Thirteen Days

by Robert F. Kennedy

  After it was finished, he made no statement attempting to take credit for himself or for the Administration for what had occurred. He instructed all members of the Ex Comm and government that no interview should be given, no statement made, which would claim any kind of victory. He respected Khrushchev for properly determining what was in his own country’s interest and what was in the interest of mankind. If it was a triumph, it was a triumph for the next generation and not for any particular government or people.

  At the outbreak of the First World War the ex-Chancellor of Germany, Prince von Bülow, said to his successor, “How did it all happen?” “Ah, if only we knew,” was the reply.

  NOTE

  It was Senator Kennedy’s intention to add a discussion of the basic ethical question involved: what, if any, circumstance or justification gives this government or any government the moral right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear destruction? He wrote this book in the summer and fall of 1967 on the basis of his personal diaries and recollections, but never had an opportunity to rewrite or complete it.

  THEODORE C. SORENSEN

  Afterword

  BY RICHARD E. NEUSTADT AND GRAHAM T. ALLISON

  THE CUBAN MISSILE crisis is important at three distinct levels. First, the crisis stands for something central in our time: we live under the cloud of nuclear weapons. Our imaginations have been dulled by metaphors. But it is nonetheless true that today men control the power to destroy mankind. Second, this crisis is a microcosm of problems of the modern American Presidency. Crises tend to highlight the basic characteristics of an institution. The Cuban missile crisis does this for a number of dilemmas in our governmental system. Third, this event poses dramatically a central constitutional issue for the 1970’s: namely, the respective roles of President and Congress in making war. During the Cuban missile crisis, the President alone decided and disposed. Two hours before his decision was announced to the world, Congressional leaders were informed that the United States was responding to the Soviet missiles with a naval quarantine.

  Comparable presidential authority has been asserted even where there is no direct threat of nuclear war. Relying on the minimal Congressional consent represented by the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, President Johnson committed American ground forces to what has become the longest war in our history. Relying on inherent powers of the Commander in Chief to protect American troops, President Nixon ordered an invasion of Cambodia. The Constitution calls for Congress to declare war. But in these cases—as with others in our history—Congress has not played a commensurate role. The result is a great argument over the constitutional balance in warmaking. The missile crisis offers some perspective on this argument.

  THE NUCLEAR PARADOX

  In October 1962, President John Kennedy chose a path of action that, in his judgment, entailed a one-in-three chance of nuclear war.* Given the potential consequences, how could he possibly have chosen this course? Robert Kennedy participated in the choice, approved of it, and took pride in the Administration’s performance. It is a mark of both the man and the times that five years later, recording his memoir of the crisis, he came to wonder about the question: “What, if any, circumstance or justification gives this government or any government the moral right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear destruction?”

  That the United States and Soviet Union could engage in a nuclear war which would effectively destroy both societies (and much of the rest of the world) is a plain but incredible fact about contemporary life. We are now twenty-six years into the nuclear age. For more than a decade, the Soviet Union has been capable of destroying millions of Americans. Yet no war has come. Today who can believe that such a war could come?

  How does our nuclear era differ from previous periods? Students of international politics have identified three qualitatively new aspects of the threat and use of force in an era of thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. First, the magnitude of destructive power of thermonuclear weapons is unparalleled. Previously, men have destroyed men by bullets and bombs. Today, the explosive power of a single thermonuclear bomb exceeds the total explosive power of all bombs used in all wars of the past, including those of this century. Second, the suddenness and swiftness with which mass destruction can be inflicted has no precedent. Surprise attacks are not new. But today no point on the globe lies more than minutes away from annihilation by a ballistic missile. Third, because of the first two factors, the meaning has been taken out of “victory” in war. As recently as 1945, victory consisted of disarming the enemy, after which the victor could determine the fate of the vanquished. Today, it is not necessary to defeat a nation’s armies before disposing of its citizens. The use of arms and soldiers to prevent occupation of one’s country is no longer sufficient to guarantee its citizens against destruction.

