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Should We Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Len Scott
International Relations 2012 26: 255
DOI: 10.1177/0047117812451837
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IRE26310.1177/0047117812451837ScottInternational Relations
Article
Should We Stop Studying the
Cuban Missile Crisis?
International Relations
26(3) 255­–266
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117812451837
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Len Scott
Aberystwyth University
Abstract
The Cuban missile crisis remains one of the most intensely studied events of the twentieth
century, and which engages the attention of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Lessons learned
by American practitioners and academics contributed to the conduct of American foreign policy
in the 1960s and to academic understanding of nuclear deterrence, nuclear crises and crisis
management in general. Nearly 50 fifty years of scholarship have generated new insights and
understanding. From the 1980s, study of what in Moscow was termed the Caribbean crisis
was informed by access to Soviet officials and Soviet archives, and became the forefront of the
‘new historiography’ of the Cold War. This collection reviews how various texts inform our
understanding and how new interpretations and/or new sources of information have overtaken
(or indeed validated) the original analysis. This article provides an overview of this endeavour
and an answer to the question of whether we should continue to study the Cuban missile crisis.
Keywords
Castro, Cuban missile crisis, historiography, Kennedy, Khrushchev, nuclear war
In 1986, Eliot Cohen published an article entitled, ‘Why We Should Stop Studying the
Cuban Missile Crisis’.1 His argument was directed at those Americans who drew from
the events of October 1962 a theoretical approach to managing international crises. The
application of such an approach had proved disastrous in Vietnam. Cohen inveighed
against the ‘parasitic breed that has flourished on the fringes of power in the past three
decades – the policy analysts and kindred social scientists’, for whom ‘history is a storehouse of data, which the irresponsible can plunder and the sober can explore’.2 If the title
of Cohen’s article is taken at face value (admittedly not entirely sensible), then he has
Corresponding author:
Len Scott, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Ceredigion, SY23 3FE, UK.
Email: [email protected]
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International Relations 26(3)
conspicuously failed in his purpose, as a huge number of books and articles on the subject have since appeared. So what has the study of the crisis achieved since 1986? Should
we, indeed, continue to study it?
The aim of this collection is to revisit some of the literature on the missile crisis, how
this has developed and how it informs our understanding of events. Key texts have been
subjected to critical scrutiny by leading international scholars (American, British,
Canadian and Russian).3 The aim is to examine how various books inform our understanding and how new interpretations and/or new sources of information have overtaken
(or indeed validated) the original analysis. The choice of the texts has also been designed
to illustrate differing methodological approaches, such as political science, memoir and
archival-based study.
If the past is another country, then most travellers to the missile crisis are historians.
Others have different academic identities and methodological perspectives.4 James Blight,
for example, one of the North American scholars most active in developing critical oral
history of the crisis, produced a psychological study that explores the role of fear in the
crisis and its resolution.5 Many other texts have multiple dimensions, and some that
explore theoretical aspects provide new empirical material. Scott Sagan’s application of
organisational theory to the command and control of nuclear weapons, for example,
provided significant evidence about the risks of inadvertent nuclear war.6 Richard Ned
Lebow and Janice Gross Stein’s use of psychological approaches reflected significant
empirical work in Moscow.7
In 1986, Eliot Cohen remarked on the ‘the unusual quality and quantity of material
available to students of this event’.8 The material in question was primarily American,
though its unusual quality became more unusual as transcripts appeared of recordings
made secretly by President Kennedy of meetings at the White House.9 Moreover, shortly
after Cohen’s article appeared, Western academics began to gain access to Soviet sources,
first through engagement with former Soviet officials, and then through (often controlled) access to Soviet (later Russian) archives. The encounters generated insight and
argument. On specific issues, such as who ordered the shooting down of the American
U-2 on 27 October, there was clarification (it was General Pliyev’s deputies). On larger
questions such as why Khrushchev sent the missiles, there has been greater clarity on
how decisions were made, but the debates about his objectives remain.
