Quick questions on Cuban Missile Crisis October 1962: HSC Modern History Cold War

The Cuban revolution under Fidel Castro (1 January 1959) had moved towards the USSR after Eisenhower cut Cuban sugar imports (July 1960). The Bay of Pigs invasion (17 to 20 April 1961), a CIA-backed landing of about 1,400 Cuban exiles, was a catastrophic failure that embarrassed Kennedy and confirmed Castro's belief that a second American intervention was inevitable. Operation Mongoose (October 1961 to October 1962), a CIA harassment and assassination campaign, reinforced the perception.

U-2 reconnaissance photographs taken on 14 October 1962 by Major Richard Heyser over San Cristobal, Cuba, were analysed at the National Photographic Interpretation Center on 15 October. McGeorge Bundy briefed Kennedy on the morning of 16 October. The Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) convened the same day.

The first EXCOMM meetings considered options: air strike alone, air strike followed by invasion, naval blockade, or diplomacy. The Joint Chiefs under General Curtis LeMay favoured air strikes; Defence Secretary Robert McNamara and Attorney General Robert Kennedy favoured a blockade.

Public: Soviet missiles withdrawn under UN observation by 8 November; American quarantine lifted on 20 November; American non-invasion pledge given. Castro's refusal to accept inspectors meant the verification was conducted from the air.

The Moscow-Washington direct communication link (the "hotline") was established by the 20 June 1963 Memorandum of Understanding, operational from 30 August 1963. It was a teletype, not a telephone.

Graham Allison's Essence of Decision (1971, second edition with Philip Zelikow 1999) is the classic model. Robert Kennedy's Thirteen Days (1969) is a participant account, accurate but selective on the Jupiter deal. Soviet archives released after 1991 (Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 1997; Khrushchev's Cold War, 2006) reveal Soviet motives and the closeness to nuclear use. Sheldon Stern's Averting the Final Failure (2003) uses the EXCOMM tapes.

The Jupiter deal was the resolution. Kennedy's public toughness was matched by private flexibility.

Arkhipov's veto on 27 October was probably the closest moment to nuclear war.

The crisis was bipolar; Cuba was the location, not the actor.