  In personal and societal terms, what these new conditions mean was stated starkly by one of the participants in the missile crisis, Robert McNamara. The Secretary of Defense testified to Congress in 1964: “In the first hour [of all-out nuclear war] one hundred million Americans and one hundred million Russians would be killed.”

  Such hard physical facts are difficult to accept. But even less acceptable, given these conditions, is that nations could choose war. The United States and the Soviet Union now live in a world of “mutual superiority,” that is, mutual capability to do unacceptable damage to the other (even after having been struck first). Under such conditions, could the Soviet Union or United States initiate a nuclear war, killing millions of the opponents and suffering in retaliation the destruction of millions of its own citizens? As Thomas Schelling has written, “there is just no foreseeable route by which the United States and Soviet Union could become involved in a major nuclear war.” Since choosing nuclear war would be, in effect, to choose mutual homicide, President Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded, “War is impossible…. there is no alternative to peace.”

  Many observers find in the Cuban missile crisis confirmation for their belief that nuclear war is impossible. The crisis did not explode. The leaders who lived through that crisis felt what it was like to peer over the precipice. Since that time, both governments have exercised extraordinary caution about all things nuclear, circumventing interests in order to avoid fundamental clashes, cooling conflicts that might erupt, and discouraging the nuclear programs of other nations. Today, nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union is very unlikely.

  But no event demonstrates more clearly than the missile crisis that with respect to nuclear war there is an awesome crack between unlikelihood and impossibility. Though many accounts of the crisis downgrade its risks (reflecting the widespread inability to believe that nuclear war could occur), Robert Kennedy’s memoir documents how close the United States and the Soviet Union came to making the impossible happen.

  How could nuclear war have emerged from this crisis? An alarming number of plausible paths branch off the actual course of events and end in nuclear war. In order to aid the reader, we will summarize what happened in the form of a scenario and then spell out one of the paths that could have led to war. Actual events are represented by eight steps.

  1. The Soviet Union puts missiles in Cuba clandestinely (September 6, 1962).

  2. U.S. U-2 flight discovers Soviet missiles (October 14, 1962).

  3. President Kennedy initiates a public confrontation by announcing to the world the Soviet action, demanding Soviet withdrawal of the missiles, ordering a U.S. quarantine of Soviet weapon shipments to Cuba, putting U.S. strategic forces on full alert, and warning the Soviet Union that any missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as a Soviet missile and met with a full retaliatory response (October 22).

  4. Khrushchev orders Soviet strategic forces to full alert and threatens to sink U.S. ships if they interfere with Soviet ships en route to Cuba (October 24).

  5. Soviet ships stop short of the U.S. quarantine line (October 25).

  6.
Khrushchev letter offers withdrawal of Soviet missiles in return for U.S. noninvasion pledge (October 26), followed by a second Khrushchev letter demanding U.S. withdrawal of Turkish missiles for Soviet withdrawal of Cuban missiles (October 27).

  7. U.S. responds affirmatively to first Khrushchev letter but warns that if missiles are not withdrawn by Sunday, October 28, invasion or air strike will follow Monday or Tuesday (October 27).

  8. Khrushchev announces withdrawal of the missiles (October 28).

  Perhaps the most obvious scenario by which nuclear war might have emerged from the sequence follows the actual course of events through step seven, but then proceeds:

  (8) Khrushchev reiterates that any attack on Soviet missiles and personnel in Cuba will be met with a full Soviet retaliatory response (October 28).

  (9) U.S. “surgical” air strike against Soviet missiles (destroying all operational ballistic missiles and killing a limited number of Soviet personnel) (October 30).

  (10) Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles attack U.S. missiles in Turkey (destroying all ballistic missiles and killing a small number of Americans) (October 31).

  (11) In accord with obligations under the NATO treaty, U.S. medium-range missiles in Europe attack bases in the Soviet Union from which missiles that attacked the Turkish bases were launched (October 31).

