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The popular story told by historians and popular culture in movies and elsewhere is that, in short, our young charismatic president JFK went eye to eye with the Russians and Khrushchev and the Russians blink and backed down, taking the missiles out of Cuba and avoiding a nuclear war.
Not many historians held to that analysis once the declassified documents became available. I don't think that you will find many contemporary historians who would leave that part of the story out these days.
JFK was not really the big hard-nosed "October Crisis" hero the MSM makes him out to be (and continues to do so). He was a very mediocre president.
Actually you couldn't have gotten that tale more wrong. Showing great restraint can be an act of bravery far greater than going off half-cocked. Defying a united opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba, Kennedy demonstrated the kind of bravery that is too often overlooked.
Y'all are forgetting that after his meeting with Kennedy in Vienna, Krushchev found him weak and easy to bully.
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Yes, and that is why Khrushchev was taken by surprise when President Kennedy wound up playing hardball over the Cuban missiles. JFK stood up to the bully and the bully backed down because the bully was already being seen as too cocky and aggressive by the Supreme Soviet. The Chairman had been on a roll every since Sputnik and things kept falling into place for him to create the perception that the USSR was pulling ahead of the west in the Cold War. Castro turned communist, they were constantly ahead of us in space feats, they shot down a U-2 spy plane, The Bay of Pigs mission went sour, the west was helpless to prevent the construction of the Berlin Wall, Nikita really thought that the hour had arrived and he overplayed his hand by thinking he could install missiles in Cuba and have them go undetected by the US until it was too late.
Regardless of the Turkey missile reciprocation involved, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended as an apparent triumph for the west and a humiliation for the Chairman and the USSR. It was among the reasons that the following October, Khrushchev was ousted by Leonid Brezhnev and other members of the Supreme Soviet.
Kennedy was no doubt a personally brave man, but his political savvy vs the Soviets was wanting. It was his diplomatic weakness he exhibited at the Vienna summit that emboldened the rooskie to get aggressive in Cuba.
Krushchev's ploy worked, and the US withdrew its IRBMs that encircled the USSR. He knew the short range missiles in Cuber weren't that big a deal, but the Jupiters in Turkey were.
If JFK hadn't appeared to be so weak at that summit, there wouldn't have been an "October Crisis" to begin with.
Krushchev's ploy worked, and the US withdrew its IRBMs that encircled the USSR. He knew the short range missiles in Cuber weren't that big a deal, but the Jupiters in Turkey were.
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If your argument is that the purpose of the placing missiles in Cuba was always to get the US to remove the missiles in Turkey, I would like to know your source for this information. What I have read has been consistent in explaining that the purpose was to deter any invasion of Cuba by the US. That is what Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet when asked his reason.
And, your point would still stand, though factually corrected. Khrushchev got pledge from JFK that there would be no invasion in return for the removal of the offending missiles. I think that the Turkey missile business was merely a bonus thrown in.
Irrespective of the terms of the settlement, it was still seen by the world as a propaganda triumph for the west and a setback for the USSR and Nikita.
It was his diplomatic weakness he exhibited at the Vienna summit that emboldened the rooskie to get aggressive in Cuba.
Diplomatic weakness or a gross misreading on the part of the Soviets? That knife cuts two ways.
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Krushchev's ploy worked, and the US withdrew its IRBMs that encircled the USSR.
That requires that the purpose of the Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba was intended to result in the U.S. withdrawal of missiles from Turkey. The historical record both U.S. and Soviet doesn't support your argument. Instead Khrushchev's intention was the secretly place missiles in Cuba in order to have the capability of actually striking the continental U.S. and if the ploy was discovered it was his intention to either use the missiles as a deterrent to any Western response to the annexation of West Berlin or to trade the missile for it. Removing missiles from around the Soviet Union was not his intention.
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He knew the short range missiles in Cuber weren't that big a deal, but the Jupiters in Turkey were.
That too is false, since the Soviet ICBM's could only reach Alaska and not the lower 48. A nuclear strike from only 90 missiles from the U.S. was indeed a big deal.
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If JFK hadn't appeared to be so weak at that summit, there wouldn't have been an "October Crisis" to begin with.
Again, based upon what? Kennedy or Krushchev's political lenses that colored by a streak of anti-intellectualism and an ideology that marked Kennedy as nothing more than the young bourgeoisie son of an American plutocrat?
Diplomatic weakness or a gross misreading on the part of the Soviets? That knife cuts two ways.
That requires that the purpose of the Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba was intended to result in the U.S. withdrawal of missiles from Turkey. The historical record both U.S. and Soviet doesn't support your argument. Instead Khrushchev's intention was the secretly place missiles in Cuba in order to have the capability of actually striking the continental U.S. and if the ploy was discovered it was his intention to either use the missiles as a deterrent to any Western response to the annexation of West Berlin or to trade the missile for it. Removing missiles from around the Soviet Union was not his intention.
