Nuclear Folly

Plokhy

American troops landed on the beaches of Cuba in June 1898. The US government entered the conflict partly.. to stop Spanish atrocities against the Cubans, widely covered and often exaggerated in the American media. But behind the move was also the implementation of the decades-old Monroe Doctrine... In 1902, there was no appetite in Washington to extend American borders to include Cuba, but neither was there much desire to make it fully independent... In all but name Cuba became a colony of the United States in the Caribbean. Most of the assets in the agricultural sector, mining, utilities, and financial services ended up in American hands. To safeguard American strategic and economic interests on the island, the United States made alliances with the local landowning elite and the military. By far the most trusted American ally in the presidential office in Havana became General Fulgencio Batista, who served as president of Cuba between 1940 and 1944, returning to power in 1952 as a result of a military coup. with the two most powerful American economic forces on the island, the agricultural corporations and the Mafia clans. Gambling and prostitution catering to American tourists became thriving industries...

Upon his return to Cuba, Batista canceled the impending presidential elections. His corrupt rule antagonized not only the poor but also the middle class. With elections canceled and democracy under attack, dissatisfied young people took up arms... On July 23, 1953, a group of young revolutionaries staged an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago. The assault was repelled and its leaders arrested. Among the latter was a twenty-six-year-old lawyer and descendant of a wealthy landowning family, Fidel Castro, who was sentenced to a fifteen-year term. His younger brother, Raúl, and twenty-four more participants in the attack were also imprisoned. Luckily for the Castro brothers and their coconspirators, they were released in May 1955 as Batista sought to improve his international image.

Batista’s regime used ever more brutal tactics to suppress the rebels, but that only increased the number of fighters. Those measures also tarnished the image of the regime abroad.. The US government was obliged to recall its ambassador to Havana and impose a trade embargo on Cuba, which stopped the sale of arms to Batista and gave a huge boost to the rebels. The year 1958, when arms sales ceased, became a turning point in the Castro-led revolution...

The Cuban revolution had succeeded, but what that meant was not yet clear either to its leaders or to its supporters and opponents, both in Cuba and abroad. Direct American investment increased during the first year of Castro’s rule, but that changed quickly as the government embarked on badly needed agrarian reform. In May 1959 Castro limited the size of agricultural estates to one thousand acres; the rest were to be confiscated and redistributed by the government without compensation to the landowners. In July 1960 the government nationalized all US-owned businesses and properties: since the revolutionary government needed resources and lacked money, no compensation was offered for the confiscated properties. In response President Eisenhower closed American markets to Cuban sugar, by far the island’s main export..

As far as Eisenhower was concerned, American interests were at stake...

Bay of Pigs

In March 1960, with agrarian reform in Cuba already underway but confiscation of American commercial properties not yet announced, Eisenhower decided to bring about regime change in Cuba. Castro was to be removed from power in the same way he had acquired it: through a popular uprising initiated by political exiles returning to Cuba. The CIA prepared a plan, but Eisenhower did not have time to carry out the project. It was passed on instead to the new president, John Kennedy...

The CIA deputy director for plans, Richard M. Bissell, the former administrator of the Marshall Plan in postwar Germany, was the principal author of the plan, which proposed to land on Cuba hundreds of guerrilla fighters recruited from the ranks of Cuban exiles and trained in CIA camps in Guatemala...

Kennedy suggested the infiltration of the task force in small groups, with their first big operation to be conducted from Cuban bases, not “as an invasion force sent by the Yankees.” Neither the CIA nor the military liked that idea. On March 11, the CIA’s Bissell presented a memorandum that effectively rejected Kennedy’s idea of infiltration of small groups, arguing that without air support and tanks guerrilla groups had little chance of making it from the beaches to the mountains. Bissell recommended instead “landing in full force.” Kennedy was not pleased. Once again, he sent the CIA back to the drawing board, asking for a plan that would make the US involvement “less obvious.” Four days later, on March 15, Bissell proposed an alternative plan. He still insisted on air support but suggested that the planes to be used in the operation be camouflaged as Cuban rather than American. To make the claim work, an airstrip on Cuban territory would be needed to serve as the base of operations for alleged anti-Castro rebels in the Cuban Air Force... Kennedy approved the new plan with one caveat. To ensure deniability he wanted a night landing on the island, with the ships carrying the task force to be removed from the area by dawn...

