Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (73 page)

In general, however, the administration did not seem to learn very much from its experiences in 1961, especially as they concerned Cuba. Kennedy continued to be enamored of the Special Forces and of secret, CIA-led efforts to undermine unfriendly governments abroad. By 1962 Kennedy had relieved both Dulles and Bissell, but he approved a CIA-sponsored counter-insurgency program in Laos. This involved the recruitment of 36,000 Meo tribesmen (later called Hmong) as well as thousands of Thai "volunteers." The CIA directed guerrilla raids against both China and North Vietnam. Air-America, a CIA-owned airline, became involved in bombing raids in Laos. This secret war in Laos continued for years until exposed in the 1970s. By then it was costing the CIA alone some $20 to $30 million a year.
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Kennedy above all seemed obsessed by Castro. Operation Mongoose, a highly secret, CIA-coordinated program, was developed to damage Castro's regime. "My idea," Robert Kennedy said in November 1961, "is to stir things up on the island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder." Operation Mongoose tried all these things and more. Its agents sought to contaminate Cuban sugar exports and to detonate bombs in Cuban factories, and it sponsored paramilitary raids on the island. It is estimated that Mongoose developed at least thirty-three plans to assassinate Castro between November 1961 and Kennedy's death two years later.
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T
HE
B
AY OF
P
IGS AND
B
ERLIN CONFRONTATIONS
implanted profound insecurity in both Kennedy and Khrushchev. Both men soon behaved as if their personal manhood were at stake. A
mano a mano
emotionality imparted to Soviet-American relations in 1962 a volatility that did credit to neither man as a diplomatist and that provoked the most frightening military crisis in world history.
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Khrushchev proceeded to act in an especially confrontational manner, resuming atmospheric atomic tests in September 1961. (Kennedy did the same seven months later.) The Soviet leader turned especially to Cuba, which he thought Kennedy was again preparing to attack. Beginning in 1961 the Soviet Union sent increasing numbers of military personnel to the island, and in the summer of 1962 it started arming Cuba with missiles. These were not defensive weapons, however, but medium-range offensive missiles designed to give the Soviets more military potential—and diplomatic muscle—in the worldwide Cold War. They had a range of 1,100 miles, easily sufficient to hit major population centers in the United States.
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By mid-October of 1962 the Soviets had almost completed their work. As later revelations disclosed, they were then about a week away from making operational their launching sites near San Cristobal. Later revelations also indicated that the Soviets had in readiness nine tactical missiles with nuclear warheads. These had a range of around thirty miles and could have wreaked havoc on American planes or invaders. Some 42,000 Soviet military personnel—twice as many as American intelligence imagined at the time—were then on the island. Their commander, not the Cubans (or military brass in Moscow), had authority to fire the missiles.
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Fortunately for the United States, the CIA grew increasingly suspicious of Russian-Cuban activity in 1962. In September Kennedy publicly and privately warned Khrushchev not to put Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. Khrushchev denied that he was doing any such thing, but on October 15 photographs from U-2 reconnaissance flights showed that missile sites were well underway in Cuba. Although the photographs failed to spot the launchers for the tactical missiles or the nuclear warheads for the intermediate-range missiles, they revealed twenty-four launchers for the intermediate-range missiles. The evidence was compelling. A "missile crisis," the most frightening confrontation of the Cold War, now faced the world.

The deliberations of Kennedy and an "Executive Committee" of the National Security Council that he set up to deal with the confrontation later evoked a great deal of praise for facilitating the President's cool and courageous "crisis management." For the next thirteen days high-ranking officials, chief among them McNamara, Rusk, Robert Kennedy, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, debated options far into the nights. Hoping to avoid the group-think that pervaded the Bay of Pigs debacle, the "Ex-Comm" members sought advice from a range of sources, including Cold Warriors such as Dean Acheson, conciliators such as Stevenson, and military and congressional leaders. They were thoroughly scared. Further reconnaissance flights made it clear that work on the sites was progressing rapidly. Time was short. If the Ex-Comm miscalculated, they risked national safety and much more. On October 20, just before the administration decided what to do, Kennedy called his wife and children back to Washington so that they could join him in an underground shelter if necessary.
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By then fairly well articulated though still shifting opinions dominated the anxious discussions. Stevenson, the most conciliatory adviser, called for the demilitarization of Cuba (including the United States base at Guantanamo) and for an American promise to remove Jupiter offensive missiles that it had emplaced in Turkey, a NATO ally. These, he said, were of no use save as a first strike and were as inflammatory to the Soviets as the Cuban missiles were to the United States. Other moderates pointed out that each side already had capacity via ICBMs to inflict fearsome damage on the other. Why should America risk a nuclear war to stop the building of sites in Cuba?

