Sixty-Two Years on from the Cuban Missile Crisis: An ever-more relevant ode to the power of diplomacy

by Gus Latcham, Third Year History

Today - 16th October- marks sixty-two years since President Kennedy hurriedly assembled a group of security experts, special advisers, and American diplomats, known collectively as Ex-Comm, to wrestle with the most critical matter of global security known yet to mankind.

The discovery of Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to install medium-range nuclear weapons in Cuba in days prior had sown turmoil in the Whitehouse. American surveillance planes had captured photographic evidence of the construction of surface-to-air missile launch sites across the island, meaning the United States was soon to be in striking range of Soviet missiles. Genuine concerns of an imminent Soviet attack, and worse still - a full-fledged nuclear Armageddon, fuelled frantic debate inside both the Whitehouse and the Kremlin for the ensuing fortnight.

Ex-Comm meeting in progress, 29th October 1962. (Credit: JFK Library)

After days of deliberation over the proposed course of action, Kennedy had made up his mind; on the evening of the 22nd of October, he publicly announced the imposition of a naval quarantine around Cuba. No ships found to carry offensive materials would be allowed to pass through to the island.

Crucially, Kennedy stressed the term quarantine. Though it was essentially a blockade, it would constitute an act of war, and would therefore give Khrushchev the imperative to retaliate. This was the first of many skilful diplomatic manoeuvrers that allowed the other side to save face; a rather superficial, but fundamental, consideration in de-escalating the tension.

A similar instance was seen when Kennedy personally chose the Lebanese ship Marucla to be the first vessel boarded and searched by American naval forces, rather than a Soviet ship, so as to avoid affronting Soviet officials.

Credit for de-escalation is not only afforded to the Americans, though. Information declassified in 2002 revealed that two out of three commanders of the Soviet submarine B-59 had agreed to launch their Hiroshima-scale nuclear torpedo on US targets, believing themselves to be under attack from the US quarantine line above. It was only through the objection of the young third commander Vasily Arkhipov, who recognised the catastrophic nature of a first-strike strategy, that the beginning of nuclear exchange was narrowly averted.

Above the water, diplomacy was being practiced in the most direct manner possible. Kennedy and Khrushchev were regularly exchanging personally-written letters – with the Soviet leader’s communication containing sentimentalism not ever displayed in bureaucratic dialogue. Khrushchev, however brash in his initial decision-making, recognised that the pathos of his handwritten letters was the most effective remedy to the crisis. 

The same is true for Robert Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Anatoly Dobrynin, who through their secretive encounters, were candid mouthpieces for their administration’s true wishes and intentions.

Anatoly Dobrynin, left, pictured with President Kennedy, 1962.(Credit: Guardian)

Although all intended nuclear materials were in fact already in Cuba by the beginning of the naval quarantine, the strategy worked. Kennedy had successfully sailed the precarious path between the Scilla of exhibiting enough US military might to warn Khrushchev, and the Charybdis of not forcing him into escalatory retaliatory action. An agreement was reached whereby Soviet missiles would be removed from Cuba, as would American nuclear missiles previously stationed in Turkey. The latter, however, would not be publicised.

As we today find ourselves in the fledgling stages of a new Cold War, with global conflicts increasingly displaying proxy dynamics, and with world leaders seemingly more bullish than ever before, it would be prudent to remember not only the mutual benefits of diplomacy, but the outright necessity to maintain open international dialogue - regardless of ideological differences - if we are to avoid a repeat of October 1962.