Different authors pose different questions, and different commentators bring different
perspectives. Several questions nevertheless loom large, such as ‘Why did Khrushchev
deploy the missiles?’ and ‘Why did he withdraw them?’ These questions have attracted
the attention of historians and political scientists for the 50 years the crisis has been studied, just as they attracted the attention of political leaders and senior officials in October
1962. Peter Catterall’s commentary on Harold Macmillan’s account makes clear concern
in London and Washington that Khrushchev’s aim was to resolve the problem of West
Berlin. Subsequently, many analysts and historians attached primary importance to the
strategic nuclear balance. Writing in 1987, Raymond Garthoff observed that ‘there is a
general consensus that the principal motivation was to redress the publicly revealed serious
imbalance in the strategic nuclear balance. No other explanation satisfactorily accounts for
the action’.10 New sources of information about Khrushchev’s motives nevertheless generated discussion of various hypotheses.11 Interpretations based on testimony from Soviet
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Scott
officials soon challenged Garthoff’s consensus, and also pointed away from a single
explanatory factor. By 1998, Garthoff asserted that the Soviet decision ‘had two principal motivations and purposes’: first, to redress global strategic inferiority, and second, ‘to
deter an anticipated US attack on Cuba’.12
In this collection, Don Munton and Sergey Radchenko explore comparable questions
within differing methodological frameworks. Munton examines Allison and Zelikow’s
revision of a seminal work of American political science Essence of Decision. Radchenko
meanwhile surveys Soviet/Russian historiography over the last two decades or more. On
Khrushchev’s motives, neither attaches importance to Berlin (in contrast to Allison and
Zelikow). Instead, both focus on the defence of Cuba and the nuclear balance. Radchenko
scrutinises how emerging material has been used that in some cases show the fragility of
evidence on which broader interpretations and knowledge claims are based. He reaches
the striking conclusion that ‘Alas, the bottom line is: we do not know why Khrushchev
sent missiles to Cuba. Fifty years on, we are still struggling with this essential and perhaps impossible question’.
The question of why Khrushchev withdrew the missiles has attracted the attention of
those applying psychological theories, including Blight’s Shattered Crystal Ball and
Lebow and Stein’s We all Lost the Cold War. It also attracted attention from American and
Russian historians. Key revelations emerged in the West and were then corroborated in the
East. In 1989, Theodore Sorensen admitted that he had deliberately falsified Robert
Kennedy’s memoir when it was published posthumously.13 Other former members of
ExComm (Executive Committee of the National Security Council) revealed that they had
lied to preserve the myth that Kennedy stood firm and refused to trade the Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Turkey. Kennedy’s willingness to remove them
was made clear by his brother Robert in a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoli
Dobrynin, on 27 October. Declassification of Soviet records, including Dobrynin’s report
of this meeting back to Moscow, corroborates the oral testimony. As discussion of Dino
Brugioni’s Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis in this collection makes clear, while Khrushchev may have blinked so too did Kennedy.14
Whether the ‘deal’ on the Turkish Jupiters made much difference to Khrushchev’s
behaviour remains open to question, as Khrushchev was already moving to retreat,
though Don Munton argues persuasively that ‘Kennedy’s offer on the Jupiters and their
actual withdrawal, became integral to the deal – for both sides’.15 Yet, Kennedy’s willingness to take action behind the backs of his North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
allies in a way that risked the cohesion of the alliance indicates his determination to
avoid war. How far would that determination have gone? The commentary on Brugioni’s
Eyeball to Eyeball in this collection makes clear the strong opposition of the US military
to a peaceful resolution of the crisis, and, on the other hand, the belief of Robert
McNamara that Kennedy would have gone the extra mile for peace. We All Lost the Cold
War and One Hell of a Gamble have demonstrated how, as the crisis continued, both
leaders manoeuvred to draw back, if need be at political cost. What if Khrushchev had
not blinked? This may seem a flawed counterfactual as the evidence overwhelmingly
shows he was determined to retreat. Yet it raises an intriguing question. If there were
circumstances in which Kennedy would have accepted the missiles, Khrushchev’s original gamble might seem less hazardous and (perhaps) less of a gamble.