Other, more militant, advisers called for much tougher American responses of one kind or another. Fulbright, a hard-liner on this occasion, recommended an invasion of Cuba. Bundy, Acheson, Vice-President Johnson, and others demanded air strikes against the missile sites. This option seemed especially popular during Ex-Comm's early deliberations. Smashing the sites might knock out the threat quickly without exposing Americans (save the pilots) to serious danger. American invasion might follow if deemed necessary.

The President and his brother refused to go along with advice such as Stevenson's, which they unkindly branded as "soft" and appeasing. Part of their reason for doing so was their profound distrust of Khrushchev. They were angry because Khrushchev's emissaries had lied to them and were continuing to lie even as Moscow directed completion of the sites in Cuba. They were also highly sensitive to charges at the time by Republicans (congressional elections were imminent) that the administration had been lax in dealing with Cuba, America's "back yard." For political reasons, they believed, the President must under no circumstances appear weak. In addition, Kennedy refused to accept the argument that the new sites added little to Soviet power. Emplacement of the missiles would give Khrushchev greater leverage and political prestige elsewhere in the world, as in Berlin. This would damage American credibility, then as always a key concern of American leaders in the postwar era. As the Ex-Comm continued its debates, it became clear that the President was determined not to back down from what he considered the provocative and reckless behavior of the enemy. The missiles must go.

JFK and Robert, however, also came to oppose air strikes. Some members of Ex-Comm, including Rusk and Undersecretary of State George Ball, shrank from the very idea of such attacks. "A course of action where we strike without warning," Ball said on October 18, "is like Pearl Harbor. It's the kind of conduct that one might expect from the Soviet Union. It is not conduct that one expects from the United States." Rusk added, "The burden of carrying the mark of Cain on your brow for the rest of your lives is something we all have to bear." Robert Kennedy then agreed, "we've talked for fifteen years about a first strike, saying we'd never do that. We'd never do that against a small country. I think it's a hell of a burden to carry." To launch such a strike, he added, would make his brother "the Tojo of the 1960s."
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The analogy to Japanese militarism infuriated hawks such as Acheson, but Robert persisted, pointing out that strikes could kill many people, including Russians and Cuban civilians, on the ground. The Soviets might well retaliate, probably in Berlin. American military leaders, moreover, weighed in with powerful practical advice. No one could be sure, they pointed out, that strikes would knock out everything that the Soviets had in Cuba. If some of the missiles survived the strikes, the Soviets might fire them off at the United States. The United States would feel obliged to retaliate, possibly with nuclear weapons of its own, and perhaps with an invasion of Cuba.

For these reasons the administration decided at almost the last moment not to begin with air strikes. Instead, JFK settled on what he considered a middle ground: the United States Navy would enforce a "quarantine" against further shipment of Soviet military equipment to Cuba. Ships that defied the quarantine would be fired on if necessary. As a contingency air strikes could also be employed.
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On October 22, a week after U-2 evidence had reached the White House, Kennedy so informed Khrushchev, both via diplomatic communication and via a dramatic, prime-time televised speech an hour later that let the world in on some of the behind-the-scenes activities of high American officials the previous week. He further warned against Soviet retaliation. Any missile shot at places in the Western Hemisphere, at Berlin, or anywhere else, Kennedy said, would provoke a "fully retaliatory response" upon the Soviet Union. American allies in NATO, as well as countries in the Organization of American States, had been consulted in advance and uneasily supported Kennedy's forceful but frightening stand.

Unprecedented fearshot down an American U-2 over Cuba the and tension gripped people throughout the world in the immediate aftermath of this announcement. Billy Graham, in Argentina, preached about "The End of the World." Soviet submarines were sighted in Caribbean waters. Soviet freighters, presumed to be bringing military equipment to Cuba, were approaching the island. So were other ships carrying Soviet goods. What if they defied the quarantine and were attacked by American naval vessels? The range of potential countermoves by the Soviets, including aggressive action in Berlin or—a worst case—the dispatch of ICBMs against the United States, was almost too horrible to think about.

Ex-Comm members, like millions of other people, waited nervously to see what would happen the next morning, when the Soviet ships would have to decide what to do. The suspense seemed nearly unbearable. Then relief. At the last moment some Soviet freighters slowly turned about. Others, carrying no munitions, agreed to be stopped and searched on the high seas. Rusk nudged Bundy, "We're eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked."
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It was a wonderful moment for the tired and beleaguered advisers and for peace-seeking people throughout the world.

The crisis, however, was far from over. Construction on the sites continued; very soon the missiles might be operational. U-2 photos indicated that parts of Soviet bombers were being uncrated and readied for assembly on Cuban airfields. Kennedy insisted that the missiles be removed and the sites inspected. On October 26 Khrushchev appeared to agree. In return, he said, the United States must end the quarantine and promise not to invade the island. As American officials were considering on October 27 whether to accept this settlement, a second Soviet note arrived. It added the demand that the United States remove the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, an action that presumably required NATO approval. This escalation of Soviet demands confused and antagonized American leaders. When a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down an American U-2 over Cuba the

same day, killing the pilot, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff reacted angrily and called for an immediate air strike on Cuba. A majority of Ex-Comm members supported their recommendation. In this terrifying moment it was eyeball-to-eyeball again before Kennedy himself ordered the planes to hold off for at least one more day.

At this point Robert Kennedy, drawing on suggestions from others, offered a way out of the impasse: accept the arrangement proposed in the first Soviet note and act as if the second note had never been received. President Kennedy liked the idea and told Khrushchev that he would accept the first proposal. Again employing open diplomacy, the President made his stance public. In private as well as in public he laid special emphasis on one aspect of the understanding: construction on the sites must stop immediately.
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Kennedy did not inform the public, however, of quiet talks that he also approved. As he was announcing his tough stance to the world, he authorized his brother to talk privately with Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador in Washington. Robert told Dobrynin that Moscow must commit itself by the next day to remove the missiles, in return for which the United States would later take out its missiles from Turkey and from Italy. Kennedy had planned to do so anyway, recognizing that submarine-launched Polaris missiles made the Jupiters obsolete. At the same time, JFK quietly developed a fall-back plan by which the United States, working through the UN, would support removal of its missiles from Turkey in return for Russian removal of its missiles in Cuba.

Khrushchev was so relieved to get the American note that he arose early on the morning of October 28 and personally dictated his acceptance of it. Kennedy was delighted. "I cut his balls off," he crowed privately. But Castro was outraged, both because Khrushchev had given in and because he himself had not been consulted. (He first heard the news over the radio.) Castro kicked a wall, shattered a mirror, and denounced Khrushchev as a "son of a bitch . . . a bastard . . . an asshole," and a man with "no cojones."
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Other interested parties were equally angry at the settlement. When anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida heard of it, they were irate that Kennedy would consider a promise not to invade the island. Kennedy, they said, had agreed to "another Bay of Pigs for us. . . . We are just like the Hungarians now." Later that day, when Kennedy met with American military leaders to thank them for their advice, he was staggered by their reaction. "We have been had," one said. SAC chief Curtis LeMay pounded the table. "It's the greatest defeat in our history, Mr. President. . . .
We should invade today."
McNamara, who was present, recalled that Kennedy "was absolutely shocked. He was stuttering in reply."
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At that stage, however, there was little that opponents of the settlement could do: Kennedy and Khrushchev had spoken. Within the next few weeks the two leaders saw to it that most of the agreement went into effect. U-2 reconnaissance indicated that the Soviets were removing the missile launchers and missiles from Cuba. The United States stopped its quarantine and clamped down on the forays of emigrés against Cuba. By April 1963 the Jupiter missiles were taken out of Turkey and Italy and replaced by Polaris missiles in submarines.

In evaluating Kennedy's handling of the missile crisis many people have given him very high marks. Some, like McNamara, maintained at the time that the administration's prior build-up of defense forces, preparing for "flexible response," was both prescient and critical to America's ability to meet the situation. "A line of destroyers in a quarantine or a division of well-armed men on a border," he declared, "may be more useful to our real security than the multiplication of awesome weapons beyond our actual needs."
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Other admirers of Kennedy have praised him as a cool and collected crisis-manager and lauded the much-improved decision-making process as carried out by Ex-Comm. Kennedy advisers emerged from their ordeal with great pride and self-assurance about their capacity to handle crises in the future.

