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Why We Should Still Study the Cuban Missile Crisis

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Why We Should Still Study the Cuban Missile Crisis UNITED STATES InsTITUTE OF PEACE www.usip.org SPECIAL REPORT 1200 17th Street NW • Washington, DC 20036 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063 ABOUT THE REPORT Michael Dobbs Few events have been as studied and analyzed as the Cuban missile crisis. Drawing on previously undiscovered archival materials and interviews with Soviet and American veterans of the crisis, Michael Dobbs has taken a fresh look at the history of those fateful thirteen days. In his book, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on Why We Should Still the Brink of Nuclear War, Dobbs argues that the real danger of war arose not from the actions and wishes of Kennedy and Khrushchev, but unpredictable events that neither Study the Cuban Missile leader was fully able to control. As a USIP senior fellow in 2006–07, Dobbs researched the Cuban missile crisis at the National Archives, the Naval Historical Center, and the Crisis Library of Congress; concluded research in Russia and Cuba; and wrote the book. In this Special Report, Dobbs distills the key findings of his book, including ten lessons for a modern-day president. Michael Dobbs was a foreign correspondent for the Summary Washington Post for nearly fifteen years, representing the newspaper in Belgrade, Warsaw, Paris, and Moscow. • Some scholars have questioned the utility of studying the Cuban missile crisis as a He subsequently served as the newspaper’s diplomatic model for executive decision making during times of crisis, arguing that it offers little reporter and a reporter on the national desk. He has held guidance for policymakers today. fellowships or visiting scholarships at Harvard, Princeton, • Many accounts of the missile crisis are incomplete, inaccurate, and too narrowly the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and focused on the “rational actors” at the center of the drama while overlooking the the U.S. Institute of Peace. His previous books include Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, “irrational actors.” Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey, and • Nonetheless, the Cuban missile crisis remains the best-documented study of presi- Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America. dential decision making at a time of supreme national danger. It offers policymakers and students of history unique insights into the interplay between the debates in the Oval Office and fast-moving events in the rest of the world. • For decades, the Cuban missile crisis has been studied and analyzed as a case study © 2008 by the United States Institute of Peace. in presidential power and crisis management. It is better understood as an example of All rights reserved. the limits of presidential power and the haphazard returns of crisis management. • The missile crisis illustrates the sometimes pivotal role of personality in politics. Had someone else been president in October 1962, the outcome could have been SPECIAL REPORT 205 JUNE 2008 very different. Introduction CONTENTS Just over twenty years ago, a prominent military historian, Eliot A. Cohen, wrote a pro- Introduction 1 vocative essay entitled “Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis.”1 Accord- The Uses and Misuses of History 4 ing to Cohen, the problem was not simply that the missile crisis offered “precious little Ten Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis 5 historical guidance for American statesmen today” and was “unrepresentative” of other Conclusion 10 post-war crises. Cohen argued that the hubris engendered among the small circle of aides ABOUT THE INSTITUTE around Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson following the “eyeball-to-eyeball The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, confrontation” with Nikita Khrushchev helped pave the way for a series of disastrous nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. foreign policy decisions, most notably in Vietnam. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, Having just completed an exhaustive study of the thirteen days in October 1962 when promote post-conflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict- the world had its closest-ever brush with nuclear destruction, I share many of Cohen’s 2 management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital world- concerns about the misinterpretation of history. He makes a valid point when he argues wide. The Institute does this by empowering others with that the “best and the brightest” fell victim to their own propaganda about their skill at knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct “crisis management” and “calibrated” message sending. Furthermore, the circumstances of involvement in conflict zones around the globe. the Cuban missile crisis—the leader of the rival superpower deploying nuclear weapons 90 miles from American shores—were indeed unique. History never repeats itself exactly. BOARD OF DIRECTOrs At the same time, the missile crisis offers many useful lessons for contemporary policy J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, makers. Viewed in their proper historical