Short History Of... - The Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 2 of 2

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

On October 16th, 1962, John F. Kennedy discovers that the Soviet Union has successfully planted ballistic missiles on Cuban soil. The United States is now in Moscow's crosshairs. How will the President respond? How far will Khrushchev and Castro push him? This is a Short History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 2. Written by Joel Duddell. With thanks to Philip Brenner, Professor Emeritus at the American University School of International Service. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's October 1962. The Soviet Union has successfully planted ballistic missiles on Cuban soil, just 485 miles from Florida. And so Kennedy is informed early in the morning of the 16th at 9 a.m. A group of intelligence analysts come to the White House and show pictures to Kennedy with a target on the United States, showing the radius of the missile potentials hitting cities in the United States. These weapons have a range of 2,200 miles, putting virtually the entire contiguous United

States at risk. How will President Kennedy respond? This is a short history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Part 2. Action Stations. Kennedy sets about assembling a core group of advisers. It will be known as the EXCOMM, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.

It's comprised of government officials, both serving and retired, from across the diplomatic corps, intelligence agencies and the armed forces. Among its members are Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General and the President's brother, and Llewellyn Thompson, a senior career diplomat, fresh from his first of two stints as Washington's ambassador to Moscow. These were people he not only trusted, but he wanted a variety of opinions.

So he invited people who were very anti-Soviet, people who were more accommodating to the Soviet Union. He wanted to make his own decision and then have these people all feel that they were part of the decision and they'd go back to their respective constituencies and sell his idea. Kennedy knew what he wanted to do. He did not want a nuclear war. He wanted to figure out some way to get out of this without a nuclear war. At this stage, on October the 16th, 1962, the U.S. public at large is yet to know about the existence of these missile bases in Cuba. From Kennedy's point of view, for now at least, it makes sense to keep

it that way. It will take months, even years, for American citizens to learn the full extent of the missile crisis. The curtains are drawn around the Oval Office as the ex-coms settle in for the most significant two weeks of their lives. Every option available to the President is fraught with risk. Launching a ground invasion of Cuba, for example, that would result in many Cuban dead and likely herald a direct confrontation with the USSR. The first thing on the President's agenda is to ensure a regular stream of reliable information regarding the missiles and the sites that house them. This means three or four reconnaissance missions per day, covering the

entire island of Cuba, to be conducted by U-2 surveillance planes. Next, Kennedy wants to isolate Cuba, to cut it off from the rest of the world. Operation Mongoose has largely achieved this objective already, at least when it comes to the Cuban economy. But Kennedy opts to take things a step further. He dispatches US warships to form a tight perimeter around the island. Kennedy's language is crucial. To many, this is a blockade, which is technically an act of war. But Kennedy, on the advice of his legal team, is careful to refer to it as a quarantine.

A quarantine sounds less aggressive than a blockade. It sounds like something softer, something being done for the Cubans' own good. In fact, Kennedy is laboring under an illusion. At this stage, Kennedy and his core team believe that the Soviet missiles, while extremely threatening to the mainland United States, are yet to be furnished with atomic capabilities. They are yet to be turned into nuclear arms. The thinking goes, then, that if this so-called quarantine around

Cuba can hold, then this should prevent further Soviet ships from landing on the island with warheads and further military supplies. Any such optimism is swiftly dashed. By October 18th, CIA analysts have discovered that the Soviets are already installing intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, which have twice the range of the medium-range missiles already there. On October 22nd, 1962, Kennedy decides that this is the moment to go public to the American people. moment to go public to the American people. He takes to the airwaves for 18 minutes, addressing his fellow Americans as they huddle around television sets and wireless radios up and down the land. America is under serious threat, Kennedy declares in solemn fashion. The United States will prevent ships carrying weapons from reaching Cuba, he vows. He demands, live on air, that the Soviets withdraw their missiles and de-escalate immediately.

We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth. But neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced. At the same time, Foy Kola, the American ambassador to Moscow, delivers a personal letter from Kennedy to Khrushchev. But these protests fall on deaf ears. To Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers in Moscow, the U.S. blockade is a flagrant act of aggression against Cuba, a country which has rapidly become a vital Soviet ally.

