IR201 INTRODUCTION TO
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
COLD WAR: THE WAR IN VIETNAM AND CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
Summary

The Vietnam War is the commonly used name for the Second Indochina War,
1954–1973.

It also refers to the period when the United States and other members of the
SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces of the Republic
of South Vietnam in contesting communist forces comprised of South
Vietnamese guerrillas and regular-force units, generally known as Viet Cong
(VC), and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

The U.S. had the largest foreign military presence and basically directed the
war from 1965 to 1968.

For this reason, in Vietnam today it is known as the American War. It was a
direct result of the First Indochina War (1946–1954) between France, which
claimed Vietnam as a colony, and the communist forces then known as Viet
Minh.

In 1973, a "third" Vietnam war began—a continuation, actually—between
North and South Vietnam but without significant U.S. involvement. It ended
with communist victory in April 1975.
SEATO

Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 1954

In September of 1954, the United States, France, Great Britain, New
Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan formed the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO.

The purpose of the organization was to prevent communism from
gaining ground in the region.

Although called the “Southeast Asia Treaty Organization,” only two
Southeast Asian countries became members. The Philippines joined in
part because of its close ties with the United States and in part out of
concern over the nascent communist insurgency threatening its own
government.

Thailand, similarly, joined and expressed concern about the potential
for Chinese communist subversion on its own soil.
SEATO

The rest of the region was far less concerned about the threat of
communism to internal stability.

Burma and Indonesia both preferred to maintain their neutrality rather
than join the organization.

Malaya (including Singapore) found it politically difficult to give formal
support to the organization, though through its ties with Great Britain it
learned of key developments.

Finally, the terms of the Geneva Agreements of 1954 signed after the fall
of French Indochina prevented Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from joining
any international military alliance, though these countries were
ultimately included in the area protected under SEATO and granted
“observers” status.

(The Geneva Conference (April 26 – July 20, 1954) was a conference which took place
in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle
outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace
in Indochina)
SEATO

Most of the SEATO member states were countries located elsewhere but with
an interest in the region or the organization.

Australia and New Zealand were interested in Asian affairs because of their
geographic position in the Pacific. Great Britain and France had long
maintained colonies in the region and were interested in developments in the
greater Indochina region.

U.S. officials believed Southeast Asia to be a crucial frontier in the fight
against communist expansion, so it viewed SEATO as essential to its global
Cold War policy of containment.

Headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, SEATO had only a few formal functions.
It maintained no military forces of its own, but the organization hosted joint
military exercises for member states each year.

SEATO worked to strengthen the economic foundations and living standards of
the Southeast Asian States. It sponsored a variety of meetings and exhibitions
on cultural, religious and historical topics, and the non-Asian member states
sponsored fellowships for Southeast Asian scholars.
SEATO

Beyond its activities, the SEATO charter was also vitally important to
the American rationale for the Vietnam War.

The United States used the organization as its justification for
refusing to go forward with the 1956 elections intended to reunify
Vietnam, instead maintaining the divide between communist North
Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

As the conflict in Vietnam unfolded, the inclusion of Vietnam as a
territory under SEATO protection gave the United States the legal
framework for its continued involvement there.
SEATO

The organization had a number of weaknesses as well. SEATO defense treaty
called only for consultation, leaving each individual nation to react
individually to internal threats.

Unlike the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), SEATO had no
independent mechanism for obtaining intelligence or deploying military
forces, so the potential for collective action was necessarily limited.

SEATO also faced charges of being a new form of Western colonialism.
Linguistic and cultural difficulties between the member states also
compounded its problems, making it difficult for SEATO to accomplish many of
its goals.

By the early 1970s, members began to withdraw from the organization.
Neither Pakistan nor France supported the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, and
both nations were pulling away from the organization in the early 1970s.
When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the most prominent reason for SEATO’s
existence disappeared. As a result, SEATO formally disbanded in 1977.
The Vietnam war

The Vietnam War was the longest in U.S. history, until the war in
Afghanistan that began in 2002 and continues at this writing (2013).