With the invasion planned for Sunday, April 16, Kennedy decided to spend that weekend away from the White House at his family retreat in Glen Ora, Virginia. Since the media knew his whereabouts, this was one more ploy to deny involvement in the planned invasion not only on the part of American forces but also on that of the president...

The invaders had little air cover: the surviving Cuban planes outnumbered the six aircraft provided by the CIA to support Brigade 2506. They would soon lose two ships, the USS Houston and the USS Rio Escondido, which carried their supplies of fuel, ammunition, and medicine. Besides, the coral reefs that CIA scouts had mistaken for seaweed prevented the rest of the transport ships from reaching the beaches, and the exiles had to use boats to get there, losing some of their weapons and ammunition in the high water. What they managed to save was wet and often inoperable. Short of weapons, supplies, and ammunition, they were also outnumbered and outgunned once Castro’s reinforcements began to arrive at the Bay of Pigs—altogether close to twenty thousand police officers, soldiers, and members of local militias. They were assisted by crews in Soviet-made T-34 tanks. The CIA asked Kennedy to authorize the use of US airplanes to help the invasion force, but he refused...

Rusk was now determined to kill CIA plans for any airstrikes that could not be credibly attributed to the planes taking off from airstrips in Cuba. Kennedy, with whom Rusk had spoken by phone after 9:00 p.m. on April 16, was of the same opinion. As far as he was concerned, he had never authorized such strikes and now gave an order to cancel those already planned by the CIA... General Charles Cabell of the CIA called Rusk at home and asked him to reconsider. He made the same plea to the president. But the order remained in force: invasion—yes, air support —no. The invaders floundered on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs, fighting now for their lives, not for a chance to break out and launch a nationwide uprising...

[I]n the early hours of April 19, with things going from bad to worse, [JFK] yielded, allowing the use of camouflaged planes piloted by Americans in support of the invaders, but the pilots were not allowed to fight enemy aircraft, and their mission was limited to a few hours. The military commanders seized the opportunity but failed to take advantage of it. Because of the time difference between Nicaragua and Cuba, the planes arrived later than expected. Two of them were shot down, and four American pilots went missing. Radio Havana declared that the Cubans had recovered the body of one of the Americans. By now the venture had turned into a complete disaster.

Kennedy appeared to believe in a missile gap between the Soviet Union and the United States favoring the former—a notion fed not only by the Soviet success with Sputnik but also by Khrushchev’s own fiery rhetoric, and one that Eisenhower’s U-2 spy flights were threatening to debunk...

Khrushchev needed a solution to the Berlin crisis that would not involve the threatened peace treaty with East Germany, the loss of American access rights, and a possible military confrontation. Such a scenario might lead to thermonuclear war, perhaps more easily with a weak president than with a strong one. Khrushchev knew that he had nothing with which to counter Kennedy: the “missile gap” actually favored the United States, and he had no additional funds for his military to match Kennedy’s unprecedented buildup. Nor could he wait any longer to solve his Berlin problem, as East Germans, attracted by higher living standards in the West, were leaving the German socialist paradise in ever greater numbers... The East German leader, Walter Ulbricht, had a solution: surrounding West Berlin with a wall... On August 1... Khrushchev told Ulbricht that he could start building the wall...[Eisenhower would later criticize JFK on this '[w]e witnessed no abdication of international responsibility... No walls were built, no threatening foreign bases were established]"

[Kennedy's problem was] General Lucius Clay [.. who] sent American tanks to Checkpoint Charlie on the border between the eastern and western sectors to enforce American rights to move freely through the entire city, including its eastern part, as guaranteed by the four-power agreements of the immediate postwar era. The Soviets responded by moving their own tanks to the area. By early evening the two columns of tanks faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie, each less than one hundred meters from the demarcation line. The tanks had live ammunition, and their crews had orders to respond if fired upon. Clay, in charge of the US troops, was prepared to use his tanks to crush parts of the newly constructed Berlin Wall. Darkness fell with no resolution to the crisis.

Not until morning did the tanks begin to draw back from the demarcation line. First the Soviet tanks moved five meters back; the Americans followed suit. Then came another five meters from both sides, then another. The standoff, which had begun at 5:00 p.m. on October 27, was over by 11:00 a.m. on October 28. The orders came from the very top—the White House and the Kremlin. Neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev wanted the situation to escalate into war... Unbeknownst to both sides, it would be a model for the solution of a later and much more serious crisis...