  (12) Soviet Union, fearing additional U.S. attacks on its limited number of ICBMs, attacks the U.S. (November 1).

  (13) U.S. ICBMs attack the Soviet Union (November 1).

  Alternative scenarios leading to nuclear war could start with the firing of Soviet missiles in Cuba or the sinking of a ship. Moreover, a large number of potential “accidents” might have triggered nuclear war, for example, the Soviet downing of a U-2 aircraft on Saturday, October 27, nearly precipitated an American attack on Soviet surface-to-air missiles. Robert Kennedy identifies at least five other incidents that could have served as a nuclear fuse.

  Given the many possible nuclear dead ends that branch off the path of confrontation, why did President Kennedy start down this path? Need Soviet recklessness have been matched in kind? Could Kennedy not have accepted their missiles in Cuba and announced to the world that Russian roulette was a game he would not play? What consequences of the Soviet move could justify his choice, instead, of countermoves that ran so high a risk of holocaust?

  The mind searches for easy answers. Perhaps the President had no alternative. There is more than humor in Robert Kennedy’s reply to his brother when, halfway down the confrontation track, John Kennedy wondered how they had ever started: “If you hadn’t acted, you would have been impeached.” No doubt, the President felt personally challenged. But none of these considerations suggest why he felt that such a choice was tolerable, rational, justifiable.

  Answers to that question go to the heart of what we have termed the nuclear paradox: in a world of mutual superiority, neither nation can win a nuclear war, but each must be willing to risk losing. Consider each clause of the paradox. First, if war comes, both nations lose. There is no value for which rational leaders could reasonably choose the deaths of millions of their own citizens. In that sense, conditions make a President Kennedy and a Chairman Khrushchev partners in a game of preventing mutual disaster. But this is the condition of both nations and the leaders of both nations know it. Thus if one nation is unwilling to risk waging (losing) a nuclear war, the opponent can win any objective by threatening to take the dispute to that level of risk. In order to be able to preserve certain values, the leaders must be willing not to choose destruction, but nonetheless to choose the risk of destruction.

  It could be argued that, despite the risk inherent in the course of action President Kennedy chose, any other course would have meant greater risk. If, rather than challenging Khrushchev and demanding withdrawal of the missiles, he simply had accepted Khrushchev’s move and minimized its importance, what would the consequences have been? First, the “rules of the precarious status quo” that the President referred to during the crisis would have been seriously jeopardized. Outside the Ex Comm conference room in the State Department there was a sign: “In the nuclear age, superpowers make war like porcupines make love—carefully.” Kennedy had tried to establish rules that would prevent either nation from miscalculating the other’s vital interests and stumbling by misunderstanding into a confrontation from which neither could retreat. If Khrushchev’s most serious infraction of these rules were disregarded, the rules would wear away. Second, the Soviet action constituted the most blatant breach of confidence and trust between Khrushchev and Kennedy. Kennedy had announced in the firmest terms possible that the United States would not tolerate Soviet offensive weapons in Cuba. Khrushchev had assured Kennedy that the Soviet Union would not place missiles in Cuba. After these promises—both public and private—Khrushchev proceeded to do what he had forsworn. If Khrushchev could so miscalculate the President’s meaning and mettle, what line could the President draw that Khrushchev would respect? Third, the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba seemed tied to the Soviet plan for action on Berlin. If the United States simply accepted Soviet action in Cuba, it might not be able to persuade the Soviet Union that it was willing to run the risk of nuclear war to preserve Berlin. Finally, the fact that the Soviet leaders had taken such a reckless step suggested that they did not appreciate how dangerous and precarious were relations between nuclear superpowers. Until this was rooted in their minds, they might continue to take actions that ran significant risks of nuclear war, hoping that the United States would yield rather than accept such risks. Though dangerous, Cuba was nonetheless likely to be more manageable than Berlin, or the crisis after Berlin. Nowhere outside the continental United States did we enjoy such a comparative advantage in conventional forces.