context—a big caveat—the dramatic events of D.C. • María Otero (Vice Chairman), President, ACCION Inter- October 1962 offer extraordinary insights into the functioning of the modern American national, Boston, Mass. • Holly J. Burkhalter, Vice President, presidency at a time of extreme tension. For those of us who have never experienced the Government Affairs, International Justice Mission, Wash- stresses of the Oval Office, they remain the best-documented case study of how a president ington, D.C. • Anne H. Cahn, Former Scholar in Residence, makes vital national security decision and the real-world impact of those decisions. American University, Washington, D.C. • Chester A. Crocker, Unfortunately, most histories of the missile crisis have focused on the debates in James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of the White House and paid much less attention to events in the rest of the world. An Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. academic cottage industry has sprung up around the forty-three hours of tapes featuring • Laurie S. Fulton, Partner, Williams and Connolly, Washing- President Kennedy and his closest advisers as they agonized over the secret deployment ton, D.C. • Charles Horner, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, of Soviet missiles fifteen minutes flying time from Washington and other big American 3 Washington, D.C. • Kathleen Martinez, Executive Director, cities. Transcribed and dissected by rival groups of scholars, the tapes are exceptionally World Institute on Disability • George E. Moose, Adjunct important historical documents, but they represent just one slice of a much larger story. Professor of Practice, The George Washington University, Wash- To understand the significance of the White House debates, you have to be able to fol- ington, D.C. • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George low everything that was happening along the entire Cold War battlefront, much of which Mason University, Fairfax, Va. • Ron Silver, Actor, Producer, was invisible to the man in the Oval Office. President Kennedy was at the center of this Director, Primparous Productions, Inc. • Judy Van Rest, maelstrom but was often only dimly aware of what was going on elsewhere. As Cohen notes in his essay published in the National Interest, the Cuban missile crisis Executive Vice President, International Republican Institute, has traditionally been taught in American universities as “a shining example of crisis Washington, D.C. management. It demonstrates how the national security apparat really works—how MEMBERS EX OFFICIO bureaucrats clash and maneuver, how politicians react to the pressure of narrowing options, David Kramer, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of how important decisions get made. The twists and turns of Kennedy administration Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Department of State policy in October 1962 represent the swaying of an accomplished (or lucky) tightrope • Christopher “Ryan” Henry, Principal Deputy Under Secre- artist negotiating the way to terra firma over a thermonuclear abyss.” One of the most cel- tary for Policy, Department of Defense • Richard H. Solomon, ebrated studies of the missile crisis, Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision, developed three President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting) different prisms through which to view the decision-making process: the “Rational Actor” 4 • Frances C. Wilson, Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps; model, the “Organizational Process” model, and the “Bureaucratic Politics” model. President, National Defense University. The problem with all these models is that they offer a rational, government-centric view of the world, leaving out all the unpredictable, unforeseen incidents that played The views expressed in this report do not necessarily havoc with the careful calculations of both Kennedy and Khrushchev. As we have belat- reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, edly come to understand with the war on terrorism, history is determined not just by which does not advocate specific policy positions. the so-called rational actors, the men (or women) in suits, the bureaucrats, and the top military brass. “Irrational actors”—fanatics of various descriptions, men with long beards, To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, ideologues living in caves, and assassins with rifles—also play a role. Sometimes, minor e-mail: [email protected] characters thrust themselves onto the middle of the stage without warning. At other times, history can be yanked from its normal path by a combination of chance events, such as an airplane going astray, a soldier losing his temper, or a spy misidentifying a piece of weaponry. Statesmen try to bend the chaotic forces of history to their will, with varying degrees of success. The likelihood of an unpredictable event occurring that can change the course of history is always greater at times of war and crisis, when everything is in flux. In my study of the Cuban missile crisis, I tried to integrate the debates in the White House with a minute-by-minute narrative of events in the rest of the world. The discon- 2 nect was often jarring.
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