Khrushchev and Kennedy had the first chance to size each other up on June 3, 1961. The venue was the US embassy in Vienna... [went badly for JFK, who] assumed that he had been treated that way because of the Bay of Pigs debacle. Khrushchev “thought that anyone who was so young and inexperienced as to get into that mess could be taken,” speculated Kennedy. “And anyone who got into it and didn’t see it through had no guts. So he just beat the hell out of me.”...

Scarred by the Bay of Pigs invasion and expecting a much more powerful invasion in the near future, Castro apparently believed that to save his revolution he had to turn it into a socialist one. He badly needed socialist solidarity and wanted it to come not only in the form of Soviet purchases of sugar, trade credits for Soviet equipment, and supplies of oil. He also wanted weapons, missiles in particular... Before the end of the year, the desperate Castro had declared himself a Marxist and a Leninist.

In Moscow Castro was still regarded as part of a broad group of Third World leaders who opposed imperialism... Privately Khrushchev welcomed the development but believed it premature on Castro’s part to declare his socialist agenda and communist goals in public... Feeling increasingly insecure and ever more frustrated with Moscow’s procrastination about supplying weapons, Castro was prepared to reverse tactics and turn on the Marxists in his own country—the members of the Cuban Communist Party. This was meant to solidify his political control over the regime and send a signal of frustration to the communist world at large... In defiance of Moscow, Castro sacked [a known pro-Moscow leader] Escalante from his all-important position. Castro also managed to turn the communist old guard into scapegoats at a time when popular support for his regime was declining and discontent caused by the worsening economic situation was on the rise...

Forced to choose between the old communist Escalante and the brand-new Marxist Castro, Khrushchev had decided to back the latter... Castro’s pledge to lead his country to socialism, previously ignored, had finally paid off, but only after his unexpected attack on Moscow’s allies in Havana. Khrushchev’s hitherto cautious approach to Castro and Cuba was completely abandoned on April 18, when he sent a letter to “Comrade Fidel Castro” commemorating the first anniversary of the Cuban victory at the Bay of Pigs.

Castro had finally gotten Khrushchev on an ideological leash, but Khrushchev was willing to be caught. His motive was not purely ideological. Great-power rivalry and the nuclear arms race with the United States, which Khrushchev knew he was losing, were among the factors that attracted him to Cuba...

In April 1962 Khrushchev found himself simultaneously besieged by a number of foreign policy crises. First there was Castro’s sudden turn against the communists in his government and threat of a new invasion of the island. Then came news that Kennedy had resumed atmospheric nuclear testing—a nuclear bomb was exploded at Christmas Island in the Pacific on April 25. [He fired a commander] allowing the real missile gap between the US and the USSR to increase.. [There was a new US missile called Minuteman] powered by solid fuel and, unlike earlier liquid-fueled missiles that needed hours of fueling before a strike, could be ready at any minute -- hence the name. Moreover Minuteman could be housed in silos hard for the enemy to destroy, making them almost impregnable. The USSR had nothing comparable to the Minuteman, because its missiles ran on liquid fuel and needed hours of prestrike fueling on open pads, making them vulnerable to enemy attack...

[Kruschev] had a eureka moment: he would do to the Americans what they had done to the Soviet Union and place his nuclear missiles on the shores of Cuba... This looked like a solution to both of his problems, protecting Cuba and bridging the missile gap with the United States...

[JFK said 'It is] just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs in Turkey. Now that’d be goddam dangerous, I would think.' Undersecretary of State Alexis Johnson interjected a sobering remark: 'We did it.' Kennedy was unimpressed: 'Yeah, but it was five years ago.' But Johnson would not give up. 'That’s when we were short on ICBMs,' he told Kennedy. Unknowingly, he pointed at one of the key factors that motivated Khrushchev’s actions in Cuba: his lack of long-range intercontinental missiles...

In the past, every time Kennedy was bullied, outmaneuvered, or defeated by Khrushchev in their personal meetings, as at Vienna in June 1960, he would strike back by asking Congress either to increase the defense budget or to call up reservists, or both. He was overcompensating at home for diplomatic defeats abroad, not only to warn Khrushchev but also to protect himself politically in his own country...