Book Reviews
New views of the Cuban missile crisis
Chaos may have been closer than we think.
By Carlo Wolff | June 2, 2008 edition
The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 generated unbearable tension. I was a sophomore at Brandeis University in suburban Boston and recall being ordered into a bomb shelter in the student union as newspaper headlines grew ever more ominous. To believe that ducking under a desk or burrowing underground could protect you from nuclear annihilation seemed crazy then (it still does), but there was no apparent alternative. Apprehension ruled.
To grasp how frightening and dangerous those 13 days really were, read One Minute to Midnight, Michael Dobbs’s chronicle of events that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union over the presence of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Dobbs’s hour-by-hour unspooling of that charged period, and of the resolution of that tension, is as gripping as any fiction.
Dobbs, a Washington Post reporter who spent two years researching this book, presents new material to substantiate his claim that this narrowly averted disaster was a matter of detail, poor communication, accident, and pure coincidence.
The crisis was driven and, thankfully, resolved by men of great talent, character, ambition – and patriotism.
The last is the rub: different countries, different ideologies, and different goals can generate intractable problems. An understanding of the fact that we need to live together, albeit uneasily, is what resulted, with face (particularly for “great survivor” Fidel Castro) perhaps the greatest loss.
Dobbs is an impeccable researcher and reporter. What gives his book special depth, though, is his gift for characterization. Take this glimpse of pain-plagued John F. Kennedy after he learns that U-2 pilot Chuck Maultsby has veered off-course into Soviet air space:
“He was discovering the limits of presidential power. It was impossible for a commander in chief to know everything that was being done in his name. There were so many things he would never find out until ‘some [expletive]’ fouled everything up. The military machine operated according to its own internal logic and momentum…. Nobody had considered the possibility that a U-2 might end up over the Soviet Union on the most dangerous day of the Cold War.”
Three canny protagonists
Dobbs is similarly astute about the canny Nikita Khrushchev, a master of the salty, telling homily; and Castro, the grandiloquent, messianic Cuban leader who staked all on dignidad, a conception of national pride that put him into uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union, his country’s chief patron.
Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro were the prime movers behind this near fiasco. Among its elements: a US blockade of Cuba, a massive Soviet militarization of the Cuban countryside to counter that (with, Dobbs reports for the first time, moves to bomb the US naval base at Guantanamo) and the accidental penetration of Soviet air space.
Ultimately, Dobbs seems to admire all three of his main protagonists, praising Kennedy for his cool-headedness, Khrushchev for his craftiness and flexibility, and Castro for his sense of mission and canny self-casting as leader-martyr-hero. Books like this one are needed, Dobbs suggests, to help reclaim and celebrate civilian control of the military – and to learn from history.
The step back from the brink
Kennedy and Khrushchev “had the power to blow up the world, but they were both horrified by the thought of nuclear Armaggedon,” he writes. “They were rational, intelligent, decent men separated by an ocean of misunderstanding, fear, and ideological suspicion.”
Later, he adds, “JFK’s great virtue, and the essential difference between him and George W. Bush, was that he had an instinctive appreciation for the chaotic forces of history.”
Chaos may never have come so close to being unleashed as it did in October 1962. Dobbs’s extraordinary book reminds us that keeping powerful forces under control is particularly hard in the nuclear age. And, as always, essential.
Carlo Wolff is a freelance writer in Cleveland and the author of ‘Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.’
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Comments
2. Roberto Figueroa | 06.02.08
Although I have some compassion for Kennedy the fact remains that his treaty or secret pact with the Russians regarding no help for Cuban exiles to topple Castro buried the exiles here. Per some other reports Fidel wanted to unleash the missiles to the US but the Russian general in charge of them told him under no uncertain circumstance that the missiles would be fired. In retrospect Kennedy as friend to Cuban exiles who needs enemies. He backed down in the Bay of Pigs and left us high and dry and the agreement with Kruschev sealed our fate.
