Eyeball to eyeball
John Erickson
THE KENNEDY TAPES edited by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow Harvard University Press, £23.50, pp. 728 Thirty-five years after the near cataclysmic event, one which even in distant retrospect raises an unwelcome frisson, we now have in The Kennedy Tapes the raw, white-knuckle, 'expletives undelet- ed' record of American decision-making at the highest level during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. American decision-making during the crisis was centred in the White House with its 'sophisticated, voice- activated taping system', its existence known only to President Kennedy and possibly his brother Robert. Others were ignorant of it. As records of 'frank deliberation in a time of crisis', the distin- guished editors justifiably class them as unparalleled.
Their publication is also coincidentally most opportune, coming, as it does, after the two major conferences on the crisis held in Moscow in 1989 and Havana in 1992, plus a virtual drip-feed of Russian disclosures and 'revelations' from Soviet archives. The latter include Colonel Dokuchaev's analysis of Operation ANADYR (the Soviet code-name for the Cuban operation) in Krasnaya zvezda, Colonel-General Gribkov's Operation ANADYR published in 1994, preceded by his Russian version, Karibskii icrizis in Voenno-istoricheskii Zhumal, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali using KGB files on the Scali-Feldisov channel'. One of the volatile by-products of this material has been the controversy over discrepancies between Russian oral testimony and documentary evidence, not least with respect to the existence and command and control of tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba. No such dubiety or equivocation attends this secretly taped evidence.
Khrushchev's menacing comments in the late summer of 1962 led Washington to believe that the focus of an impending crisis would be Berlin. Khrushchev promised no action until after the Ameri- can Congressional elections in November, but afterwards 'we shall see whether you bring us to the brink of war'. The discovery on 14 October 1962 of missiles in Cuba larger than SAMs (surface to air missiles), Soviet medium-range missiles (SS-40, drastically, dramatically, unexpectedly shifted the eye of the anticipated storm to Cuba.
Observing Kennedy from this distance and in the context of these exchanges he emerges as astonishingly cool in his reactions, a probing questioner, sifting information, apparently immune to impulsiveness. On Saturday, 20 October, 'doves' and 'hawks' had been sharply differ- entiated, the former advocating a blockade, the latter an air strike. Taylor and Bundy proposed an air strike. Robert Kennedy, Dillon, McCone, argued for beginning with a blockade with overtone of an ultimatum, hinting at a possible air strike. Dean Rusk suggested opening with a blockade to halt Soviet activity, the next step to be decided. McNamara and Adlai Stevenson also light- ed on a blockade, using it as a means to open negotiations, offering a summit meeting as a forum to discuss trade-offs for the removal of the Soviet missiles. President Kennedy decided for himself. The blockade became 'a quarantine'. For the moment no negotiations. Blockade, or 'quarantine', would go hand in hand with a demand to Khrushchev that the missiles be removed, with a limited air strike should he fail to respond.
What really lay behind the Cuban missile crisis and the frantic pace of the Soviet build-up? President Kennedy pondered this from his point of view: 'I think we ought to think why the Russians did this.' It was from the Russian point of view a 'rather useful play'. If America simply did nothing, a missile base remained to threaten it. To attack 'gives them a clear line to go ahead and take Berlin, as they were able to do in Hungary under the Anglo war in Egypt'. Americans would perforce be regarded as 'trigger-happy', held responsible for losing Berlin. 'Our problem is not merely Cuba but it is also Berlin.'
General Curtis LeMay did not share Kennedy's view that 'if we knock off Cuba, they're going to knock off Berlin . . . This blockade and political action I see leading into war', adding a stinging rider, 'This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich'. Through his constant awareness of the connection between the stand-off in Berlin and the Soviet game of chance in Cuba Kennedy probably came close to divining Khrashchev's strategic intent. Nevertheless, by the same token, he was also aware how the problem of Berlin acted as a curb on his freedom of action. In the event Khrushchev lost out on both counts, Berlin and Cuba. The vulnerability to which he hoped America might be exposed for all the world to see did not materialise. In Moscow on 28 October 1962 Khrushchev told the Presidium of the danger of war and 'nuclear catastrophe'. To save the world 'we must retreat'.
Khrushchev evidently changed his mind on 25 October, aware that he could neither alter the strategic balance of power nor resolve the Berlin situation in his favour. Americans talked more of trading Jupiter missiles in Turkey rather than Berlin itself. What Macmillan called 'the trial of wills' approached its final climax and passed in favour of President Kennedy. IChrushchev's letter, dated 28 October, responded to the message of 27 October intimating that 'no attack will be made on Cuba'. Regarding the missiles, the 'defence means there which you [Americans] call offensive', he undertook to set in train the necessary measures for 'stopping the building of the said projects and for their dismantling and return to the Soviet Union'. Those 'said projects' had placed the world at nuclear risk and almost tumbled it into a nuclear nightmare.
Though the intensity of the crisis and its mounting dangers are evident throughout the tapes, the devil is in the intricate detail which, but for the consummate editing and referencing on the part of Professors May and Zelikow, might well elude the reader. In addition to Kennedy's own lucidity and equanimity what is astonishing, given sub- sequent revelations, is that the American side had in 1962 more or less 'guessed right' about Soviet motives and behaviour in dealing with what the editors rightly call 'an insecure and impulsive risk-taker', Nikita Khrushchev. 'One hell of a gamble', to quote Aleksandr Fursenko, a stupefying- ly dangerous gamble, failed to pay off. Unique and indispensable, The Kennedy Tapes has now provided vital first-hand evidence of how precisely that came about and how exactly President Kennedy acquit- ted himself in the process. More than 'just a book', this is a major event.
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