Reconsidering the Missile Crisis: Dealing with the Problems of the American Jupiters in Turkey

Abstract

President John F. Kennedy has been variously praised and blamed for his handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. For many, it was his great triumph: Seven days of wide-ranging deliberations and careful planning, and six days of the shrewd use of cautious threats, limited force, and wise diplomacy to achieve victory.4 For critics, however, it was an unnecessary crisis or dangerously mishandled, or both: Kennedy should either have acceded to the Soviet missiles in Cuba, or at least tried private diplomacy before moving to the quarantine. Removal of the missiles was not worth the risk of nuclear war.5