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The Cuban missile crisis remains one of the most intensively studied events of the
twentieth century, and for the vast majority of historians, the moment when humankind
came closest to the brink of Armageddon.16 How close? Historical revelations have provided much new evidence with which to address this question. Both leaders followed a
trajectory that began with belligerence and ended with accommodation. As Peter Catterall
shows, the same was true of Macmillan. Kennedy’s initial belligerent reaction to the
discovery of the missiles and Khrushchev’s initial reaction to the blockade could have
augured military confrontation. However, the closer political leaders went to the brink,
the more determined they were to draw back from confrontation. Does this vindicate the
hawks? Paul Nitze, for example, argued that the 1961 Berlin crisis, which at one point
saw American tanks pointing their loaded cannons at Soviet tanks across Checkpoint
Charlie, was more dangerous than the missile crisis.17 Moreover, Nitze argues that
American regional superiority in the Caribbean mixed with strategic nuclear superiority
meant the risk of nuclear war over Cuba was nugatory.18 At root, this is an argument that
American deterrence was robust and successful. The belief that the crisis demonstrated
that nuclear threats and risks could be calibrated, managed and manipulated informed
much of the discourse of strategic studies as it took shape in the 1960s.19 The missile
crisis thus helped frame debates about deterrence and the belief in its stability.
Yet much of what has been learned in the last few decades has reinforced the view that
we were far nearer the brink than was realised. While decision-makers were increasingly
keen to avoid conflict, the risk of inadvertent nuclear war is now apparent. Campbell
Craig’s analysis of Scott Sagan’s Limits of Safety emphasises specific incidents in
American nuclear command and control that require re-evaluation of the risk of inadvertent and accidental nuclear war. Craig further explores the implications of Sagan’s work
for a broader assessment of nuclear risk in the Cold War and beyond. Both Craig and
Radchenko focus on the U-2 that strayed off course into Soviet air space on 27 October
(Roger Hilsman first disclosed the straying U-2 in his book To Move A Nation in 1964).
There was fear in Washington that the Soviets might mistake the plane for pre-strike
reconnaissance and decide to launch their InterContinental Ballistic Missiles pre-emptively. What is unclear is if the Pentagon took this risk seriously, whether consideration
was given in Washington to pre-empting pre-emption. Limits of Safety identifies more
tangible risks, including how, as Soviet fighters scrambled to shoot the U-2 down,
American fighters were sent in support. Unbeknownst to political leaders in Washington,
the prevailing defense condition (DEFCON) alert state meant that the US planes were
armed with air-to-air missiles with low-yield nuclear weapons. Sagan sketches five scenarios in which nuclear weapons could have been fired.
While Sagan’s work focuses primarily on American nuclear command and control,
much new information has emerged about Soviet forces. The suggestion that the Soviets
deployed a hundred or so tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba has become an accepted part
of the story, though it generated fierce debates in the 1990s, including, as Sergey
Radchenko describes, over whether Soviet commanders had pre-delegated authority to
fire battlefield nuclear missiles. More recently, Michael Dobbs has shown that Soviet
ground-launched cruise missiles (which American intelligence failed to identify) were
moved to their firing positions within range of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.20
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How significant are these facts? Assessing the risk that tactical nuclear weapons
might be fired in an American invasion raises questions both about the authority to use
them and whether they could have been used without authority (as well as whether they
would have survived the US aerial assault). However, the more fundamental issue concerns an essential counterfactual. Unless there was a risk of an American invasion, there
was no risk of nuclear weapons being used (assuming a breakdown of Soviet command
and control is discounted). The readiness state of nuclear weapons did not simply determine the risk of their use. Out of 60, 59 Thor IRBMs in Britain, for example, were armed
with their warheads and at less than 15 minutes readiness during the crisis.21 With the
range to destroy Moscow in 25 minutes or less, no one has suggested they presented a
serious risk of nuclear war. Would Kennedy have invaded Cuba if the crisis had not
reached its denouement over the weekend of 26–28 October? Answers are inevitably
speculative, though the belief that the President’s trajectory was taking him further away
from military action is convincing. Nevertheless, if there was a risk that Kennedy would
have invaded Cuba, then the risk of nuclear war was greater than understood.
