by Kai Bird
In this sense, his hard-line assessment was just as political as Kennedy’s. The president had his eye on the domestic implications, but in McCloy’s mind the worst aspect of the news was the psychological impact on America’s NATO allies of what would clearly be seen as a Soviet coup. Cuba had become another test of wills, and if Washington did not prevail, morale in Western Europe could be affected terribly. Worse, the Soviets might even be able to extract some kind of concessions over West Berlin in return for removing their missiles from Cuba. As it happened, Chancellor Adenauer at that very moment found himself in the center of a storm of controversy known as the “Spiegel affair.” The editors of the German equivalent of Time magazine had recently shocked the German people by publishing highly secret NATO documents that in stark language described the inability of the German Army and NATO forces to resist Soviet aggression in Europe. McCloy and others already feared that the chancellor’s political credibility as a loyal champion of NATO might be “permanently damaged” by Spiegel’s revelations.6 If the United States was now seen backing down before the Soviet challenge in Cuba, how much credibility would West Europeans place in the NATO deterrent? Political concerns for the Atlantic alliance, more than fear of the military threat posed by the Cuban missiles, explains McCloy’s initial advice to the president.
He knew, as did Kennedy, that a few more missiles in Cuba could not appreciably alter the United States’ overwhelming nuclear superiority. In his capacity as chairman of the president’s Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, he had been briefed with the most highly classified information on American and Soviet nuclear arsenals. In October 1962, the United States had some 172 ICBM launchers versus about 44 Soviet launchers. All told, the United States had some 3,000 nuclear warheads, which could be delivered to targets in the Soviet Union by 1,450 long-range strategic bombers. In contrast, the Soviets only had an estimated 250 warheads and a bomber fleet of no more than 155.7 Kennedy, McCloy, and others privy to this classified information knew that they possessed an overwhelming superiority. Naturally, there were differences of opinion about what this meant. Some of the president’s military advisers, such as Air Force chief General Curtis LeMay, believed the United States capable of delivering a credible first strike in which most, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear arm could be destroyed. McNamara himself publicly said in June 1962 that the American missile force was so accurate that in a nuclear war the United States could afford to target only Soviet military installations, sparing the civilian population. This implied that the United States was capable of launching a first strike, a suggestion the president had said that spring was a possibility under certain circumstances.8 These statements must have worried Soviet military planners, who were well aware of their own missile gap and, worse, now knew that the American president knew.9 In fact, Robert McNamara, for one, believed that, despite their numerical deficiency in nuclear warheads, the Soviets nevertheless possessed essential parity with the United States. In any nuclear exchange, McNamara reasoned, at least a few Soviet warheads would probably be delivered on American cities, killing millions. “No responsible political leader,” McNamara wrote later, “would expose his nation to such a catastrophe.”10
Fortunately for Kennedy, he had not been caught unawares. The American public did not know of the construction going on at the Cuban missile sites, and the president thought the Soviets still seemed to think their activities there were a secret.11 So he had time—not much, perhaps only a week—time enough to do something about the missiles before they became operational and before the news of their existence put him and his administration on the political defensive, both at home and abroad.12 The problem was how to manage the crisis.