It was extremely divisive in the U.S., Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
Because the U.S. failed to achieve a military victory and the Republic
of South Vietnam was ultimately taken over by North Vietnam, the
Vietnam experience became known as "the only war America ever
lost."

It remains a very controversial topic that continues to affect political
and military decisions today.
The Vietnam war

The war began in 1954 (though conflict in the region stretched back to the
mid-1940s), after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet
Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against the backdrop of an
intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United States and the
Soviet Union.

More than 3 million people (including 58,000 Americans) were killed in the
Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese civilians.

By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than 500,000 U.S.
military personnel were involved in the Vietnam conflict. Growing opposition
to the war in the United States led to bitter divisions among Americans, both
before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S.
forces in 1973.

In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War,
and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following
year.
Roots of the Vietnam war

During World War II, Japan invaded and occupied Vietnam, a nation on
the eastern edge of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia that had
been under French administration since the late 19th century.

Inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism, Ho Chi Minh formed the
Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam, to fight
both Japan and the French colonial administration.

Japan withdrew its forces in 1945, leaving the French-educated
Emperor Bao Dai in control of an independent Vietnam.

Ho’s Viet Minh forces rose up immediately, seizing the northern city of
Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho
as president.
Roots of the Vietnam War

Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Bao and set up the
state of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in July 1949, with Saigon as its capital.

Armed conflict continued until a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954
ended in French defeat by Viet Minh forces.

The subsequent treaty negotiations at Geneva split Vietnam along the
latitude known as the 17th parallel (with Ho in control in the North and Bao in
the South) and called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in
1956.

In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Bao
aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam
(GVN).
U.S. Intervention

With the Cold War intensifying, the United States hardened its policies
against any allies of the Soviet Union.

In 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support
to Diem and South Vietnam.

With training and equipment from American military and police,
Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the
south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese
Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were
tortured and executed.

By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive
regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and
other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging South Vietnamese
Army forces in firefights.
U.S. Intervention

In December 1960, Diem’s opponents within South Vietnam–both communist
and non-communist–formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize
resistance to the regime.

Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were
non-Communist, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.

A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in
South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and
technical aid in order to help confront the Viet Cong threat.

Working under the “domino theory,” which held that if one Southeast Asian
country fell to communism, many would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid,
though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention.

By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000
troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.
Vietnam war escalates

A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing
Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks
before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy’s
successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support.

The following August, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S.
destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory
bombing of military targets in North Vietnam.

Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave
Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular
bombing raids, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder, the following
February.

Vietnam war escalates

In March 1965, Johnson made the decision–with solid support from the
American public–to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam.

By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and
General William Westmoreland was calling for 175,000 more by the
end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.

Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and
about the entire war effort as well as a growing anti-war movement in
the U.S., Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000
troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966.

In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and
New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit
on a much smaller scale).
Strategy of attrition

In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South
Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought on the ground, largely
under the command of General Westmoreland, in coordination with
the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon.

In general, U.S. military forces in the region pursued a policy of
attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than
trying to secure territory.

By 1966, large areas of South Vietnam had been designated as “freefire zones,” from which all innocent civilians were supposed to have
evacuated and only enemy remained. Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft
or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into
camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.

Meanwhile, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North
Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.
Strategy of attrition

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was
approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and
109,527 wounded.

As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust their government’s
reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington’s claims that the war
was being won.

The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological
deterioration among American soldiers, including drug use, mutinies and
attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.

Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on
the home front turned against the war as well: In October 1967, some 35,000
demonstrators staged a mass antiwar protest outside the Pentagon.

Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the
primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt
dictatorship in Saigon.
IMPACT OF THE TET OFFENSIVE ON VIETNAM
WAR

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 DRV forces under General Vo
Nguyen Giap launched the Tet offensive (named for the lunar new
year), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities
and towns in South Vietnam.

Though taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed
to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of
the targets for more than a day or two.

Reports of the attacks stunned the U.S. public, however, especially
after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional
200,000 troops.

With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called
a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam in March (though
bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of
his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.
IMPACT OF THE TET OFFENSIVE ON
VIETNAM WAR

Johnson’s new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a
positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and
North Vietnam opened in Paris that May.

Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the National
Liberation Front (the political arm of the Viet Cong) the dialogue soon
reached an impasse.
Life in the jungle

U.S. troops fought a jungle war, mostly against the well-supplied Viet
Cong. The Viet Cong would attack in ambushes, set up booby traps,
and escape through a complex network of underground tunnels.

For U.S. forces, even just finding their enemy proved difficult.

Since Viet Cong hid in the dense brush, U.S. forces would drop Agent
Orange or napalm bombs which cleared an area by causing the leaves
to drop off or to burn away.

In every village, U.S. troops had difficulty determining which, if any,
villagers were the enemy since even women and children could build
booby traps or help house and feed the Viet Cong.

U.S. soldiers commonly became frustrated with the fighting conditions
in Vietnam. Many suffered from low morale, became angry, and some
used drugs.
Napalm

Napalm is a gel, which in its original form contained naphthenic and palmitic
acid plus petroleum as fuel.

The modern version, Napalm B, contains plastic polystyrene, hydrocarbon
benzene, and gasoline.

It burns at temperatures of 800 to 1,200 °C (1,500 - 2,200 °F).

When napalm falls on people, the gel sticks to their skin, hair, and clothing,
causing unimaginable pain, severe burns, unconsciousness, asphyxiation, and
often death.

Even those who do not get hit directly with napalm can die from its effects,
since it burns at such high temperatures that it can create firestorms that use
up much of the oxygen in the air.

Bystanders also can suffer heat stroke, smoke exposure, and carbon monoxide
poisoning.
Agent Orange

Agent Orange is a liquid mixture containing specific herbicides.

The compound is toxic for only about a week before it breaks down,
but unfortunately, one of its daughter products is the persistent toxin
dioxin. Dioxin lingers in soil, water, and human bodies.

During the Vietnam War, the US sprayed Agent Orange on the jungles
and fields of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

The Americans sought to defoliate the trees and bushes, so that
enemy soldiers would be exposed.

They also wanted to kill off the agricultural crops that fed the Viet
Cong (as well as local civilians).
Agent Orange

As a result, even decades later, the dioxin continues to cause health
problems and birth defects for Vietnamese people in the sprayed
area.

The Vietnamese governments estimates that about 400,000 people
have died from Agent Orange poisoning, and about half a million
children have been born with birth defects.

US and allied veterans who were exposed during the period of
heaviest usage and their children may have elevated rates of various
cancers, including soft tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma,
Hodgkin disease, and lymphocytic leukemia.

Victims' groups from Vietnam, Korea, and other places where napalm
and Agent Orange were used have sued the primary manufacturers of
these chemical weapons, Monsanto and Dow Chemical, on several
occasions.
VIETNAM WAR ENDS: FROM VIETNAMIZATION
TO WITHDRAWAL

Nixon sought to deflate the antiwar movement by appealing to a “silent
majority” of Americans who he believed supported the war effort.

In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a
program of withdrawing troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment
and giving South Vietnamese control over ground operations.

In addition to this policy, which he called “Vietnamization,” Nixon continued
public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of 1968.

The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete U.S. withdrawal as a
condition of peace, however, and the next few years would bring even more
carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had massacred
more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968.
FROM VIETNAMIZATION TO
WITHDRAWAL

Anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In 1968
and 1969, there were hundreds of anti-war marches and gatherings
throughout the country.

On November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war protest in American
history took place in Washington, D.C., as over 250,000 Americans
gathered peacefully, calling for withdrawal of American troops from
Vietnam.

The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college
campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war
symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent.

For other Americans, opposing the government was considered
unpatriotic and treasonous.
FROM VIETNAMIZATION TO
WITHDRAWAL

As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became
increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and
leadership.

In 1970, a joint U.S-South Vietnamese operation invaded Cambodia, hoping to
wipe out DRV supply bases there. The South Vietnamese then led their own
invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam.

The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a
new wave of protests on college campuses across America.

By the end of June 1972, however, after another failed offensive into South
Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise.

Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement
by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon
authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong.
Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international
condemnation.
LEGACY OF THE VIETNAM WAR

In January 1973, the United States and North Korea concluded a final peace agreement,
ending open hostilities between the two nations.