Sergey Radchenko notes the complaint of Mark Kramer about predispositions to
show the crisis was more dangerous than it actually was. New revelations about the
operational level have excited interest in the danger of inadvertent nuclear war. Assessing
the risk of nuclear war raises complex issues, not least because Soviet nuclear command
and control procedures remain opaque. Among the most dramatic of events was the
deployment of Soviet diesel-electric submarines, each carrying a nuclear torpedo.22 The
40th anniversary of the crisis witnessed testimony from Soviet submariners who suggested that on at least one boat the captain came close to launching his nuclear torpedo.
The target would likely have been one of the US warships that were dropping hand grenades and practice depth charges to get the submarine to surface. These were ad hoc
procedures that American decision-makers believed would be understood and accepted
by the Soviets. What is striking is that dropping explosives on the submarines was discussed in ExComm on 24 October and by the President himself.23 Neither Kennedy nor
McNamara appeared aware that the submarines could be nuclear-armed (even though the
US intelligence considered this category of submarine could be so equipped). Both were
greatly exercised about the need for political control over military forces, and McNamara
insisted on thinking of the blockade as a means of communicating with the Soviets.24 Yet
they set in motion a train of events that could have led to inadvertent nuclear war. The
incident that may have generated the greatest risk of nuclear use in October 1962 may
also provide the best example of the huge gap between political leaders and those who
operated nuclear weapons. Crisis management looks here like a dangerous oxymoron.
In other episodes, more evidence has lessened the sense of danger. In 1987, an account
appeared that suggested that a coded warning from Oleg Penkovsky, the Western spy in
Soviet Military Intelligence, was designed to trigger an American attack but was suppressed by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers. Political authorities thus knew
nothing of the incident, so it was believed.25 In 1992, Jerrold Schecter and Peter Deriabin
provided a detailed account based on access to CIA files, which made it clear that information about the warning was passed to CIA headquarters, and that the President was
briefed on Penkovsky’s arrest.26 A second example concerns communications and intelligence. It was suggested that the Commander of the Strategic Air Command, General
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Thomas Power, communicated to his airborne B-52 bombers en clair to intimidate the
Soviets.27 It is now clear that Power’s message was designed to reassure his bomber
crews and make clear that if in doubt they should contact headquarters.28 How far this
intent to reassure was comprehended by the Soviets is not yet known.
When, in the 1980s, Soviet officials began to share their recollections and reflections
with their Western counterparts and Western academics, some questioned their motives.
Former Deputy Director at the CIA, Ray Cline, inveighed against ‘Mikhail Gorbachev’s
team of official intellectuals engaged in a program of historical revisionism serving
Moscow’s interest’.29 The interest in question was promotion of Gorbachev’s aim of
global nuclear disarmament. Historians are long familiar with the argument that debates
about the past reflect debates about the present. The lessons of the crisis for American
and NATO strategies in the 1980s involved debates in which both sides drew from their
reading (and experience) of history. The hawks in 1962 (such as Paul Nitze and Douglas
Dillon) were hawks in the 1980s just as those who were doves in 1962 (such as Robert
McNamara and Dean Rusk) were doves in the 1980s. McGeorge Bundy (whose ornithological identity in 1962 alternated) was firmly with the doves in the early 1980s in seeking alternatives to the Reaganite agenda. Bundy’s idea of existential deterrence seemed
to draw in particular from his reading of Kennedy’s attitude towards the threat of missiles
in Cuba: the destruction of even one American city represented an effective deterrent.
So what can the missile crisis tell us about nuclear deterrence? Eliot Cohen argues,
We should ask whether the crisis itself can and should serve as an appropriate model either for
those studying policy or for those conducting it. We must, in short, ask ourselves whether the
uniqueness of the crisis does not destroy its value as an archetype, or worse, make it a profoundly
misleading subject for reflection30
Sir Michael Howard has also warned, ‘It is safer to start with the assumption that history, whatever its value in educating the judgement, teaches no “lessons” … The past is
infinitely various, an inexhaustible storehouse of events from which we can prove anything or its contrary’.31 Thankfully, we have had an insufficient number of nuclear crises
to satisfy the yearning of social scientists for generalisability. The Cuban missile crisis is
widely seen as the nearest the world came to nuclear war. It is certainly the crisis about
which we have the most information. That includes evidence of how decision-makers
themselves sought to use historical analogies and draw lessons from the past, from
Munich to Pearl Harbor to August 1914.32 Analogies and lessons reflected very differing
interpretations. It is, though, worth noting that before the crisis Kennedy and several
senior colleagues had Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August, which argued that war came
inadvertently in 1914 and that Robert Kennedy claimed that the book influenced his
brother’s handling of the crisis.33 Harold Macmillan had also read Tuchman’s book (and
had fought in the Great War) and was an assiduous reader of history books. Peter Catterall
indeed shows that he managed to read a history of the 1688 ‘Glorious’ revolution during
the missile crisis.34
Theories of nuclear deterrence inextricably involve consideration of how political (or
military) leaders could take decisions resulting in the deaths of millions, or in Robert
McNamara’s phrase, the ‘destruction of nations’, if not indeed the destruction of
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humankind.35 However deterrence is defined, it is axiomatic that decision-makers wish
to avoid the annihilation of their country. In 1992, however, Fidel Castro explained his
attitude towards Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba:
I wish we had had the tactical nuclear weapons. It would have been wonderful. We wouldn’t
have rushed to use them, you can be sure of that … Of course, after we had used ours, they
would have replied with, say, 400 tactical weapons – we don’t know how many would have
been fired at us. In any case we were resigned to our fate.36
It is easy to see such ideas as irrational. Yet the idea of initiating nuclear war in a
conventional conflict remained at the heart of NATO strategy during the Cold War.
Similarly, Castro’s exhortations to Khrushchev on 27 October to initiate strategic
nuclear attacks on the United States should Kennedy invade Cuba, might reflect a parallel logic to NATO’s strategy of Massive Retaliation, which envisaged US nuclear
bombardment of the Soviet Union in response to a Warsaw Pact conventional assault
on West Germany. Castro’s apparent willingness to provoke nuclear annihilation nevertheless challenges the idea that nuclear weapons will always deter political leaders.
How far the words of political leaders denote their intentions or how they would act in
particular (and particularly unimaginable) conditions of nuclear war remains imponderable. Yet, it is worth noting that Kennedy’s televised speech on 22 October threatened ‘a full retaliatory response’ for the use of any Soviet missiles in Cuba against any
targets in the Western hemisphere. While Kennedy obviously wished to signal his
determination, is this really what he would have done, not least when he and McNamara
were trying to move American and NATO strategies away from Massive Retaliation,
and when during the crisis he was determined to avoid escalation and respond
cautiously?
Discussion of Castro also points to how far the study of the crisis has broadened from
its Soviet–American focus. Certainly, a range of previously neglected issues have been
the subject of valuable illumination, including Cuba,37 the United Nations38 and Europe.39
Peter Catterall, in his article highlights the British role in the United Nations. Britain was
the third nuclear weapons state in 1962 (and host to a significant US nuclear arsenal). It
remained essentially at the margins, though in his telephone conversation with Macmillan,
Kennedy specifically asked for the Prime Minister’s views on whether with the blockade
in place, and Soviet work on the missiles continuing, an invasion should take place.
Catterall illuminates what the ‘special relationship’ meant, and how America behaved
towards its closest ally, as well the differences between these and Macmillan’s account
of them. On some issues there was some influence, though this seemed to owe much to
the personal relationship between Kennedy and David Ormsby-Gore, the British
Ambassador. America’s allies played limited roles during the crisis though the vote of the
Organisation of American States on 23 October to endorse the blockade provided a valuable legal cover for American action. The stage at which NATO was called upon to take
significant action had not been reached, and there is little doubt that America’s NATO
allies were informed but not consulted over the blockade, even though this might affect
their own ships in the Caribbean and, moreover, risk Soviet retaliation in Europe. And
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notwithstanding Don Munton’s point that the Turkish government may have been more
amenable to a trade on the Jupiters than has been recognised, no one in Europe knew of
Kennedy’s secret arrangement with Khrushchev that was explicitly based on keeping
NATO in the dark.
