The Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis timeline,
October 1962 (1)
16: Kennedy informed that U2 flight has
photographic evidence of missile sites in Cuba.
Kennedy sets up ExComm to deal with situation
17-21: ExComm’s deliberations proceed. Joint
chiefs advise air strikes to neutralize missile
sites
22: Kennedy decides on a naval blockade of Cuba
and informs the nation of the crisis via a TV
broadcast
Cuban Missile Crisis timeline (2)
23: Khrushchev responds to Kennedy’s statement,
insisting that the missiles are in place ‘solely to
defend Cuba against the attack of an
aggressor’.
24-25: Blockade is tested as Soviet ships head
for, but veer away from, quarantine zone. A
Soviet oil tanker is allowed through the
blockade.
26: Russian personnel continue construction of
missile bases. Soviets offer to dismantle bases
in return for lifting of blockade and US
guarantee not to invade Cuba.
Cuban Missile Crisis timeline (3)
27: Khrushchev demands that US missile sites in
Turkey are dismantled. A US U2 spy plane is
shot down over Cuba and the pilot is killed. In
order to avert a seemingly inevitable escalation,
Kennedy agrees to end blockade and not to
invade Cuba. He also agrees to dismantle
Turkish bases at a later date. [Secrecy is
maintained over this aspect of the deal until
1989.]
28: Khrushchev agrees to remove missiles – the
crisis is over.
Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1st ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1971)
Explaining policy making
In searching for an explanation, one typically puts himself in the
place of the nation, or national government, confronting a
problem of foreign affairs, and tries to figure out why he might
have chosen the action in question. … [We assume] government
behaviour can be most satisfactorily understood by analogy with
the purposive acts of individuals. In many cases this is a fruitful
assumption. Treating national governments as if they were
centrally coordinated, purposive individuals provides a useful
shorthand for understanding problems of policy. But this
simplification – like all simplifications – obscures as well as
reveals. In particular, it obscures the persistently neglected fact
of bureaucracy: the ‘maker’ of government policy is not one
calculating decisionmaker but is rather a conglomerate of large
organizations and political actors. (p. 3)
Essence of Decision
- Questions
1. Why did the Soviet Union decide to place offensive
missiles in Cuba?
2. Why did the United States respond to the missile
deployment with a blockade?
3. Why did the Soviet Union withdraw the missiles?
Problems with rational choice
accounts
1.Why no shield prior to deployment
2.Why the problem about dates
3.Why no secrecy at launch sites
4.Why ignore US surveillance flights
5.Why ignore US warnings
Model 2: Organizational Process
a government consists of a conglomerate of semi-feudal, loosely
allied organizations, each with a substantial life of its own. …
Governments perceive problems through organizational
sensors. Governments define alternatives and estimate
consequences as their component organizations process
information; governments act as these organizations enact
routines. Governmental behaviour can therefore be understood
… less as deliberate choices and more as outputs of large
organizations functioning according to standard patterns of
behaviour. (p. 67)
Model 3: Bureaucratic Politics
1.THE CUBAN PROBLEM
2. THE STRATEGIC PROBLEM
3. THE BERLIN PROBLEM
4. THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM