For those born before or after 1945, until the coming down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a terrifying potential scenario existed of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member countries going to war. If such escalated into a nuclear weapon exchange, the result would have been catastrophic: Appalling environmental consequences; the destruction of the world economy as we knew it and millions of deaths amongst belligerent and non- belligerent countries alike.
Such was the horrific nightmare facing humanity fifty years ago, from 12 to 27 October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crises constituted that historical moment when superpower tensions reached their most dangerous levels. American and Soviet leaders, President John Kennedy and Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, contemplated the real and most dread prospect of war between their respective countries.
Today's global community still share dire concerns regarding the potential proliferation of mass destruction weapons to terrorist groups or rogue states. Hence fears surrounding the current sabre-rattling between Iran, Israel and the United States. But now at least, we no longer live under a continuous dread fear for a Third World War breaking out involving nuclear weapon exchanges by big power rivals. But even such must be said with caution: China, India, Pakistan maintain nuclear weapons to guard against one another, Israel has its nuclear arsenal to protect its very existence, while historically-based suspicions are not entirely extinct between the first nuclear armed states: Russia versus its leading former ideological foes; the United States, Britain and France.
The Cuban situation had its origins in the nuclear arms race; an astronomically expensive competition between the USA and USSR dating from 1949, by 1962 completely devoid of any internationally-agreed restraints upon the destructive power or numerical extent of their respective nuclear arsenals. By 1962, there existed formidable numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), intermediate range missiles (IRBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), air-dropped hydrogen bombs and smaller battlefield tactical nuclear weapons. Such were tested atmospherically in the Pacific and Arctic Circle by the USA and USSR respectively, with photos of giant mushroom clouds catching press front pages throughout the world.
However, it was the Americans who easily bested the Soviets in terms of nuclear weapon technology and deployment. Despite the "peaceful co-existence" buzzword in then contemporary international relations, Khrushchev was determined to assert his country as America's equal in military, diplomatic, economic and scientific strength. Besides proving communism as being capitalism's ideological superior. Khrushchev believed that capitalism would ultimately destroy itself and communism would inevitably spread through the emerging Asian and African countries. Post-independence leaders and anti-colonial resistance/liberation movements, including the South African ANC and SACP, would the Soviets believed, come to power by revolution and choose the socialist road.
In 1959, the Cuban Revolution resulted in Fidel Castro's revolutionaries overthrowing the corrupt and despotic American-supported Batista regime. An opportunity now existed whereby Soviet nuclear weapons could be placed in "Uncle Sam's backyard", tilting the strategic nuclear balance away from the USA. The planned clandestine placement of Soviet IRBMs in Cuba, just 90km from Florida, meant the warning time in America to prepare for a nuclear attack would be less than one minute.
The US government had already in April 1960, confirmed its determination to oust the Castro regime. This via CIA supported armed Cuban dissidents landing at the Bay of Pigs on the southern Cuban coast. This operation's failure embarrassed the young American President and drove Castro ideologically closer to Khrushchev. The Soviets thereby easily convinced Castro that the presence of Soviet missiles would deter any future American military invasion, besides also allow the communist world to strategically out-manoeuvre their capitalist enemies.
Therefore, in the most extraordinarily dangerous gamble in history, Khrushchev with Castro's complete consent, ordered the secret shipping and installation of nuclear armed missiles on Cuba, accompanied by strong Red Army forces including aircraft and surface to air missiles to protect the IRBM sites. Having been violently transformed by Castro and his cohorts into a communist autocracy, Cuba lay now at the centre of a growing crisis.
After 14 October, when American U-2 spy planes photographic evidence confirmed the IRBMs presence, it was inconceivable the Americans would accept these weapons in Cuba. Concurrent to this situation were continuing Soviet demands that Western military forces be withdrawn from Berlin, located inside communist East Germany. Khrushchev reasoned that the missiles would not only deter any American attack on Cuba, but they could also be used as a bargaining chip to force the West out of Berlin, besides also coercing the Americans to withdraw their own IRBMs from NATO members Turkey and Italy.
In consultation with his military Chiefs of Staff, Kennedy ordered preparations to begin for a full conventional military invasion of Cuba. But firstly a naval blockade of the island was immediately enforced, euphemised as "quarantine". Kennedy opened urgent discussions with Khrushchev who after initially denying the missiles presence, was forced to confront the photographic evidence at the United Nations. Khrushchev then insisted the missiles were of a "defensive nature"; an interpretation the Americans would never countenance. The "quarantine" succeeded in halting the Soviet missile carrying cargo ships, which stopped when faced by a line of US Navy warships.
The most dangerous day of the crisis was on 27 October: A U2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba by a Soviet missile. On the same day, actions bordering on warfare occurred at sea; Red Navy submarines accompanying the Soviet ships were detected by the Americans.
The submarines were armed with nuclear tipped torpedoes - a maritime tactical atomic weapon. The chances of World War Three breaking out first in the Caribbean waters was heightened, as US Navy warships dropped practice depth charges onto one Soviet submarine, forcing it to the surface. Castro had sent a reckless letter to Khrushchev the same day, urging the use of nuclear weapons, whatever the consequences, if the "imperialists" invaded Cuba.
Although the blockade prevented further Soviet ships delivering nuclear weapons to Cuba; there was still the problem to negotiate the removal of those missiles already on the island. Using backdoor communications, Kennedy and Khrushchev continued negotiating. The Soviet leader asked Kennedy to undertake not to invade Cuba, besides remove IRBMs from Turkey and Italy. The President responded affirmatively to the first and ignored the second. Although some months later, these obsolete US nuclear weapons were dismantled; but their role had already been surpassed by the US Navy's Polaris SLBMs.
Knowing the USSR lacked the military capacity, most particularly a blue-water navy, which could project significant Soviet power into the Caribbean, if a battle was joined there, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missiles and crate them back to Russia. But in return for accepting Kennedy's promise not to invade Cuba. Militarily the Soviet Union had been out-muscled, to the fury of Castro, whom Khrushchev never bothered to consult.
The following year, a ban on the provocative atmospheric nuclear testing was agreed upon by both superpowers and the United Kingdom. The Cold War and attendant nuclear arms race continued for another 27 years; but never again did the world face looming Armageddon to the extent of the Cuban crisis. Ironically, Castro long "out-ruled" the political tenures of both Kennedy and Khrushchev and today, Cuba remains one the last remaining communist redoubts, extraordinarily still under the dictatorship of a Castro, the ailing Fidel's brother: 81 year old Raul Castro.
How remarkable that to this day, the local ANC government still hold this unhappy Cuban regime and its leaders in such high regard; long after Glastnost and Perestroika realities terminated Soviet subsidies and preferential trade agreements with Castro's government. To this day, Castro's own insane brinkmanship of fifty years ago has not been critiqued by his admirers.
This in Castro suggesting to Khrushchev that nuclear war was a realistic option in 1962, demonstrating a Mao Tse Tung-like perception that ideology would ultimately triumph, even in a post-nuclear war world. During the late 1960s Sino-Soviet tensions, Mao had appalled the Russian leaders by implying that nuclear war between the two communist giants would not mark the end of mankind.
Dr Rodney Warwick PhD MA (UCT)
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
