Diplomacy, Military Power Combined to Settle Superpower Dispute Over Missiles in Cuba

As a face-saving gesture, Khrushchev secretly suggested the US pledge not to invade Cuba.

Kennedy had earlier decided against an invasion, so he was willing to accept the deal. While his administration was preparing to confirm the agreement the next morning, Khrushchev announced publicly the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba if the US removed its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

Kennedy assumed this was a clever plot to turn the two sides into fruitless and protracted negotiations, while the Soviet missiles would remain in Cuba. Since the US had already planned to remove the Jupiter missiles because they had become obsolete, Kennedy’s ambassador to Turkey suggested that the US simply take the issue off the table by secretly assuring the Soviets that the missiles would be gone the next year. But the President made it clear that the Soviet missiles had to be removed from Cuba immediately, within the next two or three days.

While the heads of state negotiated, events on the ground escalated.

“The Soviets shot down an American reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba and killed its pilot,” Zelikow said. “There was a lot of other anti-aircraft fire going up against American aircraft. So it looked like fighting was beginning.”

Initially, Khrushchev did not know it was his own forces, in Cuba, that had shot down the U-2 plane.

“There was this real sense that both sides were beginning to lose control of their own forces,” Zelikow said. “There were other incidents that were beginning to happen; that Saturday, there were some close and dangerous encounters involving Soviet submarines, a previously scheduled missile test over the Pacific that could have been misinterpreted, and an American U-2 accidentally entered Soviet airspace in Siberia accidentally, with fighters on both sides scrambling before the American plane got out of there. The American fighters carried air-to-air missiles armed with nuclear weapons.”

The next morning, in Moscow, at a Sunday meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet meeting on Oct. 28, Khrushchev — who had not yet received the further threats and assurances being relayed from Washington, announced to his colleagues that they had to remove the missiles.

“In fact, the Soviet leaders were so nervous about this that they decided to go on the radio and announce this right away and not wait to try to communicate this through secret diplomacy,” Zelikow said. “And everyone started breathing a great sigh of relief. That relief was a little premature, because the details of how to withdraw the missiles and verify that turned out to be very difficult and require three weeks of very careful negotiation.”

The deal was done on Nov. 20, 1962.

“One undeniable positive is that the Berlin crisis dissipated and that was the most dangerous crisis in the Cold War,” he said. “Another big positive result was that 2 Kennedy and Khrushchev were both visibly sobered by the experience of coming so close to a calamity and made real efforts to reduce nuclear tensions, including the successful negotiation of a treaty to ban open-air nuclear tests. Kennedy gave a remarkable speech at American University trying to offer a vision of enemies working together to at least preserve world peace and to wind down this nuclear danger.

“In general, having been terrified, the world now shared a real sense that somehow a corner has been turned and that the superpowers were beginning to be more constructive in managing the nuclear danger and averting the fear of destroying the world,” Zelikow said. “And so by getting through the crisis, it made the world a lot safer.”

“That,” he added, “might be an insight now – this current period of danger is not likely to remain static. It is likely to worsen or ease, and a positive outcome could become a turning point toward more cooperation in handling this century’s problems.”

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