Those who favorably evaluate Kennedy's actions tend to blame Khrushchev as the real villain of the piece. They surely have a point. The Soviet leader acted rashly in building up missiles in Cuba and compounded his rashness by lying about it even after it became clear that Kennedy knew he was lying. When Kennedy resisted, Khrushchev wisely backed down from a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet leader was even then reckless, having ceded to Soviet commanders in Cuba the authority to fire off missiles on their own. One commander completely surprised Moscow by doing just that, bringing down the American U-2. It was fortunate indeed that Kennedy, acting prudently, resisted the urging of his military advisers and refused to authorize a retaliatory strike. If he had, the United States would probably have killed Russians and set in motion a series of responses that might have provoked a nuclear war.

Khrushchev's worst error was in starting something so reckless that it could not be carried out if challenged. When he turned back the ships, he accepted worldwide public embarrassment. Not only Castro but also Red China ridiculed his handling of the affair. Critics at home grew increasingly restless, finally removing him from power in October 1964 (and replacing him with leadership that was bent on still more rapid expansion of Soviet military forces). His mismanagement of the missile crisis almost certainly contributed to his ouster and helped to usher in further escalation of the arms race.

Supporters of Kennedy argue also that he acted with an admirable mix of firmness and wisdom. If he is compared to some of the hawks on Ex-Comm, that is true. To have ordered an invasion or an air strike would have been to invite nuclear disaster. If he is compared to Stevenson, praise is less clearly due, for Stevenson had a point in emphasizing that the missiles in Cuba gave the Soviets little new military potential: their ICBMs already could hit American targets. The United States, having discovered the missiles, might have quietly struck a deal. But Kennedy was correct in believing that acquiescence by the United States in Soviet missiles in Cuba—which were certain to come to public attention—would have changed international
perceptions
of Soviet strength and diplomatic boldness, thereby damaging America's credibility in the world.
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Acquiescence might also have encouraged Khrushchev to take further liberties. Finally, it would have provoked major political recriminations in the United States. For all these reasons, Kennedy felt he had to take a firm stand. When he resisted—and forced the Soviets to back down—Americans reacted with enormous relief and fulsome praise. The journalist Richard Rovere observed in the
New Yorker
that Kennedy had achieved "perhaps the greatest personal diplomatic victory of any President in our history."
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Still, critics of the President's performance have many of the last words. With good cause they raise questions about actions and omissions that long pre-dated the crisis itself. If he had not followed the Bay of Pigs invasion with Operation Mongoose and other highly threatening anti-Castro activities, the Cubans might not have looked so eagerly for Soviet military help. If he had given higher priority to intelligence-gathering, he would probably have known a little earlier of the substantial Soviet buildup on the island. If he had specifically warned the Soviets before September 1962 (perhaps following the Bay of Pigs debacle) not to bring offensive missiles to Cuba, they might not have dared to do so. Many of these American actions (and inactions) had the effect of persuading Castro and Khrushchev that another invasion—this one openly American—was soon to come. That, in turn, rattled them. The administration gave too little thought to the way in which American actions, some of them (such as Mongoose) hostile indeed, were perceived by unfriendly governments.
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Kennedy can also be faulted for his performance in October 1962. Angered by Khrushchev's lying, he was understandably eager to score a diplomatic victory and to humiliate the Soviet leader in the process. This he resolved to do publicly. If he had privately shown the U-2 photographs to Soviet officials and tried to negotiate—perhaps (as he ultimately did) by exchanging missiles in Cuba for missiles in Turkey—he might have managed a tense but not world-frightening diplomatic settlement. Alternatively, he might have threatened to take the strong stand that he did but have done so via more quiet diplomacy, thus enabling Khrushchev to back off in private. Instead, Kennedy felt he must face down his adversary if he hoped to avoid repeated challenges in the future, and he resorted to television. This was an unsubtle and provocative approach that required the enemy not only to give in but also to accept public humiliation. Nothing can be more risky in high-stakes diplomacy. Kennedy himself noted, "If Khrushchev wants to rub my nose in the dirt, it's all over."
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Kennedy partisans exaggerate considerably when they describe the decision-making process, as many did, as a cool and masterful display of the best and the brightest of American officialdom. Schlesinger later maintained that Kennedy's response revealed a "combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated, that it dazzled the world."
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On the contrary, members of the Ex-Comm worked frantically and went without sleep. Understandably, some lost their tempers. Given the pressure of circumstances, these were predictable reactions, but they reveal that Kennedy and his advisers found themselves confronted with an unanticipated situation that demanded improvisation. What followed was not always very cool.