On October 23rd, Khrushchev responds publicly by saying, the hell with you. We're a sovereign country. Go to hell, in effect. Whoa. Go to hell, in effect. Whoa. And so the next day, Kennedy increases the strategic condition of our nuclear forces to Defense Condition 2. Defense Condition 2 is the highest state of alert before nuclear war. Defense Condition 1 is nuclear war. When you're at Defense Condition 2, you have your bombers, for example, flying at their fail-safe point. The fail-safe point is the point beyond which a bomber cannot be recalled. They shut off their radio because they've now moved into the territory or radio range of the adversary, and the fear is that the adversary

will try to fool them. And so they shut off all radio communications and just head to their target. they shut off all radio communications and just head to their target. And I spoke to a pilot who was on an airplane, B-52, circling over Italy, circling over the Mediterranean Sea, 24 hours a day being refueled in the air with hydrogen bombs in his bay destined for two Soviet cities that he was going to drop them on once given the order. So we were at a hair trigger starting on October 24th. Over the coming days, the war of words only heats up. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Adlai Stevenson, addresses the Security Council, attempting to rally support amongst the global community.

Meanwhile, Soviet submarines inch closer and closer to Cuba, preparing, it would seem, to push through the blockade. On October 24, Khrushchev writes again to Kennedy, You are no longer appealing to reason, but wish to intimidate us, he tells the US President. Then, on October 25, a real test for the US President. Then, on October 25th, a real test for the US-imposed quarantine. A Soviet oil tanker, the Bucharest, homes in on Cuba.

The American quarantine line sits 800 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. Two warships, USS Gearing and USS Essex, prepare to engage the Bucharest. This could be it. But then the order comes through from the White House. Stand down. The Bucharest may be carrying vital oil supplies, but it's not carrying weaponry. It's not worth a nuclear war.

Kennedy lets the Soviet vessel through. On both sides, in Washington and Moscow, advisers are broadly split between those who feel a nuclear confrontation is now all but inevitable and those who insist there is still a way out. Fidel Castro chooses this moment to throw his weight behind the former camp. He writes to Khrushchev, insisting that the Soviet Union must now launch a nuclear first

strike against the United States. The Soviet Union must eliminate such danger forever through an act of legitimate defence, however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other." Castro believes that the US and Cuba are mortal enemies, and that American intransigence, when met with Cuban revolutionary zeal, can only end in war. Che Guevara adds his voice to the growing chorus for a first strike. We must walk the path of liberation even when it may cost millions of atomic victims, he says. It is perhaps Castro's recklessness that

sows a seed of doubt in Khrushchev's mind. That night, the Soviet premier writes another letter, a far more personal and unofficial one, to his American counterpart. a far more personal and unofficial one to his American counterpart. For the first time in the crisis, for a moment at least, brinkmanship and second-guessing are abandoned. Khrushchev is levelling with Kennedy. And then on October 26th, Kennedy gets a letter, a secret letter from Khrushchev, a long, rambling letter,

the kind of letter someone might write if it's a little too much vodka. And the letter says, Mr. President, you and I have seen the destruction war brings. Khrushchev had fought in World War I. Kennedy famously fought in World War II and was injured in the Pacific. We know the death and destruction that lie in its wake. We have to stop pulling at the ends of a rope that is tied in this knot.

Let us find a way out. And he offers to Kennedy that they'll remove the missiles from Cuba if Kennedy promises not to invade Cuba. Whoa, it's an interesting proposal. Exactly at the same time, the head of the KGB in Washington, on his own, not knowing Khrushchev has done this, meets with the chief White House correspondent for ABC television, John Scali, and he offers Scali the same idea. Wow, amazing coincidence. Scali runs to the White House and says, the KGB just told me that this is their offer, and it coincides with this letter. Whoa,

this is a way out. And so on the next morning, October 27th, because it's now 10, 10.30 in the evening, everyone's tired. They reassemble early in the morning on October 27th, as McNamara recalls a beautiful, crisp October fall afternoon in Washington. And they are beginning to assess what this letter is about. Almost out of nowhere, it appears that Khrushchev is extending an olive branch. The sense of relief is palpable. But in a cruel twist, this relief proves to be extremely short-lived.