A 1994 review of conventional wisdoms about the crisis (which predated much Soviet
archival work) demonstrated how far the interpretations of historians and the models of
political scientists required revision.40 While all historiography may be revisionist in
intent, the missile crisis provides much ammunition for those who question whether ‘the
truth’ can be found. After 50 years, the debate about why Nikita Khrushchev deployed
nuclear missiles in Cuba remains a debate (although his personal responsibility for what
happened is well established). Likewise, why he withdrew them still exercises historians,
strategists and psychologists, though we have a much clearer understanding of how decisions were made in Moscow, and by whom.
Under what circumstances Kennedy would have used force against Cuba remains
central to judgements about the risk of nuclear war. How close we came to nuclear war
is inextricably linked to counterfactual questions about what might have happened. Some
of these require better understanding of nuclear command and control – an area of deepest secrecy in the Cold War whose details remain closely guarded. There are many
‘known unknowns’ about the missile crisis including what consideration was given by
the respective military leaderships to nuclear war. Yet these are secrets not mysteries.
The mysteries concern the minds (and souls) of those who could have faced decisions to
use weapons of mass destruction. Historical evidence of, and cognitive insights into,
their moment of thermonuclear truth is inevitably limited.
Moreover, any evidence concerns how they anticipated what they would do. What
they would have done might have been entirely different. Furthermore, whether
Khrushchev or Kennedy (or Macmillan) would have been taking the decision on nuclear
use should not be taken for granted. One of the debates triggered by the 1992 revelations
concerned delegation of nuclear release authority, and specifically whether General
Pliyev had authority to use tactical nuclear missiles. The issue of whether the respective
militaries had authority to use strategic nuclear weapons remains critical in the adjudication of the risk of inadvertent nuclear war and the stability of crisis management in 1962
(and indeed more broadly in the Cold War). Certainly, the British Bomber Command
received clear authorisation in September 1962 to initiate nuclear attacks on the Soviet
Union in specified circumstances.41 The obvious circumstances which applied to all
three nuclear weapons states were decapitation. If Washington or Moscow (or London)
had been destroyed, who would have taken decisions on nuclear use? Would they have
worn suits or uniforms? So too is the question of whether (and how) the respective militaries had the ability to use strategic nuclear weapons whether or not they had authority.
The Jupiters and Thors were among many nuclear weapons in NATO Europe that were
not equipped with electronic locks (or Permissive Action Links as they were known) and
which relied on procedural safeguards as well as the military discipline and judgement of
the troops concerned.
Much of the literature on the crisis takes the use of nuclear weapons as synonymous
with cataclysmic nuclear war and assumes escalation was automatic. Perhaps so. Indeed,
probably so. Yet, arguably one of the most significant moments of the crisis was when
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President Kennedy chose not to retaliate against Soviet surface-to-air sites when Major
Anderson’s U-2 was shot down on 27 October. Whether there would have been similar
reluctance to foreswear or limit retaliation in response to the use of nuclear weapons is
certainly conceivable, especially where the use of nuclear weapons was judged to be
tactical, limited or accidental. Although the Soviets possessed a smaller strategic force
whose vulnerability might have quickly raised in Moscow’s minds the need to ‘use them
or lose them’, a limited or selective American attack might have prompted a limited
Soviet response (or indeed no response at all). Assessments of the risk of nuclear war
(and of cataclysmic nuclear war) require a dark empathy on the part of the historian.
They also require attention to the organisational processes and military imperatives that
could have hastened escalation against the wishes of the political leaders.
Most (though not all) students of the missile crisis would agree with Eliot Cohen’s
antipathy to nuclear crisis management.42 That would certainly include one of the more
influential proponents of crisis management, Robert McNamara, who devoted much
energy to re-examining the crisis, and which led him to conclude that the decisive factor in avoiding war in 1962 was luck.43 Campbell Craig endorses Scott Sagan’s pessimism about the prospect of nuclear war – in Craig’s words, ‘if anarchical great-power
politics perpetuate over the long-term, a nuclear war will happen sooner or later’.44
Robert McNamara’s conclusion is similar: ‘it can be predicted with confidence that the
indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries a very high
risk of a potential nuclear catastrophe’.45 McNamara shared with Craig, though not
with Sagan, the conclusion that global abolition of nuclear weapons is the solution to
the problem.
