The Rise and Demise of World Communism by George W. Breslauer

Author:George W. Breslauer [Breslauer, George W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, Political Ideologies, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Comparative Politics
ISBN: 9780197579671
Google: h3o_EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-11-15T00:29:14.027551+00:00

The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962

During the year following the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion, Soviet leaders feared that the United States might try again—and might use overwhelming military force this time as a guarantee against failure. By that time, Castro’s declaration that he had become a Marxist-Leninist spurred in Soviet leaders a somewhat deeper sense of obligation to do what they could to protect the Cuban Revolution. In spring 1962, Khrushchev secretly hatched a risky plan to prevent another US invasion. He sold the Politburo on the idea of sending Soviet intermediate-range missiles to Cuba to act as a nuclear deterrent against invasion. That triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, a ten-day period in which the threat of a US-Soviet nuclear war allegedly had never been higher.10 The United States learned of the deployment through secret intelligence and before the missiles could be fully deployed. (Khrushchev had wanted to surprise the United States with a fait accompli.) Declaring the missile deployment to be intolerable, but hoping to avoid a military escalation, Kennedy reacted with a “quarantine” of Cuba to prevent additional Soviet ships from reaching the island with their nuclear cargo. Meanwhile, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged letters and back-channel communications. In the end, and much to Castro’s angry dismay, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in their entirety, but not before extracting from Kennedy private promises not to invade Cuba and to remove US intermediate-range missiles from Turkey. These assurances gave Khrushchev a face-saving device when justifying the Soviet retreat to his associates.

Why was Khrushchev so accepting of the risks of nuclear escalation in this case? Many observers believe that Khrushchev was motivated to send nuclear missiles to Cuba solely by an urge to defend Castro’s government against another US invasion. I find this explanation unconvincing. Khrushchev had not been willing to run such risks for non-European members of the world communist movement in the late 1950s. Indeed, this risk aversion had contributed mightily to the Sino-Soviet schism. And his policy programs of the 1950s had presumed that a US-Soviet détente would provide cover for pro-Soviet forces to prevail throughout the world by emulating Soviet economic successes. Why, then, should he abandon caution in 1962?

The answer, I believe, is that Khrushchev was on the political defensive and was seeking a quick win to revalidate his leadership. His domestic economic programs were in shambles. The promises of the “full-scale construction of communism” were increasingly viewed by his associates as folly. His détente with the United States had collapsed after the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane over the USSR in May 1960, resulting in the acrimonious cancellation of a scheduled summit meeting with President Eisenhower and other Western leaders. Thereafter, in 1961–1962, the Kennedy administration was publicly claiming that Soviet nuclear capability was no match for that of the United States. Meanwhile, the Chinese leadership was criticizing Khrushchev for “revisionism” at home and for compromising the anti-imperialist struggle with his pursuit of détente. Under these circumstances, Khrushchev viewed putting missiles in Cuba as a cure-all.

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