War between North and South Vietnam continued, however, until April 30, 1975, when DRV
forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City (Ho himself died in 1969).

The long conflict had affected an immense majority of the country’s population; in eight
years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese died, while 3 million were wounded and
another 12 million became refugees.

War had decimated the country’s infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded
slowly.

In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence
continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia.

Under a broad free market policy put in place in 1986, the economy began to improve,
boosted by oil export revenues and an influx of foreign capital.

Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. were resumed in the 1990s.
LEGACY OF THE VIETNAM WAR

U.S. spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 196573; this massive spending led to widespread inflation, exacerbated by a
worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and skyrocketing fuel prices.

Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the
myth of American invincibility, and had bitterly divided the nation.

Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of
the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its
supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical
damage including the effects of exposure to the harmful chemical
herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by
U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C.
On it were inscribed the names of 57,939 American armed forces killed or
missing during the war; later additions brought that total to 58,200.
Why America lost the Vietnam war?
Americans
Vietcong
The American hi-tech tactics continually
killed the wrong people and
demoralized their own troops.
The Vietcong's guerrilla tactics were
appropriate to the nature of the conflict.
The US was trying to supply a war 8,000
miles from America.
The Vietcong were supplied with weapons by
China and Russia.
The South Vietnamese regime was weak,
brutal and corrupt.
The South Vietnamese peasants
supported and sheltered the Vietcong.
Their short (one-year) tour of service meant The Vietcong had been continuously at war
that American troops were
since they resisted the Japanese during the
always inexperienced.
Second World War.
The morale of Americans soldiers was rock
The Vietcong were fanatically determined to
bottom - they took drugs, shot their officers drive out the Americans, whatever the cost.
and deserted.
The war became very unpopular in the US,
and lost public support.
The North Vietnamese were motivated,
fighting at home to unite their country.
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

For 14 days in October 1962 the world stood on the brink of nuclear
war.

The Soviet Union had secretly stationed nuclear weapons on the island
of Cuba, and when the government of the United States discovered
them, and demanded their withdrawal, the most dangerous
confrontation of the Cold War followed.

A single miscalculation made either in the White House or the Kremlin
could have precipitated catastrophe.
The Cuban Revolution

In January 1959, Fulgencio Batista, the brutal, American-backed
Cuban dictator, was overthrown by the guerrilla army of Fidel Castro.

Initially president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration welcomed
the Cuban revolution.

Batista had long been an embarrassing ally, and a friendly, democratic
government in Cuba, addressing urgent social reform, would be far
more stable and reliable.
The Cuban Revolution

For America, Cuba provided a naval base at Guantanamo; it was an exotic, but
conveniently close, tourist resort; and low paid Cuban labour made it an attractive
investment area, much of the island’s agriculture and industry being Americanowned.

Hence governments in Washington had never hesitated to intervene to protect
American interests.

Indeed to Castro, and to a large proportion of the Cuban people, American
domination was a root cause of Cuba’s problems, and it must be ended.

As American property was expropriated by the new government, Castro’s defeated
enemies were treated mercilessly and elections were postponed while Castro
secured his grip on power.

Yet as ever more vicious anti-American diatribes came from the new leader, his
popularity in Cuba grew.

In the United States, however, he became increasingly unacceptable.
The Cuban Revolution

Eisenhower ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow him,
and the CIA orchestrated sabotage raids on Cuba to destabilize the
regime.

Attempts were made to assassinate Castro,

Economic sanctions were imposed, especially against Cuba’s sugar
crop, which was its main export. Yet rather than undermine Castro,
this hostility made him more secure, and an increasingly bitter and
vocal enemy of the United States.

In the logic of the Cold War, this made him a potential partner of the
Soviet Union.

Steadily growing ties with the USSR made him appear a growing threat
to US hegemony in the western hemisphere which could not be
tolerated.
The Bay of Pigs

Among the steps taken by the CIA to remove Castro, a brigade of
about 1,400 anti-Castro Cuban exiles was raised.