The emphasis on contingency and unacknowledged risk has accelerated with more
evidence. Better understanding of the role of misperception, miscalculation and mistakes, including the actions of subordinates, suggests that the risk of nuclear war was
greater than thought by decision-makers at the time and by commentators subsequently.
The study of the Cold War has rightly extended beyond Soviet–American relations. Yet
the reason why the missile crisis remains such a focus of interest is because it is a crisis
with the potential for nuclear weapons use at its epicentre. The more we learn about the
risk of inadvertent nuclear war, the less we should see nuclear weapons as epiphenomenal in the Cold War. Whatever the role of political ideology in the Cold War, we need to
understand that nuclear deterrence (however conceived) was an independent variable
and perhaps a social construct in its own right. So long as we confront the problems created by nuclear weapons, we should strengthen our commitment to studying the Cuban
missile crisis.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to the following reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this article: Kris Stoddart,
Don Munton, Gerry Hughes and the anonymous reviewers.
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Notes
1 Eliot Cohen, ‘Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis’, The National Interest,
Winter 1985/1986, pp. 3–13. For a well-informed critique of nuclear crisis management, and
an assessment of Cohen’s essay, see Michael Dobbs, ‘Why We Should Still Study the Cuban
Missile Crisis’, Special Report No. 205 (Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace,
June 2008), pp. 1–12.
2 Cohen, ‘Why We Should Stop’, p. 11.
3 Some of those asked to assess one book preferred to write on another. Other contributions
have not materialised. Inevitably, books that some see as intrinsically significant in their interpretation or illustrate broader themes and issues are not included here, such as Richard Ned
Lebow and Janice G. Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1994); Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow (eds.), The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the
White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997).
4 See most notably, Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision, Explaining the Cuban Missile
Crisis (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1971); Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow,
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999).
5 James G. Blight, Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1992).
6 Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety – Organisations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
7 Lebow and Stein, We All Lost.
8 Cohen, ‘Why We Should Stop’, p. 4.
9 May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes and Sheldon M. Stern, Averting ‘The Final Failure’
John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2003).
10 Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Washington, DC: The
Brookings Institution, 1987), p. 9.
11 Blight and Welch, for example, list eight hypotheses to explain why the missiles were
deployed: to deter an American attack on Cuba; to respond to American statements that the
‘missile gap’ had been a ‘hoax’; to use as a bargaining chip for US IRBMs in Turkey; to
solve the problem of West Berlin; to bolster the Soviets in their rivalry with China for leadership of the international socialist cause; to bolster the Soviets in their Cold War rivalry with
the United States and achieve psychological advantage in the Cold War; provide a foreign
policy success for Khrushchev to offset failure in domestic reform and as a response from
Khrushchev to pressure from the hardliners. James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the
Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Noonday
Press, 1990), pp. 116–7.
12 Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘US Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis’, in James G. Blight and
David A. Welch (eds.), Intelligence and Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 50.
13 Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight and David Welch, ‘Essence of Revision: Moscow, Havana
and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, International Security, 14(3), Winter 1989/1990, p. 164.
14 Len Scott, ‘Eyeball to Eyeball: Blinking and Winking, Spy-Planes and Secrets’, International
Relations, this issue.
15 Don Munton, ‘Hits and Myths: Essence, the Puzzles and the Missile Crisis’, International
Relations, this issue.
16 For an authoritative yet concise overview, see Don Munton and David A. Welch, The Cuban
Missile Crisis: A Concise History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
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Scott
17 Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision (New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1989), p. 205.
18 Interview in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, pp. 147–8; Nitze, From Hiroshima, pp. 214–38.
19 I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for this point.
20 Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of
Nuclear War (London: Hutchinson, 2008), pp. 178–81, 205–6.
21 Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, ‘The Other Other Missiles of October: The Thor IRBMs and
the Cuban Missile Crisis’, Electronic Journal of International History, 3, Spring 2000, available at: http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/3387/ (accessed 1 May 2012).
22 Svetlana V. Savranskaya, ‘Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis’, Journal of
Strategic Studies, 28(2), April 2005, pp. 233–59.
23 May and Zelikow, Kennedy Tapes, pp. 354–6.
24 Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 64.