And all of a sudden, a second letter shows up, a letter that is now much less friendly, much less rambling, almost as if it's written by a committee. And this letter says, Mr. President, we will remove our missiles from Cuba. If you remove your missiles from Turkey, the United States had exactly the same kind of missiles in Turkey about the same distance from missiles in Turkey about the same

distance from the Soviet Union at the time as the missiles in Cuba were from the United States. If you promise not to invade Cuba, we will promise not to invade Turkey. Oh, the problem with this was it raised the ante. Now they're talking about removing missiles from Turkey. The arrival of this second letter sows chaos. Firstly, this is not a private note from one leader to another. It's a public announcement, delivered over the airwaves of Radio Moscow. It'll be hard for Khrushchev to back down from that. Mere moments ago it had seemed like Khrushchev was relenting. Now he's made a public announcement that seems, to all intents and purposes,

to be readying the ground for war. What on earth is he playing at? The members of the EXCOMM are scratching their heads. But there's at least one theory for this erratic behavior. What's going on? Well, the officials in the EXCOMM say they think there's been a coup in the Soviet Union. They think that the generals have overthrown Khrushchev. And this was written by the generals. And they obviously want those missiles out of Turkey. And we have to be tough.

We have to go in right now and take the missiles out. We can't exceed this demand from the Soviet Union. Increasingly it feels like there's no way out. A nuclear war is about to get even more likely. In Moscow, as in Washington, the mood is somber. Khrushchev can sense that control over events on the ground is slipping from his grasp. He makes a desperate play to stop the situation from escalating further. Khrushchev orders that no one is to fire on US ships or planes unless given a direct order to do so.

His hope is that this will bring clarity to personnel in Cuba as well as the commanders of the Soviet ships and submarines circling the Caribbean. But Khrushchev has failed to get one person on board with this approach,

a very significant person, Fidel Castro. Khrushchev, on October 26th, recognizing that things are getting out of hand maybe in Cuba and wanting to avoid a confrontation, orders all of the military not to fire at any U.S. planes, boats, unless given a direct order by Khrushchev. And then early on the 27th, Fidel Castro gives an address over national radio saying that the enemy is about to attack us. Everyone has to rise up. This is the moment of truth. This is the moment history about to attack us. Everyone has to rise up. This is the moment of truth. This is the moment history will remember the most.

American U-2 pilot Rudolf Andersen Jr. cruises over Cuba. Such surveillance flights have become increasingly dangerous in recent days. Soviet surface-to-air missiles are primed and pointing up into the sky. But Anderson has gone into this mission with his eyes open. He knows the risks. Fourteen miles below Anderson, on the ground, Lieutenant General Stefan Grechko studies the Soviet radar screen. A blip has just appeared. This is it, Grechko thinks. This is the moment we've all been waiting for.

The promised war is finally upon us. Swept up in the moment, overcome with adrenaline perhaps, Gretschko makes an extraordinary call. And a Soviet general who was consumed by the fervor of Castro's speech, by the nationalism, he said,'s speech, by the nationalism. He said, I felt more Cuban than Russian. He said he saw this blip on his radar of a U-2 and he orders the plane to be shot down,

defying the order not to fire any missiles. Two Soviet surface-to-air missiles scorch up into the stratosphere. Anderson's cockpit gives way under the pressure of the first blast, as does his flight suit and helmet. His is a swift end. What's left of the U-2 comes crashing down to Earth. The first shots of World War III have been fired. The world is now right at the brink.

Bobby Kennedy will later write in his memoirs that there was the feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling. The U.S. president now surely has no choice but to respond in kind. So Saturday, among those people, was known as Black Saturday because the darkening clouds seemed to be hovering over the White House. Things were getting out of control.

The generals say, why did they shoot that down? What are they trying to keep us from seeing? They are preparing to launch a strike against the United States. You have to go in, Mr. President. You can imagine the pressure on the president at this point. One of our planes has been shot down by the Soviets. There's evidence that they're very quickly building up their missiles in Cuba. They've announced this unacceptable deal over the airwaves to make it more difficult for

the United States to give in. The pressure is enormous on Kennedy. In the White House, the members of the EXCOMM take a short break to take the evening air to gather their thoughts. Most of them are now consigned to nuclear war. Kennedy at this point was sure a conflict was going to happen. In fact, Secretary McNamara and the Deputy Secretary of State George Ball took a walk in the Rose Garden outside the White House.