3. Monnie | 06.02.08
I was in junior high at the time, and I remember it almost as if it happened yesterday. Those of us who didn’t have ready access to blast or fallout shelters felt very vulnerable!
In later years, I became aware that the Vienna summit had convinced Khrushchev that Kennedy could be manipulated, leading directly to his big gamble. Also, that Kennedy made a deal to remove our IRBMS from Turkey, and promise not to invade Cuba or make blatant attempts to overthrow Castro.
Mr. K’s perceived reckless disregard for the peril of nuclear war led the Russians to get most of what they wanted, while Kennedy came off looking resolute.
4. Monnie | 06.02.08
I was in junior high at the time, and I remember it almost as if it happened yesterday. Those of us who didn’t have ready access to blast or fallout shelters felt very vulnerable!
In later years, I became aware that the Vienna summit had convinced Khrushchev that Kennedy could be manipulated, leading directly to his big gamble. Also, that Kennedy made a deal to remove our IRBMS from Turkey, and promise not to invade Cuba or make blatant attempts to overthrow Castro.
Mr. K’s perceived reckless disregard for the peril of nuclear war led the Russians to get most of what they wanted, while Kennedy came off looking resolute.
5. Barbara Myers | 06.02.08
What is on record of the part played by former NY Senator Kenneth Keating in exposing the Soviet missle sites in Cuba? Did this have any influence on the White House - either to impel action on the Soviet threat - or in the choice of the NY senate seat held by Keating as target for his brother’s election?
6. ben barr | 06.03.08
really not much is new here. One should have known a few well placed cubans as to what went on. were we lucky or had our time not come. we will never know.
7. michael sullivan | 06.05.08
I was at the US Army Intelligence training center at Hollybird outside Baltimore, being trained as a POW interrogator, and was put on a special list of Spanish-speaking personnel for off-lifting to somewhere we could be useful. So the crisis was part of my personal experience.
But what creates a well-spring of regret is this: it was a time when the US of A was blessed with a team of the best, the brightest and the most capable of running a crisis more than we’ve had ever since.
Now that Hillary has been blocked from bringing her nuke-the-Iranians management style to the Oval Office, let us hope that Obama will be able to assemble the team we need to lead the country out of the abyss that Boy George has led us into.xxx
8. Marc A. Nerenstone | 06.18.08
I was a civilian Operations Research Analyst working with the Navy in Key West. Transferred from the Annex to Headquarters when the crisis broke out. Heard Castro’s speech direct from Cuba and (thanks to high school and college Spanish) realized that he was ranting and raving but did not threaten to do anything. The big threat we focussed on was the flotilla of Russian Komar missile boats in Mariel harbor. I worried that some over eager Cubans might seize one or more and high tail it for Key West, only 90 miles away. In joint meetings several years later, we learned that the Russians had the same worry and kept the missile firing boats under armed Russian guard.
9. Chuck Maultsby Jr. | 03.01.09
In short: Capt. Maultsby did not “stray” into Russian airspace during the Cuban Missle Crisis… His specific mission was to look for ICBMs “lighting up and arching”. Another secret tidbit is: Terry Anderson was indeed shot down in his U-2 while over Cuban airspace as was widely reported, what was not reported was that Capt. Joe Hyde was also shot down in his U-2 the next day…
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1. marie scheer | 06.02.08
Memories of this still terrify me. I was a young mother of 3, living in Duluth MN, trapped at home most of the time. I watched and waited–no one to talk to–but glued to the black and white television riveted on the news. I finally was able to get away and took my youngest for a walk. As I pushed the stroller up and down the hills and looking down at Lake Superior, I begged for divine intervention in a good way, and cried, fearing that no one would hear. Many years later, in college class at the Humphrey Institute in Minneapolis, we used a textbook that analyzed the decisions made during that time. It did not help to understand the mechanics of it, I still feel the horrible seriousness of that time, as well as others that followed. I hope to read it–if I can. Thank you for writing this so that others understand.