On October 16, 1962, President John F. Kennedy met with foreign policy and defense department officials. Aerial reconnaissance had detected Soviet inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in Cuba.
Kennedy contemplated several courses of action: air strikes, invasion, and/or a naval blockade.
Troops and equipment began mobilizing along the southeastern U.S. should Kennedy elect to conduct airstrikes and then invade–which the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, urged. What LeMay did not know is that tactical nuclear weapons were already on the island and could be employed to repel an invasion. Had Kennedy elected to invade, it likely would have ushered in World War III.
There were a variety of hazards inherent to deciding on a course of action without sufficient information, particularly when the implications of making the wrong decision were so dire.
Over the next 13 days, the U.S. and the Soviets transitioned to heightened nuclear alert levels as troops and military equipment were marshalled from near and far. Bombers and interceptor aircraft were armed and airborne, missile silo personnel prepped for in-coming launch orders, and submarines moved into position. All of this increased the complexity of the situation and the probability of a mistake or misunderstanding escalating into catastrophe.
The most crucial consideration in this regard is the least quantifiable—the self-fulfilling prophecy. The interpretation that prevails in a given situation can unwittingly contribute to the fulfillment of that which is strongly expected.
LeMay and other top military officials urged Kennedy not simply to order an airstrike and invasion of Cuba but a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Cuban President Fidel Castro pressed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States. Despite their very different political orientations–LeMay and Castro illustrated the same dangerous predilections.
On October 20, Kennedy opted for a quarantine and naval blockade of Cuba. Two days later, he informed the public in a nationally televised speech. Ships nearing a demarcated point would be stopped and searched for additional ICBMs and their supporting infrastructure. If offensive weapons were discovered, the vessel would be turned back.
At least, this was the plan on paper. Over the ensuing days, the world waited as a flotilla of twenty-five ships sailed south towards the quarantine line as U.S. reconnaissance watched from above. Underneath they were escorted by submarines with nuclear tipped torpedoes and submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).
It was not entirely clear what the U.S. Navy would do if Soviet vessels refused to stop, and Kennedy elected not to delegate decision-making authority to the commander in charge. He monitored the situation by telephone as information was haphazardly relayed to him. He did not trust his own military officials in the Atlantic, or elsewhere. He was concerned someone might unilaterally plunge the world into a war they had been preparing to conduct for well over a decade.
The advantage of delegating authority to lower-level military commanders is that of speed. They can react to events in a flexible manner. The disadvantages are legion: emotion, incomplete information, self-fulfilling prophecy, psychosis, all precipitating a decision prompting World War III. Speed and prudence are often incompatible.
Saturday, October 27, or “Black Saturday” is widely regarded as the closest humanity has come to the nuclear precipice. That morning a U2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba. With tensions running high, Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff presumed that it signaled the commencement of war, and they debated how to respond militarily. What they did not know is that Khrushchev was equally surprised. A Soviet general in Cuba had given the order despite strict instructions not to do so except with approval from Moscow.
Notwithstanding their rational veneer, large organizations are riddled with personnel occupying distinct roles and embracing divergent preferences from those above them. Kennedy and Khrushchev each feared unauthorized decisions by personnel closer to events on the ground. Both struggled to maintain a centralized chain of command amid a situation in which any number of individuals dispersed across a vast geographic area could intentionally or unwittingly invite catastrophe.
As Kennedy and his advisors struggled to make sense of the downing of an unarmed U2 and the death of its pilot, Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson, they learned of another U2 lost deep into Soviet airspace while sampling atmospheric radioactive material from Soviet weapons testing. The pilot became disoriented due to the glare of the aurora borealis and ineffective guidance by compass, and he only recognized the mistake as Soviet MiG fighters were dispatched to shoot him down.
As Scott Sagan documents in The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (1993), U.S. fighter jets equipped with air-to-air nuclear missiles were dispatched to intercept the MiGs. Fortunately, the U2 pilot was able to navigate eastward in time to avoid a military confrontation. As Kennedy infamously noted upon hearing of this new problem, “There is always some SOB who doesn’t get the message.”
The issue was less about getting the message than exercising prudence. The world was on the brink of war and Air Force officials had not elected to suspend air sampling over the arctic. On October 28, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy suggesting the U2 could easily have been mistaken for a bomber and, thus, provoked a counter-response from Soviet air defenses.
One day earlier, on October 26, a rocket lifted off from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, arching out over the Pacific Ocean. Again, the issue of prudence is paramount: The world was on the brink of war and officials had not cancelled a rocket test scheduled before the crisis arose. Although it carried a dummy warhead, just days earlier the real thing had been installed on long-range ICBMs stationed at Vandenburg as the crisis intensified. The Soviets could plausibly have misinterpreted the test as an aggressive provocation if not the opening salvo of World War III.