And McNamara says to Ball, I don't think we'll live to see another spring. In the White House, orders had been given out to all of key personnel to be ready to escape into a mountainside hideaway to protect themselves against a nuclear war. They were given instructions of where to go, how to go. They were getting ready for a nuclear war. The next few hours will be, quite literally, some of the most pivotal in human history. Responsibility for the very livability of planet Earth has been concentrated onto just two men, two mere mortals like you or I, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.

For all their advisors, it is ultimately they who call the shots. They who will decide whether the world succumbs to war or clings to a fragile peace. Those around Kennedy in the Oval Office wouldn't blame him at this point for consigning himself to Armageddon. It seems unavoidable. But Kennedy, in the heat of the moment, with unbearable pressure on his shoulders, opts to make a different call. Saturday is nearly over. The clock is ticking and will soon stop dead. But the president decides to play for time.

So what he does is he says, OK, let's revisit this problem on Monday. And I promise you, he says, if they shoot down one more surveillance plane, I will launch an immediate attack. And then he did a very clever thing. He cancelled all the surveillance flights so none could be shut down. So all the U-2 flights stopped.

The president has by no means stepped back from the brink, but he has decided not to take the final step forward. Time stands still. Then one man speaks up. Here's where empathy comes into play. So while most of the people around the table in the executive committee of the National Security Council, the EXCOMM, were favoring doing something in response, one person, Llewellyn Thompson, who had been U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, said, I think there's a way out, Mr. President. He was willing to speak up. This does not have to end in conflict. Llewellyn Thompson, he knows Khrushchev and the Soviet top brass personally. The Khrushchev he knows may well be America's mortal enemy,

but he certainly does not wish to wipe the human race off the face of the earth. Thompson can appreciate how Khrushchev, like Kennedy, has become entangled in a complex web of competing priorities. It's not as simple as saying Khrushchev regrets decisions or maneuvers he's made. Rather, that events have acquired a momentum all of their own. And Llewellyn Thompson says the way out of this is to give Khrushchev a way to save face. He's gotten himself into a pickle and you have to help him get out of it. Kennedy has managed to hit pause, to delay the inevitable until Monday at least.

That gives him less than two days to find a solution. And Kennedy then sends his brother, Robert Kennedy, who was the attorney general, to meet with the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. And Kennedy says, I'm telling you what our situation is. The generals in the United States are pressing Kennedy to do something. He will do something by Monday. This is now Saturday evening. He will do something by Monday. Let us come to a compromise. Kennedy is reaching out to Khrushchev. But Khrushchev has also, in his own fashion, reached out to Kennedy.

Remember that first letter that arrived at the White House? Well, that letter is now crucial. Kennedy and Thompson are betting everything on that letter. Bobby Kennedy conveys this message to the Soviet ambassador. And he says Kennedy will agree to the terms of the first letter, that the United States will promise not to invade Cuba if the Soviets remove their missiles from Cuba. At this juncture, the U.S. president telephones his predecessor,

General Eisenhower, to bring him up to speed. Hello? Yes, sir. Oh, it's the General on the air. I'll put it on, yes, sir. Ready? Hello? General Eisenhower, Mr. President.

General, how are you? Pretty good, thank you. Oh, fine. General, I just wanted to bring you up to date on this matter because I know of your concern about it. We got, Friday night, got a message from Khrushchev which said that he would withdraw these missiles and technicians and so on, providing we did not plan to invade Cuba. We then got a message, a public one, the next morning in which he said he would do that if we withdrew our missiles from Turkey.

do that if we withdrew our missiles from Turkey. We then, as you know, issued a statement that we couldn't get into that deal. So we now have to wait to see how it unfolds, and there's a good deal of complexities to it. So I would think that if we can do that, we'll find our interests advanced, even though it may be only one more chapter in a rather long story as far as Cuba's concerned. Suddenly there's the faintest chink of light at the end of the tunnel. But while the president and his team may be seeking a peaceful resolution,

they are still at the mercy of fate. And Dobrynin understands he sends a message back to Moscow. Now this was not so easy because they did not actually have a means of sending an encrypted message. And so they had to use Western Union, a regular telegraph agency. And 17-year-old boy on a bicycle

came from the Western Union office around the corner from the Soviet embassy to pick up this encrypted telegram and he takes it back. But imagine if he had been hit by a car. He's driving on the middle of the street. I mean, anything could have stopped this from ending peacefully. Thankfully, the telegram makes it to Moscow. Khrushchev, it's fair to say, is mightily relieved. Khrushchev gets the message and decrypts it. It's now morning in Moscow,

and Khrushchev makes a dramatic announcement on Radio Moscow that an agreement has been reached that the Soviet Union will remove its missiles from Cuba and the United States promises not to invade Cuba. We now have records that show that Khrushchev had decided on October 25th to remove the missiles from Cuba, because he felt the circumstances were getting out of hand, they were too precarious.

