Cuba Crisis Decision Making During

Cuba Crisis

Decision making during the missile crisis involved sequential choice over an array of non-competing courses of action, the act of making decisions led to the discovery of goals, and the decision makers were more concerned with avoiding failure than achieving successes." (Anderson 1983-page 201).

Keeping the above quote in mind, my recommendation to the President of the United States for this particular moment in time, in regards to what is commonly referred to as the "Cuban Missile Crisis" would be to do exactly what he chose to do which was to blockade Cuba until the Russians ultimately chose to back down and acquiesce to the United States demands to remove the missiles from Cuba and the United State's back door.

It was interesting time for both the United States and the Soviet Union, and many observers would later state that it was a defining moment in the history of the world when President Kennedy and the United States stood strong against the Soviet Union.

In his book; Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy, he states that he met with Ambassador Dobrynin of the Soviet Union several times during the days of the crisis and that Dobrynin repeatedly assured him that, "there were no missiles in Cuba; that this is what Kruschev had said, and, as far as he knew, there were still no missiles in Cuba." (Kennedy 1969-page 51).

Evaluating the ambassador's remarks and comparing the proof provided by the CIA in the form of satellite photographs led the President to believe the CIA and to demand the withdrawal of all missiles from Cuba.

With the United States threatening, and ultimately being willing to enforce a blockade, the Russians realized that they had made a mistake and had guessed wrong on their perception of how the President of the United States would react to such an event that they were attempting to initiate.

The same response could have been diagnosed by other experts and as such my recommendation would have been the same.

A blockade was an effective measure at the time because it was only threatening to the Soviet Union if they attempted to break through it. It was a calm and measured response to the problem at hand and would allow the Soviet Union and the United States the opportunity to back away from each other and the brink of another world war.

Sylvan may have said it best when he stated; "Analysis of U.S. decision making in the Cuban missile crisis typically focused on how officials calculated tradeoffs between available options." (Sylvan 1992-page 7).

Those options included blockading the Russian's way into the port at Cuba which was a much better option than other options also considered; an air-strike, an invasion or even negotiations. Comparing a blockade to the first option (air-strike) was a no-brainer. First of all, a guarantee of the airstrike being effective was highly unlikely.

At the time, the pinpoint weaponry employed by the present day United States was not available, and in fact such weaponry had not even been invented yet. The Soviet Union, of course, knew that such a course of direction would not be effective and therefore the deterrence factor on this particular option was rather low.

Secondly, a comparison of a blockade vs. An invasion was also strongly tilted towards the idea of a blockade. The reason(s) for this bias towards the blockade included the fact that an invasion was a risky prospect, and at best, put far more lives at risk than a blockade would. An invasion could also be considered as an overt act of war against the country being invaded (Cuba in this circumstance) and that such an act of war would require retaliation and a constant state of preparedness to defend the action.

As for comparing the blockade to negotiations, there again, was no comparison. The blockade was a strong response to an event that could threaten the end of the world. Negotiations continued even as the blockade was enforced and were a part of the solution as the Soviet Union realized that though the United States was 'standing tough' the President was more than willing to negotiate, but only after the missiles were removed. The Soviet Union may have been a bit surprised by the President's response, and may have even thought that President Kennedy would use negotiations as the method of solution rather than the blockade he ultimately ended up using.