The Cuban Missile Crisis

OCT 28 1962 · 12:00

US Air Force U-2 reconnaissance photograph of a Soviet MRBM launch site at San Cristobal, Cuba, 14 October 1962. Place: Cuba; the White House Cabinet Room; the Soviet embassy on Sixteenth Street; the Kremlin Figures: John F. Kennedy, US President · Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet First Secretary · Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba · Robert F. Kennedy, US Attorney-General · Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to Washington · Vasily Arkhipov, Soviet submarine officer (B-59) who refused to authorize the nuclear torpedo Thirteen Days U-2 reconnaissance photographs of San Cristóbal in Pinar del Río, taken on 14 October 1962, reveal SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile launchers under construction. Kennedy is briefed on the morning of 16 October. The Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm) deliberates in secret for six days, considering options from diplomatic protest to invasion. Kennedy chooses naval quarantine, announced in a televised address on the evening of 22 October. The choice of the word quarantine rather than blockade is deliberate; under international law a blockade is an act of war. Soviet ships approach the quarantine line; some turn back; one (the Bucharest) is allowed to pass after inspection by signal. On 27 October (Black Saturday) a U-2 is shot down over Cuba, killing Major Rudolf Anderson; a second U-2 strays into Soviet airspace over Chukotka; the Soviet submarine B-59, hounded by US destroyers near the quarantine line and out of radio contact with Moscow, considers and rejects the use of its nuclear-armed torpedo (Arkhipov's vote against, as second-in-command, is the one that determines the rejection). The world is closer to nuclear war on that single day than at any ot The Quiet Deal Khrushchev sends two messages on 26 and 27 October. The first (private channel, conciliatory) offers withdrawal in exchange for a US pledge not to invade Cuba. The second (public broadcast, harder) demands also the removal of Jupiter intermediate-range missiles from Turkey. Robert Kennedy meets Dobrynin at the Justice Department on the evening of 27 October and conveys the President's agreement on both: a public non-invasion pledge, and a private commitment that the Jupiters in Turkey will be withdrawn within four to five months. The Jupiter element is kept secret for sixteen years. Khrushchev announces the withdrawal at nine in the morning, Moscow time, on 28 October. The crisis ends. The Washington-Moscow direct communications link (the hotline) is established 20 June 1963. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed 5 August 1963. The Non-Proliferation Treaty opens for signature 1 July 1968. Détente, the SALT process, the Helsinki Accords (see [[helsinki-accords-1975]]), follow. The Westphalian system, having brushed against the possibility of its own physical end, builds the architecture by which the two surviving Great Powers will manage their nuclear duopoly for the next tw Video: CBS News broadcast of President Kennedy's 22 October 1962 address to the nation revealing Soviet missile sites in Cuba and announcing the naval quarantine.