And in fact, what he now is going to try to do is save face, and he's going to try to get the most out of the United States in this concession to remove the missiles. The full extent of Kennedy's proposal to Khrushchev is cunningly concealed from public view. What wasn't spoken at the time, and we didn't find out for another 25 years, was that Kennedy offered one more thing, the removal of the missiles from Turkey. Robert Kennedy tells Dobrynin that if, in fact, you make that public, because it would seem like Kennedy was backing down to a Soviet ultimatum,

if you make that public, we will leave the missiles in Turkey and we will take away our promise not to invade Cuba. And so that secret stayed for actually 25 years. It was very closely held. And at that point, everyone takes a deep sigh of relief. The missile crisis seems to be over. In the United States, the missile crisis is often thought of as 13 days. 13 days that threatened humanity's very existence.

13 days to save the world. The truth is that the crisis both starts and ends outside this limited period. As we've seen, you can go back to the Bay of Pigs and even the start of the Cold War itself to seek its origins. And it certainly doesn't all end neatly on day 13. It will continue, away from public view for at least another three weeks. But we'll get to that in a second. Now, on October the 28th, the two leaders have stared into the abyss, and neither likes what he's seen. The crisis will rumble on, but its most acute period is, mercifully, drawing to a close. The world has come mightily close, too close, to nuclear war. Even when the two leaders had wanted to de-escalate, the fulfilment of their wishes had rested on pure chance.

There are several such incidents that we can highlight, where things could have gone in the total opposite direction despite Kennedy and Khrushchev ending up on the same page. The boy on the bicycle with Kennedy's telegram in his hand, for example. Back on October 27th, after the American pilot Rudolph Anderson was shot down, Kennedy had suspended all U-2 surveillance flights over Cuba. But, in preparation for a potential land invasion of the island, Kennedy had maintained lower-level reconnaissance missions. One such mission produced another desperately close call.

mission produced another desperately close call. We had assembled at this point 180,000 troops in South Florida ready to invade Cuba. And in preparation for that you have low-level reconnaissance flying around and one of them is hit by a Cuban anti-aircraft gun. They were flying at 200 feet off the ground, not by a Soviet missile but by anti-aircraft gun and barely makes it back to Homestead Air Force Base. Kennedy's advisor, Sorensen, told me that had that plane not made it back, Kennedy would have launched an invasion. And if they had done that, had they invaded Cuba, the Americans would have been greeted

with enemy forces far stronger and more resilient than their intelligence reports had indicated. The United States assumed that there were 10,000 Soviet soldiers on the island, that there were 100,000 armed Cubans, and that there were no warheads. In fact, the Soviets had 43,000 soldiers, the Cubans had 400,000 armed personnel, and there were 160 warheads on the island, some for tactical nuclear missiles that would have been used against an invading force. Had we launched that invasion, they would have launched a tactical nuclear missile against the U.S. forces, and we would have lost, as McNamara said, 100,000 people in one fell swoop. There was no way that Kennedy wasn't

going to respond in kind, and it would have been the start of a nuclear war. In some sense, humanity was saved by the skill of one pilot who got his damaged plane back to Homestead Air Force Base. In January 1989, Soviet officials disclosed publicly for the first time, Soviet nuclear warheads had already been deployed in Cuba long before the Americans realized. Not only that, these atomic weapons could have been fired at U.S. cities at just a few hours' notice. Kennedy didn't know there were nuclear weapons on the island. I don't think Kennedy would have even considered an invasion had he thought there were nuclear weapons on the island. We did not know that the nuclear warheads arrived until 1989. And it wasn't until 1992 that we learned how many there were. And so this was 30 years later.

That secret was still kept. And so Kennedy was making decisions in the dark. Each surviving member of the EXCOMM must surely feel a chill down his spine on hearing this news. Exactly what the missiles were capable of was always a matter of conjecture. The president's advisers had to assume the worst, but they never knew for sure quite how destructive these weapons were.