Further out in the Pacific at Johnston Atoll, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) officials conducted an atmospheric nuclear test codenamed “Calamity” (unironically) on Black Saturday. The world was on the brink of war and AEC officials opted not to suspend testing of a device with an explosive yield fifty times greater than the bomb decimating Hiroshima, Japan in August of 1945. Not to be outdone, the Soviets also conducted an atmospheric nuclear detonation on Black Saturday over the uninhabited island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean.
The myriad of problems arising in the atmosphere all occurred as intricate games of cat and mouse were afoot in the Atlantic. To locate Soviet submarines and force them to the surface, the U.S. Navy dropped depth charges around them. Doing so disabled the communication link of the Soviet submarine B-59 to the outside world. With no way to communicate with upper command and unsure whether nuclear war was already in progress, the captain readied a nuclear tipped torpedo. The second in command gave his approval.
Given the commander of the fleet was aboard B-59, the order necessitated the additional approval of Soviet naval officer Vasily Arkhipov. But Arkhipov refused. If he had been stationed on another submarine, then the B-59 may have fired a nuclear tipped torpedo. It likely would have reverberated far beyond the vastness of the Atlantic.
Soviet naval vessels did not attempt to breach the quarantine line, and on October 28–in large part due to the events occurring one day earlier–Kennedy and Khrushchev crafted a resolution effectively ending the crisis. The Soviets agreed to remove their ICBMs from Cuba, and the U.S. promised not to invade the island. The Kennedy administration also covertly promised to remove ICBMs from Turkey; a concession the president endeavored to conceal from the American public.
Advanced military technology, deep distrust, and a lack of effective communication between adversaries can contribute to mistakes, happenstance, and misinterpretation–and all propagating faster than the actors involved can comprehend let alone manage. The emergent unintended events that nearly culminated in overt or accidental war, at differing times, reflected not simply the internal complexity of U.S. nuclear command but its interaction with an equally complex Soviet command structure.
Only one death is attributable to the Cuban missile crisis, and proponents suggest that failure to lurch over the precipice is evidence of the “cooler heads will prevail” thesis. That is, in a moment of crisis reason and good sense will rise to fore. It is a historically naïve interpretation. The Cuban missile crisis illustrates that rational behavior, the cornerstone of deterrence theory, is not assured in a crisis but unanticipated and, at times, bewildering sequences of events are virtually inevitable.
Both Kennedy and Khrushchev later confided that they feared events would take on a life of their own due to factors they could neither foresee nor control. It is not dissimilar to the successive collision of neutrons and nuclei upon which the nuclear age is grounded. Indeed, amid the crisis there was a very real possibility of an errant decision, mistake, misinterpretation, or simple happenstance eliciting an uncontrolled chain reaction.
We learn through trial and error, but in the nuclear age this can lean dangerously close to catastrophe. Thirteen days of nuclear brinksmanship highlighted the imperative to improve relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first step was simple but significant. A dedicated communications link was established between the White House and Moscow to allow for unimpeded contact in the event of future crises. Moreover, the two superpowers were more willing to addressing the expansionary momentum of the arms race over the next decade.
Today, the nuclear armed states are abandoning hard-won arms control treaties. In 2019 President Trump pulled the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, originally signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. The INF is credited with reducing the number of forward-deployed intermediate range missiles. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), originally signed in 2010, limits the number of warheads each country can deploy. In February of 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his country was suspending participation in New Start.
Even as Russia and the United States are backing out of arms control agreements, they, along with China and North Korea, are pursuing “emerging technologies.” This includes hypersonic missiles and glide vehicles that are more maneuverable than ballistic missiles and exhibit a distinct flight trajectory. They are harder to detect by ground-based radar, impervious to most missile defense systems, and shorten the window of time in which to make an informed decision.
Moreover, if artificial intelligence (AI) confers an “asymmetric advantage,” then it may be increasingly integrated into the command, control, and communications structure of nuclear armed states. Incorporated in a piecemeal manner, it may not be apparent that functional control has been ceded to technological decision-making until a false alarm erupts and the ICBMs are already airborne. As fallible as human judgment may be, removing people from key decision-making tasks may end up appearing remarkably irrational, in hindsight.
This raises difficult questions regarding whether we have truly learned what we should have from the Cuban Missile Crisis? Is another crisis in the making? And, if so, will we survive the things we have created?
