A ‘What If . . . ‘ Not to Be Answered : Dark Thoughts Haunt Cuban Missile Crisis Reunion

The most extraordinary aspect of last month’s Moscow conference on the Cuban missile crisis was the fact that it took place at all.

No one could have imagined in October, 1962, when Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and I were conferring in the Cabinet Room with President John F. Kennedy and a dozen others on the world’s first potentially nuclear confrontation, that one day we would gather in Moscow with Soviet and Cuban counterparts for a frank and friendly exchange of facts and views about the crisis.

On Oct. 18, 1962, as he met tensely in the Oval Office with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, the President could not have imagined that one day these men and their colleagues would be sitting around a Moscow table amiably answering our questions on the crisis, exchanging acknowledgements of error with us and openly disagreeing among themselves.

Among American scholars and experts, the 1962 confrontation over missiles in Cuba is almost everyone’s favorite crisis.

Hawks like to talk about Kennedy’s naval blockade, facing down Nikita S. Khrushchev and forcing his missiles out of our hemisphere.

Doves like to talk about Kennedy’s cool diplomacy, peacefully resolving the crisis without the United States firing a single shot.

Revisionist historians like to complain that Kennedy needlessly brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction over a Soviet action that, however hostile and surreptitious, did not fundamentally threaten our security.

Right-wing scholars like to complain that Kennedy’s refusal that October to launch an invasion of the communist satellite 90 miles from our shore cost the United States its last best opportunity and excuse to go in there and take Cuba away from Castro.

War-games theorists are divided into those admiring the carefully executed management of the crisis by Kennedy and his advisers and those castigating the mistaken assumptions and miscalculations on both sides that nearly led the world to a nuclear nightmare.

As the discussion in Moscow confirmed, there is some truth--but only some--in each of these perspectives. Ultimate release of the transcript of our proceedings will no doubt provide new ammunition for each of these analysts, justifying new editions of their books, new essays and new lectures on their favorite crisis.

But the 1962 showdown over Cuba was my least favorite crisis. I hope never to see its like again. Our discussions in Moscow refocused my mind not on the successful, statesman-like resolution of that conflict, which filled me with overwhelming pride and relief at the time, but on the terrible vulnerability and fallibility of man in the nuclear age.

We talked earnestly in Moscow about the invaluable role of continuing communication between the combatants during a nuclear crisis. I agree that this was one of the most important lessons of 1962. But it is now clear that some of those communications included deception, exaggeration and bluff, which could have led to unthinkably disastrous consequences.

We talked proudly in Moscow about our respective commanders-in-chief, exercising careful control of the situation to avoid plunging headlong into the irrevocable and unknown. Kennedy and Khrushchev do indeed deserve praise for their ultimate caution and their rejection of less temperate advice. But it is now clear that no military machine can be wholly free from dangerous human and mechanical errors beyond the control of the most prudent commander-in-chief.

We talked matter-of-factly in Moscow about the calculations and the numbers that weighed heavily in the balance of choices during those 13 unprecedented days and nights in 1962--the number of missiles on each side, the number of nuclear warheads in place, the number of air sorties required for a “surgical strike” at the missile sites, the number of troops on both sides, the number of casualties expected, even the numerical odds of war.

But it is now clear that no one in the room in January, 1989, or in October, 1962, could quantify an acceptable level of nuclear destruction or an acceptable risk of nuclear war. It is thus not surprising that the meeting in Moscow has refueled old controversies--within, more than between, the two superpower delegations--over how great the risks really were as the crisis neared its climax on the night of Oct. 27, 1962.

In truth, we will never know with any certainty--no matter how many conferences we hold or how many pieces of evidence we selectively recall--whether Kennedy would have in fact launched an invasion of Cuba had the Soviet rockets not been removed promptly, or whether Khrushchev in response would have launched an attack on Berlin or Turkey. We will never know whether the American forces storming Cuba would have used the tactical nuclear weapons recommended by the Pentagon. We will never know whether the Soviets, either before or after such an attack, would have fired their Cuban-based missiles at American cities rather than have them captured or destroyed by American forces. On these questions, we simply do not know what might have been.

Thank God.