Now, 27 years after the crisis, they are finally learning the full extent of what they were dealing with in Cuba. On the American side, senior figures in the 1960s had been terrified of some kind of catastrophic human blunder. Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense through the missile crisis, had ordered that coded locks be fitted to all intercontinental ballistic missiles. But once they were installed, the Strategic Air Command had all the codes set to eight zeros so that the locks would not prevent a quick launch. Hardly a foolproof safeguard. You can see then how things almost went totally off the rails, even when both leaders were trying

to dial everything down. At a certain point, presidents and premiers in their offices, hundreds or thousands of miles away from the action, lose control of events on the ground. Lest we forget the example that opened this story of the Soviet submarine commander priming his men to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo at an American naval destroyer. And even after both sides have publicly stepped back, American forces are still primed for action at a moment's notice.

So what the public doesn't understand at this point is that the United States keeps its strategic forces at DEFCON 2. And so we're still at a hair trigger. Anything could set us off. Any mistake on the part of one country or the other. The Americans and the Soviets are agreed that the missiles must go. But that's easier said than done.

And what becomes at issue now is an inspection of the dismantling of the missiles in Cuba. The United States wants to supervise the dismantling to make sure no missiles are kept there. The Soviet Union doesn't want to allow that and offers that an international inspection team under the sponsorship of the UN come in and inspect and the United States accepts that. Progress is now being made towards the restoration of peace in the Caribbean. And it is our firm hope and purpose that this progress shall go forward. We will continue to keep the American people informed on this vital matter.

Thank you. While these may be Soviet missiles, it's not Soviet territory they're sitting on. And the Cuban premier is having none of it. And Castro says no. He won't allow an international team to come in. They have no business coming into our country to inspect anything. Now, this is a real problem because the United States is getting quite upset about this. And we have the letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev during this period. They were writing to each other almost every day. So there was active communication,

trying to figure out how to deal with this problem. From where the Cuban leader is sat, relinquishing the missiles is giving America the green light in their pursuit of regime change on the island. Khrushchev dispatches his deputy premier, Anastas Mikoyan, to talk Castro round. But Castro is not for turning. Castro and Mikoyan just don't see eye to eye. Castro says, you don't understand that your backing down has given the United States a free hand to do whatever they want to us. And Mikoyan says, no, Kennedy's promised not to invade. And Castro says, you don't know the United States the way we know the United States.

Cubans feel they understand the monster and you can't trust the monster. But by now, Khrushchev is done talking. He decides there's nothing else for it. He throws Castro under the bus. There's nothing else for it. He throws Castro under the bus. Khrushchev has had it with Castro, and he agrees on November 12th to give up everything, to give back the patrol boats,

which were going to be used to prevent attacks against the Cuban shores, to give up the bombers, and essentially to leave Cuba defenseless. He doesn't tell McCoy on that. Khrushchev keeps this a secret from both Castro and McCoy on. Khrushchev accepts Kennedy's demand that international inspectors be allowed into Cuba.

In the meantime, U.S. planes will continue to conduct surveillance flights in Cuban airspace. Castro will only discover this deal between the two superpowers in early 1963, as he makes a visit to the USSR. For the Cubans, it's never been clearer. The Soviets prioritize

a positive relationship with America over watching the back of little old Cuba. Castro realizes his future lies in rejecting both superpowers While the Cuban economy sinks further and further into the pits he will now begin a decades-long mission a very costly one to wage revolutionary struggles throughout Latin America Africa and the Third World On November 20, 1962

Kennedy calls a press conference. Rumours abound that the President is going to announce a ground invasion of Cuba to make absolutely sure the nuclear missiles are being dismantled and removed. Two mortal enemies, the Soviet Union and the United States, are now united in wanting Cuba's missiles gone. And there's nothing Cuba can do about it. Castro realizes he has no choice now but to give up his stance. And he says, OK, we can have international inspections. And Kennedy uses that press conference on November 20th to announce the United States is stepping down from DEFCON 2, and at that point the missile crisis really is over.

On January 7th, 1963, the crisis is formally ended at the UN. Later that year, the two superpowers negotiate the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, widely viewed as a symbolic moment of de-escalation. One would have to say it is the closest that the world has ever come to nuclear destruction, because it's the only time the United States ever put its forces at DEFCON 2. So when you're at DEFCON 3, that still gives you room to walk it back. DEFCON 2 is right at the precipice. And it's the only time, the missile crisis, when the United States did that.

