Kennedy vs. Khrushchev: Leadership in the Cuban Missile Crisis

Introduction: The Crisis and Its Leaders

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 is widely considered to be the moment when the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union came closest to outright hostility and, indeed, nuclear war. What is most interesting about the Cuban Missile Crisis in retrospect is its strategic handling by the two national leaders involved, Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy. An examination of the correspondence exchanged by these two leaders during the crisis reveals that Kennedy's handling of the situation, while marked by some errors, was more responsible than Khrushchev's. In some sense, the Cuban Missile Crisis began as an irresponsible gamble by Khrushchev: if he exhibited some clever statesmanship during the crisis, this does not erase the fact that it was begun as an attempt to take advantage of a perceived weakness on Kennedy's part that was not ultimately there.

Khrushchev's Gamble and the Monroe Doctrine

The Soviet decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba — which was allied to the U.S.S.R. after Fidel Castro's revolution had made Cuba into a Communist state in the late 1950s — followed the ill-advised Bay of Pigs invasion earlier in Kennedy's administration. Khrushchev was therefore capable of claiming an immediate provocation that had made necessary a boost to Cuba's defense capability. However, Khrushchev chose to ignore an American policy that had stood since the 1820s — the Monroe Doctrine — which held that the United States would treat interference by European powers (including Russia) in the Americas as an act of aggression.

That is why Kennedy's initial communication of October 22, 1962 to Khrushchev frames the Cuban missiles in terms of hemispheric security: "At the same time, I wish to point out that the action we are taking is the minimum necessary to remove the threat to the security of the nations of this hemisphere" (60). While being careful not to allow the provocation to start an immediate outright war, Kennedy nevertheless articulates the problem with the missiles as relating not to the ideological concerns of the Cold War, but to an American security policy that pre-dated Communism and nuclear weaponry altogether.

Khrushchev's Rhetoric: Rodomontade and Casuistry

What is most remarkable about Khrushchev's responses to Kennedy during the crisis is the high level of rhetorical mockery, casuistry, and outright rodomontade which — however occasionally accurate in its specifics — hardly indicates responsible statecraft. On October 24, Khrushchev claims that "the actions of the United States with regard to Cuba constitute outright banditry or, if you like, the folly of degenerate imperialism" (63).

Khrushchev's telegram of October 26 is full of high-minded declarations — "War is our enemy and a calamity for all the peoples," which would have come as a surprise to the Hungarians subjected to Soviet invasion just a few years earlier — but also bizarre references to piracy in the Middle Ages, the 1918 military occupation of Archangel by American and British forces, and Bertrand Russell (65). If what was at stake in the Cuban Missile Crisis was potentially global thermonuclear war, Khrushchev's rhetorical style alone is frankly terrifying.

The bluster grows most outlandish in Khrushchev's long October 30 communication, in which — seemingly realizing that the Cuban situation had earned him the world's attention — he proceeds to list every conceivable Soviet diplomatic demand: a nuclear test ban treaty, the American presence in Guantanamo and West Berlin, Chinese membership in the United Nations. He even admits, "I understand that I listed a great number of questions. Therefore, if we started after breakfast we would not have finished solving them before dinner" (71). What ultimately seems plausible, in reading Khrushchev's bizarre and florid communications to Kennedy, is that the Cuban missiles were intended as a deliberate provocation — purely designed to see what concessions the Soviets could extract from America. The removal of American missiles in Turkey was therefore a plausible concession on Kennedy's part, as it was the only issue remotely resembling the Cuban missiles raised by Khrushchev.