That too is false, since the Soviet ICBM's could only reach Alaska and not the lower 48. A nuclear strike from only 90 missiles from the U.S. was indeed a big deal.
Again, based upon what? Kennedy or Krushchev's political lenses that colored by a streak of anti-intellectualism and an ideology that marked Kennedy as nothing more than the young bourgeoisie son of an American plutocrat?
I agree about Nikita Sergyivich's game plan but need to advise and extend the remarks about Soviet missile technology in the early 19650s. The USSR did not a very good ICBM which was Korolyev's R-7 nickmaned old Semyorka (number 7). It weighed over 200 tons and took time to refuel and had to be on a lauching pad rather than a protective silo. Hence, the whole show of gettin it ready for lauch was right out in the open for all to see. Once on the pad could be taken out with a near miss of lets say a mile. 10 miles if you are using thermonuclear weapons. Our aiming was much better than that. America in 1962 had tested and was moving to replace its first generation ICBMs like Atlas and Titan with smaller solid fueled Minuteman 1 soon to be superceded with Minuteman 2 and 3 which could be in armored concrete silos that could withstand esentially a direct hit (1 MT) or a near miss with a super H-bomb (10 MT)+. Improvements in technology like manuverable warheads , multiple warheads on a single missle and lastly GPS mad it possible for us to disarm the USSR and kill it if we chose. In 1962 we had about 500 ICBMs and SLBMs the USSR about 36 combined and it was not likely any of the USSRs 150 Long range bombers My-4 and Tu-95 would even reach the lower 48. If the USA pre-empted which was the option Gen Powers and LeMay would have pushed weapons in the USSR would have been ineffective and even if a few would have made it the USA would have killed the USSR and virtually all of its 250 million people. The problemwas the short range missiles in Cuba that could have hit much of the US east of the Rockies (They numbered about two dozen). As General Buck Turgedson or the movie Dr Strangelove noted "we would get our hair mussed up a little bit but only 25 million causalties tops! " SIOP 63 would have killed 180 million in the USSR about 150 million in China and Korea and maybe 75 millon in Eastern Europe. Kruschev knew this and understood it very well had been a engineer before he climbed the ranks of the CPSU and had supervised the Soviet rocket program before he took pwer after Stalin's death.
The popular story told by historians and popular culture in movies and elsewhere is that, in short, our young charismatic president JFK went eye to eye with the Russians and Khrushchev and the Russians blink and backed down, taking the missiles out of Cuba and avoiding a nuclear war.
Is that the true story?............
Everything written by reputable analysts is at least partially true. And probably nothing written tells the whole story.
"Young charismatic" President? Ever hear of an "old charismatic" President? I've never noticed that phrase, myself. Charisma, it appears, belongs only to the young. Spin. It is everywhere. It seems to be almost impossible to say Kennedy without pointing out that he was both young and charismatic.
Some texts point out that Cuban Missile Crisis was, in fact, caused by Khrushchev's disdain for this too young President, and that if the President had been Nixon the whole thing would not have happened.
Maybe. We'll never know.
My position is, that a lot of people were in the right place at the right time. Ship captains; President; Secretary of State; military analysts no one ever heard of.
Kennedy always gets credit for success during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but never blame for The Bay of Pigs.
But that's OK. I get credit for a few good moves in my life, too. I just hope no one ever finds out about all the bone-headed moves that I made.
Kennedy always gets credit for success during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but never blame for The Bay of Pigs.
I've read numerous works which had treatments of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and JFK gets blasted pretty good for giving the go ahead and then pulling back on fully supporting it. President Kennedy is taken to task for making Castro's revolution stronger by handing it a propaganda triumph.
Glancing through a Bay of Pigs bibliography on line one finds books with titles such as:
"The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs."
"Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs"
"The Cuban Invasion: The Chronicle of a Disaster"
From:"the Bay of Pigs" by Howard Jones
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The Bay of Pigs set the course of Kennedy's foreign policy. It was a humiliation for the administration that fueled fears of Communist domination and pushed Kennedy toward a hardline "cold warrior" stance. But at the same time, the failed attack left him deeply skeptical of CIA and military advisers and influenced his later actions during the Cuban missile crisis.
From:
"The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs"
by Jim Rasenberger
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President Kennedy must take and did take full responsibility for the mission and its failure.
..and really giving Kennedy a butt whipping is "Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story"by Peter Wyden where JFK is faulted for approving the mission despite his reservations, for misleading the Cuban freedom fighters about expected air support, for intervening to reduce the planned air support, and placing more value on US denial positioning than on the lives of the men he sent into battle.
The CIA certainly gets its just due in these works as well, but not by way of rehabilitating Kennedy.
If you do not believe JFK has been held sufficiently responsible for the disaster, I suspect it is because you have not read the works which do precisely that. That does not mean that they are not out there.
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