The Soviets haven't done that. The Chinese haven't done that. So yes, there are other circumstances that might have spiraled out and led to so much misunderstanding that there would be war between nuclear powers. After all, Pakistan and India have come very close. But a nuclear war that would cause the end of humanity, this is the closest we ever came. It depended on the skill of a pilot getting his plane back, the decision of Kennedy not to give in to the generals and launch an attack that would have led to the firing of tactical nuclear missiles,

the commander of the nuclear submarine not firing his nuclear torpedoes. So many slight instances where a decision made the other way in the flick of an instant might have set off a war. That's too close. At Khrushchev's suggestion, a hotline will be created between the Kremlin and the White House, allowing the two leaders to communicate in person

should things ever get out of hand again. Needless to say, there are lessons to be learned. Each country drew lessons that were harmful to it from the missile crisis. The United States came to believe that you could use something called coercive diplomacy. The idea being that unless you threaten with a stick, talk to talk, diplomacy won't work. And it's because the United States threatened the invasion of Cuba that the Soviets backed down. That's not the reason the Soviets backed down, because they

were afraid things were getting out of hand. There might be a nuclear war that would destroy the world. The consequence, though, was the United States began to behave as if coercive diplomacy was a viable strategy. From the Soviet perspective, they believed that the cause of this crisis was U.S. adventurism. But in the longer term sense, the Soviet assessed that the only way to prevent crises with the United States was to have parity. That the Soviet Union had to block the United States from its adventurism. And as a consequence, they started building up their military significantly. started building up their military significantly. And you can chart the decline in Soviet domestic standards of living, health care, for example, from that point when they started spending money on the military instead of spending money on domestic needs. The Cubans, in a similar way,

believed that the United States would continue the plan to invade Cuba. In fact, Kennedy had given up on that idea. And the Cubans built up their military, sacrificing domestic needs, sacrificing the diversification of their economy. They became much more of a national security state that stifled freedoms on the island. And so Cuba, assuming the worst of the United States, then let itself down a road that it still suffers today.

In October 1964, Khrushchev is booted out of office by the Communist Party Central Committee. Any progress in de-escalation is fleeting. From 1964 onwards, the Soviet generals pour everything into closing the missile gap. Both sides were able to leave the crisis with something to show for it. Kennedy got the missiles out of Cuba. Khrushchev got America's promise not to invade the island, as well as the removal of US missiles from Turkey. Precisely because each side can spin themselves as the

victor here, the missile crisis actually sets the scene for future arm wrestles between the two superpowers over the coming three decades and more. And today, in the 21st century, the specter of nuclear war absolutely remains. The United States still has thousands of warheads. The Russians still have thousands of warheads. China has about 250 warheads. There are officially seven countries that have nuclear weapons. There's concern about Iran getting nuclear weapons. And so to the extent that countries still think this is a viable weapon, that's much too dangerous to have all these weapons around. But no country seems to be willing to give up what they have.

But would a U.S. president ever actually use nuclear weapons? If the Cold War really was a war of perceptions, would one man or woman really take the ultimate step? It's still this game of credibility, the game of pretending that this is a deterrent, but the reality is a president who would launch a nuclear attack, even if the United States were attacked, is talking about destroying humanity.

When President George H.W. Bush was asked about this in a meeting in the National Security Council, he talked about there being an acceptable loss of 90 million people. And that's why we have nuclear weapons, to be able to fight a war where there would be 90 million deaths. The threat of unintended escalation remains live, as does the risk of human error. Just think of President Jimmy Carter leaving the nuclear launch codes in his suit when he sent it to the dry cleaners. The final word goes to Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense through the missile crisis. Years later, he reflected on those weeks back in 1962. He pulled no punches in his final analysis.

It was luck that prevented nuclear war. Rational individuals came that close to the total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today. The major lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is this. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations. In the next episode of Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of Blackbeard the pirate. He was surrounded by sparks and smoke like some kind of demon-like creature. And he and his crewmen had bandoliers of grenades and weapons

and were dressing in clothing of the wealthy passengers they captured like war trophies. It looked like something like one of these Mad Max movies. That's next time on Short History Of.