Nor did it reveal much mastery. No such capacity was easy to attain in complicated, fast-moving situations wherein a good deal of key information was either not known or misunderstood. Ex-Comm advisers, for instance, did not realize that the Soviets had 42,000 men on the ground in Cuba, that the Soviets might have tactical nuclear weapons ready to fire at invaders, or that decisions to shoot off missiles could be made by Soviet commanders in Cuba rather than in Moscow. Fortunately, the Ex-Comm people decided against either invasion or air strikes, which might have prompted terrific counter-force. But they did so only at the last minute and on the basis of faulty intelligence. In a word, they were lucky as well as wise.

Kennedy, meanwhile, underestimated the enemy's military capacity. Wrongly assuming that the United States had total control of the air, he kept the U-2S flying and lost one at a critical time in the negotiating process. Only the President's restraint at that point prevented major escalation. Meanwhile, Mongoose operatives were continuing to plot separately; unreachable by the CIA during the crisis, they managed to blow up a Cuban factory on November 8. What would the enemy have thought if Mongoose agents had succeeded in doing so at the height of the crisis in late October? Imponderables such as these suggest how extraordinarily difficult it is for decision-makers—whether American or Soviet—to "manage" a major crisis in the nuclear age. Officials then and later who thought they could indulged in a fair amount of self-congratulatory wishful thinking.
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Second thoughts about the crisis gradually sobered both Kennedy and Khrushchev, who agreed to establish a "hot-line" in 1963 in order to lessen the chances of nuclear disaster. In June 1963 the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain agreed to a limited ban on nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space, and under water. The Senate ratified it, 80 to 19, in September, and it was signed in October. The treaty did not do much to reduce tensions, for underground testing continued. Expenditures on nuclear-armed bombers, Polaris missiles, and Minutemen escalated. Other potentially important nuclear powers such as France and China refused to accede to the treaty. Still, the agreement signified a bit of a thaw in the deep freeze of Soviet-American relations. In a widely hailed speech at American University on June 11, Kennedy went so far as to suggest a reassessment of Cold War assumptions. "In the final analysis," he said, "our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
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But the understandings that Kennedy and Khrushchev had reached over Cuba at the end of October 1962 had been rough and tentative, and serious disagreements persisted even as Kennedy talked of common humanity. American forces had had to remain on highest alert until November 20, at which point Castro had reluctantly agreed to the return of three long-range Soviet bombers to the Soviet Union. Then and thereafter, most of the 42,000 Soviet soldiers and technicians stayed in Cuba. Castro never admitted on-site inspectors, thereby promoting persistent rumors that secret installations remained. He sought to export his revolution to other parts of the Western Hemisphere, notably in Venezuela, where a Cuba-inspired plot was uncovered in November 1963. The Soviets ultimately resumed their military build-up in Cuba by installing offensive fighter bombers and starting construction of a submarine base.
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United States policy regarding Cuba remained equally provocative. Kennedy refused to put his no-invasion promise in writing, demanding that Cuba first agree to inspections and that it cease "aggressive acts against any of the nations of the Western Hemisphere."
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This insistence left him—and subsequent Presidents—free to launch an invasion. As if to confirm that possibility, the Kennedy administration revived Operation Mongoose in June 1963. Only in September 1970, during the Nixon presidency, did leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union (again bypassing Castro) reach a semi-formal understanding of the settlement of 1962. At that time Nixon said the United States would not invade Cuba, and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, agreed that Russia would stop developing offensive weapons on the island. Even this understanding, however, was a secret exchange between leaders, not a formal agreement. It was not until some years later that many officials in the American government even knew of it. Cuba remained a flashpoint of the Cold War.
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