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Issue No. 68, December 2002 - January 2003
In Havana on October 11, a meeting to mark the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis was attended by President Fidel Castro, former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and other senior political and military officials involved in the terrible drama surrounding the placement of Soviet missiles on the island. The anniversary took place in the shadow of the crisis over Iraq and the broader level of concern evoked by the widely-perceived emphasis of the new US National Security Strategy on pre-emptive military action. The Bush administration, in turn, has invoked the naval quarantine imposed by President John F. Kennedy on Cuba as an impressive example of effective pre-emptive action. In a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, the President observed: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, 'Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,' he said, 'where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril.'"
The parallel was strongly faulted by a number of participants in the Havana meeting, including Robert McNamara, who observed: "We called it a 'quarantine' because 'blockade' is a word for war, and the purpose of the quarantine was exactly the opposite. It wasn't at all clear that a quarantine would postpone war. But it was not pre-emption - it was the reverse of pre-emption." This view was strongly echoed by Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, who stated bluntly: "Bush is absolutely wrong. The quarantine was an alternative to military action, not a form of military action. By claiming that the peaceful pressure was equivalent to a military pressure, clearly Bush did not think it through". Wayne Smith, former senior US diplomat in Havana, was as undiplomatic as Schlesinger: "There was no cowboying [in 1962]... Today's crisis is not being handled in the same careful, prudent way."
Fending off the criticism, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated on October 11: "The reason the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully was because President Kennedy, like President Bush, displayed strength and was indeed willing to use force pre-emptively." On October 16, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz again drew a comparison between the situation in Cuba forty years ago and in Iraq today: "Some ask, why act now? Why not wait until the threat is imminent? ... [T]he more time passes, the more time Saddam Hussein has to develop his deadly weapons and to acquire more. The more time he has to plant sleeper agents in the United States and other friendly countries or to supply deadly weapons to terrorists he can then disown... The notion that we can wait until the threat is imminent assumes that we will know when it is imminent. That was not even true in 1962 with the very obvious threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba. ... If that [uncertainty] was true 40 years ago of a threat that was comparatively easy to observe, how much more true is it today of threats developed by evil people who use the freedoms of a democratic society to hide even in our midst? ... We cannot afford to wait until Saddam Hussein or some terrorist supplied by him attacks us with a chemical or biological or, worst of all, a nuclear weapon, to recognise the danger that we face."
On October 21, the Russian Foreign Ministry weighed into the debate in no uncertain terms, observing in a statement: "It has not escaped our attention that in Washington the 40th anniversary of the 'Caribbean Crisis' has turned out to be marked by attempts of officials to review the already established and authentic concept of those events with a rhetoric alleging that John Kennedy in October 1962 obeyed the logic of a pre-emptive strike and that the real threat of the use of force then worked. Such a distortion of history to support the disputable components of the new US National Security Strategy causes bewilderment, since the entire logic of the events of 1962 around Cuba speaks to the fact that, having come to the very edge of a nuclear abyss, the superpowers and their leaders managed to see that a force-based scenario of conflict resolution was fraught with the [danger of] the destruction of mankind. By rejecting the scenario of a pre-emptive use of military force, US President John Kennedy took the path leading to a political solution of the conflict, which in the end bolstered international security and served as an example for the resolution of issues in international relations for many years ahead. That is why the lessons of the 'Caribbean Crisis' are relevant for our days, too."
Note: on October 12, Robert McNamara urged the pursuit of radical, if not total, nuclear disarmament as the only viable long-term option in combating the threat of weapons of mass destruction: "I think the combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to their use, and [the] destruction of nations... I'm not really proposing total elimination... [I am suggesting] that we move toward eliminating the risk of destruction of nations by nuclear weapons. That risk is unacceptable today. We ought to address it."
Reports: Cuba missile crisis veterans fault Bush on Iraq, Reuters, October 11; Former US defense chief calls for end to risks of nuclear destruction, Associated Press, October 12; Text - Wolfowitz analyses risks associated with action against Iraq, Washington File, October 18; Concerning 40th anniversary of the 'Caribbean Crisis', Russian Foreign Ministry Statement, Document 2156-21-10-2002, October 21.
© 2002 The Acronym Institute.