Cuban Missile Crisis
Critical to understanding the missile crisis of fall 1962 is the relationship and timing between US activities and Soviet/Cuban decisions to place on the island nuclear weapons that could strike areas of the United States. After the Bay of Pigs invasion, Moscow had began military shipments; after the Moscow-Havana agreement, which Che Guevara drew in Moscow in September 1962, the Soviets intended to send surface to air missiles (SAMs), medium-range (SS-4) missiles, intermediate-range (SS-5) missiles, IL-28 bombers and nuclear weapons. The origins of the October 1962 crisis derived largely from the US campaign to quash the Cuban Revolution, the US Castro assassination plots and from the Soviet-Cuban effort to deter the United States through missile deployment. Khrushchev would never have had the opportunity to install dangerous nuclear weapons in the Caribbean if the US had not been attempting to overthrow the Cuban government. On October 14, a U-2 reconnaissance plane photographed medium-range missile sites under construction in Cuba. After gathering more data the US president was informed on October 16 that the Soviet Union had placed missiles in Cuba. Kennedy created an Executive Committee of the National Security Council (Ex Comm), consisting of his action intellectuals and experienced diplomats from the Truman years: McNamara, Robert Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze and Robert Lovett. Ex Comm advisers initially gave only slight attention to negotiations and concentrated on military action. Acheson favored an air strike but the Air force officials reported they could not guarantee 100 percent success because some missiles could remain in place for firing against the United States. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended a full-scale military invasion but this could mean a prolonged war with Cuba, heavy US casualties, and a Soviet retaliatory attack on Berlin. Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson proposed that the United...