The Cold War: a very short introduction by Robert J. McMahon

Author:Robert J. McMahon [McMahon, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, History - General History, History, Modern, 20th century, United States, Political Science, Politics & government, International Relations, Arms Control, International Relations - General, History: World & General, General & world history, Modern - 20th Century, Foreign relations, World history: postwar; from c 1945 -, 1945-1989, Cold War., Cold War, History: American, Soviet Union - Foreign relations - United States, World politics - 1945-, United States - Foreign relations - Soviet Union., Postwar 20th century history; from c 1945 to c 2000, World politics - 1945-1989, Nuclear Age, United States - Foreign relations - Soviet Union, 1945-, World politics, Soviet Union
ISBN: 9780192801784
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

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7. Photographic evidence of a medium-range ballistic missile site at San Cristobal, Cuba, October 1962.

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hemisphere. He subsequently ordered a renewed covert campaign to sabotage and subvert the Castro government, while the CIA, with White House approval, launched a series of ever more bizarre plans to assassinate Cuba’s ‘Maximum Leader’. It is difficult to dispute Castro’s retrospective observation that: ‘If the United States had not been bent on liquidating the Cuban revolution, there would not have been an October crisis.’

The October crisis, or the Cuban Missile Crisis as it is more commonly known, constitutes the most dangerous Soviet–American confrontation of the entire Cold War, the one in which the two superpowers – and the world – came closest to the devastation of nuclear war. The crisis broke on 14 October 1962, when a U-2 reconnaissance plane photographed some intermediate-range missile sites under construction in Cuba. Two days later, the intelligence community presented the president with 90

incontrovertible photographic evidence that the Soviet Union had placed missiles in Cuba. Those images offered an alarming picture: Cuba had already received between 16 and 32 missiles from the Soviet Union, both Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs), with a striking range of 2,200 miles, and Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBMs), with a striking range of 1,020 miles. The CIA estimated that the missiles would probably be operational within a week and, once mounted with nuclear warheads, be capable of inflicting as many as 80 million casualties if launched against major US cities. Judging this startling development an exceedingly grave threat to US security, Kennedy constituted an Executive Committee, or ExCom, of his National Security Council to provide him with advice and build a consensus behind the agonizing F

decisions he knew he would soon have to make. The president and rom c

his inner circle were agreed, from the first, about the absolute onfrontation t

unacceptability of nuclear missiles in Cuba and hence upon the need for their prompt removal. The most daunting question, and the one upon which the virtually round-the-clock meetings of the o

ExCom pivoted, concerned what means could most reliably be det

ent

employed to achieve that end – without triggering a nuclear e

conflict.

, 1958–68

Why had Khrushchev rolled the dice in so blatantly provocative a manner? Available evidence now suggests that, in May 1962, the Soviet premier decided upon the risky gambit of deploying nuclear missiles to Cuba for several reinforcing reasons. He sought, first of all, to deter a US invasion of Cuba, thereby affording protection to a regime that had cast its lot with the Soviet Union. By so doing, he could also deflect the challenge posed by an increasingly hostile China and reclaim the Kremlin’s historic position as the military and ideological fountainhead of the world’s socialist revolutionary forces. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, Khrushchev saw in the beleaguered Cuban revolution a fortuitous opportunity to close the wide missile gap between the Soviet Union and the United States. ‘The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons,

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