and Ernest R. May, noted scholars and professors of public affairs and history, includes declassified presidential transcripts from July 30 through October 28, 1962. A CD with audio recordings of meetings accompanies the publication. Volume 3 covers transcripts of President Kennedy and the ExComm. The transcripts capture decision makers navigating their way through the quicksands of international diplomacy, escalating tension, and the management of public information. Examples of problem definition, reframing, and consensus building provide rich resources for rhetoricians, public policy analysts, and graduate students. This three-volume collection provides a captivating and comprehensive sense of the presidency as an institution. Civil rights, South American regime changes, currency fluctuations, along with lesser ceremonial responsibilities, convey the multifaceted tasks the chief executive faces daily. Next, Sheldon M. Stern's Averting 'The Final Failure,': John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings provides a narrative approach to the ExComm transcripts. Stern, as an historian, chief librarian of the Kennedy Library for over two decades, and a compelling storyteller, captures personality and contextual nuances, adding rich dimensions to the collective wisdom on this topic. The author, having studied the Kennedy tapes for decades, conscientiously retranscribes and reinterprets a number of the transactions presented in The Presidential Recordings. In Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis, historian Alice L. George details a social history of Middle America's world during the Cold War. As a unique contribution to the available literature, she provides a diorama of children's lives as they experience the attempts of government, schools, and the media to manage and communicate the threat of nuclear war. Then, retired navy captain Peter A. Huchthausen's October Fury breaks new ground by dramatically recounting moment-by-moment decision making and lifestyles of both the Russian and American naval crews aboard submarines and ships participating in maneuvers during the crisis. The author effectively builds the case that a combination of exceptional political and naval leadership, plus superior American naval power, determined the outcome of events. Finally, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers After the Missile Crisis, authored by international...

The article analyzes role of the image of Cuba in the letters of American citizens addressed to N.S. Khrushchev at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The study focuses on perception of Cuba as a political and symbolic subject, its significance in the confrontation between the two superpow-ers, as well as the emotional reactions reflected in these let-ters. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which reached its apogee after the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, became the most important episode of the Cold War, giving rise to public anxi-eties and fears that were manifested in letters addressed to the leader of the USSR. The author considers the letters as an im-portant historical source that allows us to study the social and cultural practices of conveying emotions. Using the methods of social constructivism, the study demonstrates how emo-tions such as fear, anger, or hope were transformed into polit-ically significant forms of group identity. The letters show that the dominant image of Cuba as a dangerous "Other" served as a tool for constructing an emotional community that united citizens of the USA and the USSR, while excluding Cuba from this group. The article highlights the uniqueness of the perception of Cuba as a symbol of threat and highlights its marginal place in the public consciousness of Americans, who rarely identified with the Cuban people. The analysis also reveals potential of emotions as a tool for the formation of new identities in the context of global conflicts. The findings of the study emphasize that the Cuban Missile Crisis contributed not only to the escalation of political tensions, but also to the transformation of international relations through emotional and cultural mechanisms.

This article reviews major issues in the historiography of the Russian/Soviet side of the Cuban missile crisis, as it has developed since the early 1990s. Focusing on key works, including Fursenko and Naftali’s One Hell of a Gamble and Mikoyan’s Anatomi’ia Karibskogo Krizisa, the article explores three issues: why Nikita Khrushchev decided to send missiles to Cuba, why he resolved to withdraw them, and how close the world came to ‘the brink’. The author contends that in our understanding of the Kremlin’s motivations in the Cuban missile crisis, we have come to over-rely on disparate pieces of ‘evidence’, which, at closer investigation, turn out to be one-sided, undocumented, or demonstrably false. The author therefore urges caution in drawing far-reaching conclusions from the crisis, especially in projecting its uncertain lessons onto the broader scholarship on the Soviet decision making during the Cold War.

The Armageddon Letters: Kennedy/Khrushchev/Castro in the Cuban Missile Crisis - by Blight, James G. and Lang, Janet M.

Drawing on revealing new research, this richly informative volume is the definitive concise introduction to the crisis that took the world to the brink of nuclear war. Cuban Missile Crisis: The Essential Reference Guide captures the historical context, the minute-by-minute drama, and the profound repercussions of the “Missiles of October” confrontation that brought the very real threat of nuclear attack to the United States’ doorstep. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the crisis, it takes full advantage of recently opened Soviet archives as well as interviews with key Russian, Cuban, and U.S. officials to explore the event as it played out in Moscow, Havana, Washington, and other locations around the world. Cuban Missile Crisis contains an introductory essay by the author and alphabetically organized reference entries contributed by leading Cold War researchers. The book also includes an exceptionally comprehensive bibliography. Together, these resources give readers everything they need to understand the escalating tensions that led to the crisis as well as the intense diplomacy that resolved it, including new information about the back-channel negotiations between Robert Kennedy and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.