25Garthoff, Reflections, pp. 39–41.
26 Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet
Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), pp.
346–7.
27 Scott D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management’, International Security, 9(4), Spring
1985, p. 108.
28Sagan, Limits of Safety, p. 69.
29 Ray S. Cline, ‘Commentary: The Cuban Missile Crisis’, Foreign Affairs, 68(4), Fall 1989, p. 190.
30 Cohen, ‘Why We Should Stop’, p. 5
31 Cohen, ‘Why We Should Stop’, p. 5.
32 See Dominic Tierney, ‘“Pearl Harbor in Reverse”: Moral Analogies in the Cuban Missile
Crisis’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 9(3), Summer 2007, pp. 49–77.
33 Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis October 1962 (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1969), pp. 65–6.
34 Peter Catterall, ‘At the End of the Day: Macmillan’s Account of the Cuban Missile Crisis’,
International Relations, this issue.
35 James G. Blight and David A. Welch, ‘Risking “The Destruction of Nations”: Lessons of the
Cuban Missile Crisis for New and Aspiring Nuclear States’, Security Studies, 4(4), Summer
1995, pp. 811–50.
36 Blight, Allyn and Welch, Cuba on the Brink, pp. 251–2.
37 Philip Brenner, ‘Cuba and the Missile Crisis’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 22(1),
February 1990, pp. 115–42; Blight, Allyn and Welch, Cuba on the Brink; J.I. Dominguez,
‘The @#$%& Missile Crisis: (Or What Was “Cuban” about US Decisions during the Cuban
Missile Crisis?)’, Diplomatic History, 24(2), Spring 2000, pp. 305–15.
38 Daniele Ganser, Reckless Gamble: The Sabotage of the United Nations in the Cuban Conflict
and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South,
2000); A. Walter Dorn and Robert Pauk, ‘Unsung Mediator: U Thant and the Cuban Missile
Crisis’, Diplomatic History, 33(2), April 2009, pp. 261–92.
39 Maurice Vaïsse (ed.), L'Europe et la Crise de Cuba (Paris: Armand Colin, 1993); Frank
Costigliola, ‘Kennedy, the European Allies, and the Failure to Consult’, Political Science
Quarterly, 110(1), 1995, pp. 105–23; L.V. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile
Crisis: Political, Military and Intelligence Aspects (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999);
Nigel Ashton, Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: The Irony of Interdependence (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
40 Len Scott and Steve Smith, ‘Lessons of October: Historians, Political Scientists, PolicyMakers and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, International Affairs, 70(4), October 1994, pp. 659–84.
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International Relations 26(3)
41 The National Archives, Kew, UK, ‘Supplementary Directive to Air Marshal Sir Kenneth Cross,
25 September 1962’, AIR8/2530, in Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, Planning Armageddon:
Britain, the United States and the Command of Nuclear Forces, 1945-1964 (Amsterdam:
Harwood Academic Press/Routledge, 2000), pp. 321–2.
42 See, for example, Richard M. Pious, ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Limits of Crisis
Management’, Political Science Quarterly, 116(1), Spring 2001, pp. 81–105. Cohen’s antipathy to the idea of crisis management is surely vindicated by the last two decades of research,
revelations and reflection.
43 James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang, The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S.
McNamara (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), p. 61.
44 Campbell Craig, ‘Testing Organisation Man: The Cuban Missile Crisis and The Limits of
Safety’. This issue.
45 Robert McNamara, ‘War in the Twentieth Century’, in John Baylis and Robert O’Neill (eds.)
Alternative Nuclear Futures: The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the Post-Cold War World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 178.
Len Scott is a Professor of International Politics and Dean of Social Sciences at Aberystwyth
University. He specialises in international history and intelligence studies. Among his publications
dealing with the Cuban missile crisis are Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis:
Political, Military and Intelligence Aspects (London: Macmillan, 1999), with Stephen Twigge,
Planning Armageddon: Britain, the United States and the Command of Nuclear Forces, 19451964 (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers/Routledge, 2000) and The Cuban Missile Crisis
and the Threat of Nuclear War: Lessons from History (London: Continuum Books, 2007).
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