Teetering on the edge: The Cuban missile crisis

Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Ryle Dwyer examines a tense fortnight when the world was on the brink of nuclear war

ON MONDAY, Oct 15, 1962 US President John F Kennedy was presented with irrefutable proof that the Soviet Union was building a nuclear missile base in Cuba, 90 miles from America.

This sparked the most dangerous international crisis since the Second World War.

For the previous couple of years, the Americans had been trying to rid Cuba of the communist dictator Fidel Castro. In Apr 1961, the US sponsored and armed an invasion force of Cuban exiles, but the invasion was routed at the Bay of Pigs.

In the following months, the CIA conspired with Mafia gangsters to assassinate Castro. Castro turned to the Soviets for protection. Introducing Soviet missiles was an effective way of protecting Cuba from the US.

Former secretary of state Dean Acheson and Gen Maxwell Taylor, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, advised Kennedy to launch an immediate air strike on Cuba and institute a naval blockade.

While the air strike might neutralise the missiles, the president warned that Soviet Union would probably retaliate by seizing West Berlin. That would then leave him with “only one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons”, he said.

The Soviets would not dare take Berlin if the US attacked Cuba, but they would do so if the Americans failed to act, air force chief of staff Curtis LeMay warned. “This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich,” he said. “I just don’t see any other solution except direct military intervention right now.”

Fearing an air strike on the Cuban facilities would lead to between 10,000 and 20,000 casualties, Kennedy decided to try a naval blockade first.

He announced this in a television address on Oct 22, 1962. Building the missile base was a threat to American national security, so he announced the US was introducing a naval quarantine of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from delivering additional missiles and construction material to the island.

“The 1930s taught us a clear lesson; aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked, ultimately leads to war.

“Our objective, therefore must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country.”

This sparked the biggest international crisis of the past half-century as the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war.

There was an ugly demonstration in Dublin outside the American embassy in Merrion Row, where the famous photograph was taken of Noel Browne supposedly being attacked by a police dog. The protest began in Kildare St with marchers carrying placards proclaiming “No War Over Cuba”, “Keep Our Neutrality”, and “Is Cuba Worth Your Life?”

By the time the march reached Merrion Square North, there were about 80 protesters. A force of 15 gardaí would not allow the marchers any closer than 30m from the embassy. Two gardaí arrived with police dogs. The handlers said they held the dogs on a short leash, but some protesters tried to provoke the animals. Garda John Kelly reported that Dr Browne stood in front of him, trying to annoy his dog by raising his hand while he shouted at a cameraman to take a photograph. The dog was on such a short leash that he never got at Browne, who desisted after the cameraman’s flash.

“While being mauled by the dogs”, he later asserted, “I tried to tell the public that the men setting these dogs on us were the men whom we as citizens paid to keep the peace.”

The deputy commissioner of An Garda Síochána and the head of the Special Branch both told Charles Haughey, then justice minister, “that the use of the dogs was an unfortunate mistake”. But Haughey — possibly disappointed that they had not actually set the dogs on Browne — announced he was “fully satisfied that the action taken by the gardaí was necessary in order to prevent the unruly mob which was assembled from committing a serious breach of the peace”.

While this was going on in Dublin, the American air force was on the highest grade of alert ever — Defcon 2, which was categorised as “the brink of nuclear war”.

On Oct 24, some Soviet ships reached the quarantine line and stopped in the water, while 14 others turned around. Kennedy was anxious to give Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev some room to compromise. “We don’t want to push him to a precipitous action. Give him room to consider. I don’t want to put him in a corner from which he cannot escape,” he said.

Khrushchev privately indicated on the Friday that the Soviets would remove their missiles, if Kennedy publicly guaranteed that the US would not invade Cuba. Bobby Kennedy, the president’s brother, secretly talked in Washington that day with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin about the Americans removing their missiles from Turkey as part of a comprehensive settlement.

If the Soviets made that offer publicly, Kennedy believed that Britain and most of Western Europe would endorse the idea.

Although his military advisers were urging him to invade Cuba, Kennedy feared that if the Soviets retaliated by seizing West Berlin, America’s allies would think that the Russian action was justified “on the grounds that we were wholly unreasonable”.

“Most people would think that if you’re allowed an even trade you ought to take advantage of it,” the president insisted.

Robert Kennedy met Dobrynin again on Saturday and offered to call off the blockade, provide an assurance the US would not invade Cuba, and also secretly agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey within a reasonable time, if the Soviets withdrew their missiles from the Cuba.

Next day, Oct 28, Khrushchev announced the Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed. The crisis was over.