The paper deals with the comparison of two cases when humanity was closest to the outbreak of a world nuclear war - the Cuban missile crisis (1962) and the Ukrainian crisis (2022). First, the basic elements of the term “international crisis” were given, and then, based on selected criteria, the Cuban crisis and the reality that arose from the invasion of the Russian armed forces into Ukraine were analyzed. The international legal aspects of these problems were specially addressed, with the fact that it was pointed out that, unlike the American naval blockade of Cuba, there was nothing illegal in the deployment of Soviet missiles on that island, yet the USA was still ready for war just to remove the threat. In the case of the Ukrainian crisis (2022), everything is much more complicated. Although at first glance, this is a classic case of aggression, Russia invoked the favorite arguments and concepts of the USA, such as humanitarian intervention and preventive self-defense. In the concluding remarks, the authors point out that, according to current international law, all international disputes and crises must be resolved exclusively by peaceful means, that the Ukrainian crisis should not be an exception in this respect, and that, after all, a good example is the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended with a kind of agreement.

David Gibson's Talk at the Brink is a stimulating and insightful contribution to scholarship on one of the single most important events in American history of the past sixty years—the Cuban Missile Crisis. It adds another level to our understanding, continuing the multi-model approach pioneered by Graham Allison (along with Philip Zelikow) in Essence of Decision(1999). Who needs a rehashing of the decisions around the crisis, given that it has been analyzed from stem to stern by a bevy of social scientists? As it turns out, we do. Gibson covers new ground on the case by engaging in deep analysis of the deliberations of President Kennedy and his advisors from ExComm, as they tried to decide how to extricate the United States from a diplomatic mess that held the potential to escalate to full-on nuclear war. Gibson's focus on micro-contingency, or the notion that history can be influenced by the local as much as by the global, asks us to get our feet back on the ground. Rather than focus on the Hobbesian world of political scientists, in which nations relentlessly pursue national interest, or the bureaucratic political realm, in which “where you sit determines where you stand,” Gibson asks us to focus our gaze on talk.

Books reviewed in this article: Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963 Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 The Cuban missile crisis generated acrimony and tension not only among the policymakers in Washington, Moscow, and Havana who handled the October 1962 confrontation, but also among future generations of historians and political scientists. As the apogee of the Cold War contest, the closest the world has been to the nuclear brink, the missile crisis has not surprisingly served as a magnet for scholarly attention. In the first decade after the crisis, Elie Abel and Graham Allison produced the most important works. In The Missile Crisis, Abel used interviews with numerous participants to craft the first richly detailed narrative of the crisis. For his part, Allison examined the crisis in order to develop various models for understanding the process of policy formulation. His Essence of Decision remains a classic of missile crisis historiography. Soon a vast article literature was also being generated, including Barton Bernstein's examination of the issue of the American Jupiter missiles in Turkey. In the 1980s and 1990s, a cluster of historians, such as Thomas Paterson, James Hershberg, and Michael Beschloss, produced significant work on the missile crisis and its origins. Raymond Garthoff's Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis has been among the most important of these. For the detail it furnished on the Soviet side of the story, it was path breaking.1

The Evolution of the Cold War, from the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and the establishment of communist regimes to the stabilization of international relations after the Cuban Missile Crisis, also involved the use of the economy as a weapon. The United States of America, which held technological supremacy in the world at that time, understood that it could use commercial and economic instruments to maximize its advantages. Economic relations between communist Romania and the United States reflected the political developments during the Cold War. Only after Stalin’s death and the Hungarian Revolu¬tion, and with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania, did the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party – at odds with the new Soviet leadership – seek closer ties with the West. Romania’s signals were understood by Washington, but the American response was cautious. In this context, discussions about opening a Romanian Trade Office in New York pro-gressed slowly, taking several years for the Romanian proposal to materialize. After the most intense phase of the Cold War had passed, the US accepted that Romania could have an economic representative in New York, even though it was clear that Bucharest wanted to turn a simple trade office into a full-fledged agency. On the other hand, Bucharest hoped for spectacular growth in economic relations with the United States and for the introduction of a wider range of Romanian goods onto the American market. Romania’s rapid economic development and new major political events (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis) helped the country become one of America’s few favorites within the Eastern Bloc.

Lessons of the Cold War

Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War