The CIA decided to use this force in a large-scale invasion of the Bay
of Pigs island, with the backing of its own air force.

This, it was assumed, would trigger mass risings and overthrow
Castro’s government.

Yet Eisenhower, who had after all been Supreme Allied Commander at
D-Day, recognized the risks of failure and hesitated.

His successor in January 1961, John F. Kennedy, would be left to
decide whether or not to launch the invasion.
The Bay of Pigs

Perhaps Castro hoped that a new president would be less hostile to his
revolution. If so, he hoped in vain.

Kennedy had used Cuba repeatedly in the election campaign, accusing
his Republican opponents of being soft on communism, insisting that
Cuba was America’s ‘most glaring failure’, one that endangered the
‘whole Western Hemisphere’.

This rhetoric would be difficult to forget once Kennedy was in office.
Business interests, alarmed that if Castro was left unpunished he
might start a trend in Latin America opposing U.S. business
investments.
Bay of Pigs

Furthermore, Kennedy seems to have been personally offended by
Castro, who had defied the might of the United States and refused to
be intimidated.

Kennedy became obsessed with the fear that Castro might prove able
to export his revolution to other Latin American nations.

Defence Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted the
administration was ‘hysterical’ over Castro.

Kennedy was even more hostile to Castro than Eisenhower had been,
and a great deal less cautious.
Bay of Pigs

Kennedy was probably unaware that there were risks attached to the
CIA’s plan. He approved the project (the invasion of the Bay of Pigs),
which was put together in a remarkably slipshod manner.

Most bizarrely, Kennedy was convinced it would be possible to launch
this invasion without the world being aware of American involvement.

At the time there was already speculation in the press that the CIA
was planning an invasion.
Bay of Pigs

Air attacks failed to destroy Castro’s air force completely.

Most of the ammunition and communications equipment was
destroyed before it could be landed.

Castro’s forces fought well, and enjoyed massive popular support.

There were no risings, and US forces did nothing to support the exiles.
Within two days over 100 exiles had been killed and nearly 1,200 had
surrendered.
Operation Mongoose

The Bay of Pigs was a shattering blow to Kennedy, who had to face international
ridicule for the fiasco.

But Castro did not escape unscathed. Any possibility of mending fences with
Washington was lost. He now faced the undying hostility of the United States.

A US invasion on Cuba was not an option in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, since
Kennedy could hardly claim to be liberating people who had rallied to Castro.

But the President did authorize the CIA to undertake Operation Mongoose.

This amounted to renewed attempts to destabilize the Cuban regime.

Sabotage raids multiplied, Castro supporters were assassinated, foreign suppliers
were bribed to send faulty goods to Cuba.
Operation Mongoose

Kennedy also warned the Soviet Union against challenging the USA in
the western hemisphere.

Perhaps more threateningly, in 1962 a large-scale military exercise
was undertaken by US forces in the Caribbean, in which 40,000
military personnel practiced invading an unnamed island to overthrow
a dictator threateningly codenamed Ortsac.

Kennedy wanted to alarm Castro, and he succeeded. But he also
alarmed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Operation Mongoose

The Soviet government had welcomed the Cuban revolution; and as
American hostility to it grew, so did Soviet support.

Cuba was never really an unquestioning servant of Moscow, but the
state was growing increasingly dependent upon Moscow for military
and economic aid.

In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Castro had declared his
commitment to Communism for the first time.

And in Moscow, as in Havana, there was a growing conviction that
Kennedy was preparing to invade Cuba. As it was the only communist
state in the western hemisphere, Khrushchev could not allow this.
Soviet Initiatives

Khrushchev also had other concerns. Since the launch of the Soviet
satellite Sputnik 1 in October 1957, Khrushchev had proclaimed an
entirely fictitious superiority in Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).

Kennedy had campaigned for the presidency proclaiming he would match
the supposed Soviet advantage, closing the ‘missile gap’ as it was known.

Even when he found that the strategic balance was, in reality, heavily in
America’s favour, Kennedy still ordered a major expansion of US ICBM
forces.

