Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
It is hard for many of us to imagine, 60 years on from the Cuban missile crisis, the atmosphere of a time in which many assumed all-out war between the superpowers was coming and that such a clash would necessarily be nuclear. But as the journalist and historian Max Hastings reminds us in Abyss, relations between China, Russia and the US are as fractious now as ever. Levels of mutual understanding, and the will to accommodate new understandings, are hardly better than in 1962; the scope for an irreversible error – even a deliberate act – remains.
Between July and September 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev secretly deployed intermediate-range, medium-range and short-range nuclear missiles to bases across Cuba. These were accompanied by tens of thousands of troops disguised as civilians, fighter jets, bombers, surface-to-air missile launchers and other munitions. Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government had taken power in January 1959 and in 1961 openly pledged allegiance to the Soviet Union. Earlier that year, the US had backed a disastrous invasion of Cuba aimed at toppling Castro. Publicly, Khrushchev claimed his missiles were to vouchsafe Cuban sovereignty. But more than this, his move was a ploy to counter the recent installation of US nuclear missiles in Turkey.
Hastings lays bare, with chilling clarity, the ease with which political theatre and bluster could well have escalated into a scenario of mutually assured destruction. John F Kennedy himself had cynically stoked false fears concerning a “missile gap” (in Russia’s favour) during his election campaign, knowing this would play well with a terrified electorate. Khrushchev often threatened the west with nuclear war, while privately acknowledging it must never happen because US superiority would mean annihilation for the Soviet Union. Even the strategic advantage gained by placing nuclear missiles in Cuba – when both sides had by this time submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles – was slight. It was all about grandstanding, saving face and courting public or political opinion.
This is in no way to diminish the dangerousness of the Cuban missile crisis. As Hastings shows so well in Abyss, those who have downplayed its importance – with, for example, the line of argument that neither side wanted a nuclear war, so neither would have dared make a first strike – underestimate the level to which “both sides groped through… under huge misapprehensions”. Channels of communication between Washington and Moscow were slow and unreliable, as were those between the Kremlin and the Soviet forces in Cuba. President Kennedy’s advisers were unrepentant hawks almost without exception, fed by seriously flawed intelligence. The (supposedly collective) decision-making of the presidium of the USSR’s Communist party did not dare to counter Khrushchev’s impulsive plans.
Take, for example, just one moment from among the many during the 13-day crisis that could have led to the inconceivable. On 18 October, at a meeting in the cabinet room of the White House, US armed forces’ chiefs of staff were unanimous in urging the government to bomb the missile sites before they were completed and then launch a full-scale invasion of Cuba. Most of Kennedy’s own team – his national security adviser and brother Robert included – favoured this course of action. A plan was drawn up for marines to land at several north-coast locations, based on CIA estimates that there were 5,000 Soviet troops in Cuba. In reality, a number of the bases they considered to still be under construction had been battle-ready for at least a week; the true number of Soviet personnel in the Caribbean was 43,000.
It wasn’t until 1992 that the US learned that the Soviets had had tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons at their disposal – each with a charge similar to that detonated over Hiroshima – and that plans had been drawn up to permit their use in the event of a land invasion. Should this have happened, had Kennedy chosen to follow the recommendations of his military chiefs, a nuclear response would have been probable. The ensuing public pressure would have made it extremely hard for the US president not to retaliate in kind. Kennedy was distrustful of his military and intelligence advisers, partly because of the previous year’s Bay of Pigs fiasco – Dwight Eisenhower’s planned invasion of Cuba that Kennedy had felt obliged to carry through – and we should only be thankful that some in his circle, under his calm leadership, were able to stem their hubris and sabre-rattling.
In January this year, Russia’s deputy foreign minister threatened to deploy “military assets” to Cuba if the US continued to support Ukrainian sovereignty. As has become all too apparent in the past weeks, tactical nuclear missiles are still a threat, along with chemical weapons and supersonic missiles. It’s as if Russia’s desperate scramble to maintain influence will stop at nothing and, as Hastings points out, “the scope for a catastrophic miscalculation is as great now as it was in 1914 Europe or in the 1962 Caribbean”. Abyss provides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted.
• JS Tennant is the co-author with Richard Hollis of Cuba ’62: Preludes to a World Crisis, published this month by Five Leaves Publications
• Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 by Max Hastings is published by William Collins (£30). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