  Thus President Kennedy might have justified his action as the lesser of risky alternatives. To the question that had begun to trouble Robert Kennedy—What right or justification is there for bringing people under such risk?—he might have answered: I did not bring people under such risk; this is simply our present condition. But Robert Kennedy’s question seems to ask: what justification can there be for tolerating that condition? What seems immoral and, indeed, irrational and intolerable is that technology forces fallible human beings to make choices about life and death for hundreds of millions of other human beings. Would any reasonable man choose to live in such a world? The nuclear paradox cannot be denied. But can it be accepted?

  One way to avoid the bite of Robert Kennedy’s question lies in wishing risks away, discounting by denying them, or closing eyes to them. The authors of this Afterword have heard a lot of wishing done by government officials in the aftermath of Cuba. Some men near the Ex Comm but not of it—mainly military officers advising in subordinate capacities—have argued strongly that from the moment President Kennedy went on the air to publicize American awareness and reaction there was never a substantial risk of nuclear war. Faced by our obvious superiority, both strategic and tactical, the Russians, being rational, were bound to retreat. What then of Kennedy’s perception, movingly attested by his brother, that the risk of holocaust was real? These officers dismiss it as “flap in the White House.” Other men, including some who sat around the table, now persuade themselves instead that “toughness pays.” If there was risk, it lasted only until our destroyers, troops, and aircraft were deployed in the Atlantic and in Florida. Thereafter, while we held firm, Khrushchev had no alternative except to turn his ships around and stop construction at the missile sites.

  Such “lessons” offer comfort, but they share a flaw. It lies in the assumption that the Soviet rulers were at once cool calculators, reasoning from all the evidence at our disposal, and assured controllers, orchestrating every act of their bureaucracies. As Robert Kennedy informs us, this is an assumption that the President resisted. His resistance accounts for the “flap” at the White House.

  What Kennedy appears to have believed is that Khrushchev might be a ruler somewhat like himself, beset
by uncertainties in seeking evidence and weighing it, likely to misjudge its meaning in another country’s context, susceptible to human imperfections of emotion and fatigue, plagued also by the bureaucratic imperfections of communication and control. Khrushchev’s long message on Friday night, October 26, seems powerfully to have reinforced this presidential point of view, adding to White House concern about a third week of crisis. If the Russians held their course for a mere seventy-two hours, we would have to escalate a step, probably by bombing Cuban sites. In logic, they should then bomb Turkish sites. Then we…; then they…. The third step is what evidently haunted Kennedy. If Khrushchev’s capability to calculate and to control was something like his own, then neither’s might suffice to guide them both through that third step without holocaust.

  NEW CHECKS AND BALANCES

  In warmaking, the Constitution contemplated enforced collaboration between the President and his fellow politicians on Capitol Hill. In practice, as the missile crisis illustrates, a strong role for Congress is by no means assured. This does not mean, however, that Presidents act in isolation. Any modern President stands at the center of a watchful circle with whose members he cannot help but consult. Today, indeed, he is more dependent on Executive officials for advice as well as execution than our Constitution makers could have anticipated two centuries ago.

  New checks and balances replace the old. There is, however, one extraordinary difference: the old circle was supposedly comprised of men who owed their places to elections, who themselves had experienced the risks of nomination and electioneering. Political accountability conferred on each, firsthand, legitimacy as an agent of the people. Indeed, our Constitution’s democratic element consisted mainly in reserving to these men the great decisions on the use of force. By contrast, the new circle is appointive or co-optive: congressmen may enter it and so may private citizens when their service as surrogates is wanted by a President. But mostly, and continuously, those assured an entry are the President’s own appointees: department heads, Chiefs of Staff, White House aides, and others whose institutional positions or personal relations make their presence virtual necessities for him. As this implies, they are by no means “mere” subordinates. He is no freer than he would have been with Congress to ignore them. But neither are they colleagues in the sense of sharing either his legitimacy or accountability. Nowadays those rest with him alone.