Khrushchev, who was desperate to divert resources from the military to
domestic reform, was now caught by his own bluff and faced ruinous
expense to fill a very real ‘missile gap’ that was in America’s favour.
Soviet Initiatives

But American actions perhaps suggested a way out for Khrushchev.

In 1962 American Jupiter missiles were stationed in Turkey, well
within range of Soviet targets.

Soviet followed example and stationed Intermediate Range and
Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs and MRBMs) in Cuba, where
they could threaten most of the continental USA

This would be a cheap way to offset the American missile advantage,
it would deter an American invasion of the island, it would be a
proportional response to the missiles in Turkey.
Soviet Initiatives

The entire project was meant to be kept secret until the missiles
were operational, and then a fait accompli would be presented to the
USA, which would have to learn to live with them.

But the project was too big to be kept secret for long. The Soviet
technicians were told that speed was their first priority and they
made few attempts to camouflage their work, which would probably
have been impossible completely to disguise anyway.
Soviet Initiatives

By August 1962 the first rumours of Soviet missiles in Cuba, from CIA leaks, appeared
in the US press.

Soviet diplomats, unaware of the project, issued flat denials. This made the sense of
shock when they were discovered by a U-2 spy plane, on 14 October 1962, even more
profound.

Kennedy was stunned. He felt Khrushchev’s conduct was inexplicably provocative.
Khrushchev, in fact, had never considered that the presence of missiles in Cuba would
be deemed a monstrous threat in the United States.

Nor had he realised that Kennedy and the United States would not tolerate the
massive blow to their prestige that would result if the weapons were allowed to
remain.

In fact the weapons would make very little difference to a strategic balance that was
massively in America’s favour. But their presence would give the appearance of a
weakened America, and in the Cold War appearances were vital. For his part, Kennedy
gave no thought to Khrushchev’s motives: the missiles had to be removed, and initially
he favoured air strikes and an invasion of Cuba to achieve this.
U.S response

Yet the Bay of Pigs had taught Kennedy the dangers of acting impetuously. Within two days, he
formed a special advisory group to weigh various options; this was named the Executive
Committee of the National Security Council.

Excomm – made up of ‘hawks’ who favoured the immediate use of force and ‘doves’ who
preferred to avoid a conflict – met almost continuously for 13 days and subjected proposals to
resolve the crisis to intense scrutiny.

The dangers of using force soon became clear. An unprovoked attack, involving air strikes
probably followed by an invasion, would be hard to justify; and Castro’s forces would resist and
could be expected to fight a prolonged and bitter guerrilla war, the same sort of war they had
fought so successfully against Batista.

The projected casualties were alarming. Also, large numbers of Soviet technicians would be
killed, and this might lead to war between the Superpowers – or Khrushchev might launch the
surviving missiles, and at least ten per cent of the missiles might survive an air strike.

Nevertheless, even the ‘doves’ in Excomm were largely agreed that the missiles must go, and
without American concessions in return.
U.S response

Yet there was an alternative to invasion – a naval blockade of Cuba.

But it was a limited and measured response, which would avoid forcing Khrushchev into a corner
where he have to fight to avoid utter humiliation. If it failed, the military option was still open.

Only on the 22 October, when the blockade was prepared, was news of the missiles and
America’s response made public.

It caused immense shock in the USA and internationally –

Soviet responded by saying that they were acting legally and responding in kind to US actions in
Turkey.

Khrushchev’s reply was to bluster that the USSR would assert its rights on the high seas and to
accuse Kennedy of bringing the world to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.
Soviet Initiatives

Throughout the world forces went on high alert. World War III seemed
imminent and, across the globe, terrified people prepared for
Armageddon.

On 23 October, as 27 Soviet ships headed towards the blockade, many
carrying military equipment, presumably including missile parts,
Kennedy, who had assumed that Khrushchev would back down, had to
consider what to do if his blockade was defied.

As the world stood on the brink of nuclear war, news reached
Kennedy that the first Soviet ships had stopped and turned back.
Resolving the Crisis

The crisis was not over. Nuclear missiles remained on Cuba and Kennedy was
determined to remove them.

A resolution had to be found, and quickly, before Kennedy was pushed by the
national panic he had generated to launch an attack on Cuba. Both leaders, it
is clear, had become horrified at the prospects in front of them. Kennedy,
desperate to avoid pushing Khrushchev too far.

Khrushchev, for his part, sent a long, rambling letter to Kennedy, appealing to
reason and trust to prevent a catastrophe.

From recently released archives, that Castro was urging Khrushchev to use
the missiles if Cuba was invaded.

Khrushchev’s response was to order his military commander in Cuba to do
nothing of the sort without direct orders from Moscow. Thus both sides were
under immense pressure to resolve the crisis.
Resolving the Crisis

Khrushchev’s message seemed to contain the basis of a settlement.
But matters took a turn for the worse.

A new message was received from Moscow offering a specific deal by
which the missiles in both Turkey and Cuba would be removed and
the USA and USSR would jointly guarantee the security of both
nations.

This was deemed unacceptable by Excomm, as it would mean backing
down in the face of Soviet pressure.
Resolving the Crisis

Yet Kennedy was interested. It was not an unreasonable deal: the Turkish
missiles were obsolete and were soon to be withdrawn anyway, and the crisis
was escalating.

Kennedy outraged the ‘hawks’ by ordering the Turkish missiles to be disabled
to prevent any accident.

In the message to Khrushchev agreed by Excomm, Kennedy insisted that the
missiles in Cuba must be removed and offered to end the blockade and
pledged not to invade Cuba if that happened.

But when he delivered it to the Soviet ambassador, Kennedy’s brother, Robert,
added a private message that once this was done, after a few months had
passed, the Turkish missiles would be withdrawn (which in fact happened in
April 1963).
Resolving the Crisis

Had Khrushchev rejected the deal, it is likely that an American invasion of Cuba
would have been launched within days.

Had the Russian used tactical nuclear weapons, whose presence was not
suspected by the Americans, a full-scale thermonuclear war would probably have
followed.

But Khrushchev, himself desperate to find a settlement and aware that a noninvasion pledge would meet his most important need, did agree.

Tedious and frustrating negotiations followed over the means of verifying the
departure of the missiles, largely caused by the obstruction of Castro, who was
enraged that Khrushchev had not consulted him over the settlement.

In the end the Russian ships departed with their hatches uncovered, allowing the
Americans to see the missiles leaving.
Credit and Blame

Kennedy certainly came out of the crisis with a reputation greatly
enhanced in the west.

Khrushchev, for his part, was deemed by his colleagues to have
suffered a humiliation, and the crisis was one of the issues that led to
his being deposed in October 1964.

Certainly once the enormity of the situation became clear to both
men, they showed responsible leadership and a determination to find
a peaceful resolution.

Both rejected hard-line advice and were careful not to escalate the
crisis.

Khrushchev might even be said to have shown greater courage in
making what was publicly seen as the larger concessions.
Credit and Blame

In the aftermath of the crisis they both worked to improve relations
and prevent a recurrence of such a confrontation.

The ‘hotline’, allowing direct communication between both leaders,
was installed and the Partial Test Ban Treaty of September 1963
signified a first step towards arms controls.

Kennedy’s hope to build on these steps, brutally ended by his
assassination in November 1963, further heightened his statesman-like
image.
Credit and Blame

However, both men had acted recklessly in bringing the crisis about.

Khrushchev (and Castro) should have realised the dangers of surreptitiously introducing
nuclear weapons into Cuba.

They could not realistically be kept secret, and the US reaction should have been
predictable.

Conventional forces, perhaps a couple of Soviet armoured brigades, should have been
enough to deter a US invasion of Cuba, without risking a major confrontation.

Kennedy, for his part, allowed his vendetta against Castro to overcome good sense.
Operation Mongoose was hardly the act of a statesman. He also rejected the use of discreet
diplomacy.

A secret message to Moscow, requiring the quiet removal of the missiles, might have
avoided a confrontation, though admittedly giving Khrushchev the chance to prevaricate
until the missiles were operational.
Credit and Blame

In the final analysis, the world was fortunate that the greatest crisis
of the Cold War arose when it did.

In 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev had days to consider their position
and think through their options.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, both sides were careful to avoid such
circumstances.