This may seem, in retrospect, too cool an assessment of how Kennedy and his advisers felt at the time. But it is borne out by the most reliable of historical documents, a transcript of their first two meetings on the crisis. Kennedy had a surreptitious tape recorder running during these meetings, and from the partially released transcripts of these verbatim conversations it is clear that, even in the first heat of the crisis, most of the president’s advisers understood that the Cuban missiles in themselves had not substantially altered the strategic balance.13
Of course, McNamara had to report that the Joint Chiefs believed the missiles “substantially” affected the strategic balance. But he immediately discounted this by saying that he personally felt there was no change at all. In his view, a missile was a missile.14 Bundy chimed in his agreement, and no one else in the room took issue with McNamara except Chief of Staff General Maxwell Taylor. Even Taylor prefaced his mild objections by saying, “You’re quite right in saying that these, these are just a few more missiles, uh, targeted on the United States.” Later in the conversation, the president himself observed, “You may say it doesn’t make any difference if you get blown up by an ICBM flying from the Soviet Union or one that was ninety miles away. Geography doesn’t mean that much. . . .” The problem, as Kennedy pointed out, was that it “makes them look like they’re coequal with us and that . . . [Doug Dillon finishes the president’s sentence:] We’re scared of the Cubans.”15
There may have been some arguable strategic reasons, but the bottom line was that U.S. domestic political considerations alone required the administration to find a way to remove the missiles. As McNamara said that day, “I don’t think there is a military problem here. . . . This is a domestic, political problem.” The administration had previously announced that it would do something if the Soviets placed offensive weaponry in Cuba. Now, said the defense secretary, the administration had to act. That meant some kind of concrete military action. As George Ball remarked, “Yeah, well, as far as the American people are concerned, action means military action.”16
Actually, though Khrushchev had misled Kennedy about his intentions, he had not done anything that the Americans had not themselves already done. In one of the more telling exchanges during the entire crisis, Kennedy questioned the “advantage” the Russians would gain from their gamble: “It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBM’s [Medium Range Ballistic Missiles] in Turkey. Now that’d be goddam dangerous, I think.” Bundy then said, “Well, we did, Mr. President.” Kennedy lamely replied, “Yeah, but that was five years ago.”17 Kennedy was in fact mistaken. NATO had made the decision in 1957 to install intermediate-range missiles in Britain, Italy, and Turkey. But the fifteen Jupiter missiles destined for Turkey had not become operational until July 1962; indeed, though Kennedy did not realize it, a ceremony was scheduled for the following week in which the Jupiters were to be formally turned over to Turkish control.18 This had to be viewed by the Soviets as a provocation, and it is not unreasonable to assume that the deployment of the Turkish missiles played an important part in motivating Soviet military leaders to reply in kind. A few days later, Averell Harriman sent Kennedy a memo further emphasizing the link between the Turkish and Cuban missiles: “There has undoubtedly,” wrote Harriman, “been great pressure on Khrushchev for a considerable time to do something about our ring of bases, aggravated by our placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey.”19
But even if everyone recognized these facts that first day of the crisis, it was also known that the Kennedy administration could not afford any reciprocity. The missiles had to come out. U.S. nuclear superiority was such that the risks were worth taking. The only question was how the missiles should be taken out. Many options were discussed, and the gut reaction on the part of many if not most of the men in the room favored the same choice as McCloy’s: a surprise air strike to be followed by an invasion. But McNamara and Rusk in particular made strong arguments for a moderated response. McNamara spoke about a “blockade against offensive weapons entering Cuba” in which every ship would be searched and any offensive weapons seized. By the end of the day, during their final evening session, McNamara had fully fleshed out his blockade strategy.20
That was Tuesday evening. By Thursday, October 18,1962, Kennedy was t
elling his chief speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen, to draft a speech announcing the blockade. But nothing was firmly decided. All the President’s advisers, now known as the “Executive Committee” or “Excomm,” switched positions a number of times. Some, like Mac Bundy, were still arguing for an air strike as late as Sunday. But as a group they kept coming back to the idea of a blockade. The lawyers among them, particularly George Ball, argued that, of all the alternatives, a naval blockade had the most “color of legality.”21
Up to this point, McCloy, who was still traveling in Europe, took no part in the deliberations. But then an incident occurred that resulted in a decision by the Kennedy brothers to have him return from Europe immediately. On Saturday, October 20, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson flew down from New York to take part in Excomm’s meeting that day. Stevenson favored the naval-blockade option, and he suggested that the administration could enhance the legality of the blockade by having the Organization of American States formally vote its approval. Kennedy accepted this suggestion. But then Stevenson reiterated several diplomatic concessions he had proposed in a handwritten note to Kennedy on the previous Wednesday. Perhaps, he said, the United States should offer to withdraw from its Cuban naval base in Guantanamo as part of a deal to demilitarize the entire island. Maybe Washington should further offer to guarantee the territorial integrity of Cuba. In addition, many in the U.N. were going to question why the United States could not tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba when U.S. missiles had been stationed on the Soviet Union’s border in Turkey for five years. The president, he argued, should offer to withdraw the Jupiter missiles in Turkey.22
Kennedy had already been annoyed by these proposals. Now he flatly rejected them. Everyone else in the room opposed Stevenson’s arguments, and Robert Kennedy came away from the meeting that afternoon with the distinct impression that Stevenson was soft. The attorney general recommended to his brother, “He’s [Stevenson] not strong enough or tough enough to be representing us at the U.N. at a time like this.”23 He suggested that McCloy or Herman Phleger, a California Republican who had worked under Foster Dulles, be brought to New York to ensure that Stevenson displayed some backbone.24 Either Republican, thought Robert Kennedy, would make the administration’s efforts at the U.N. look bipartisan.25
The next day, Sunday, President Kennedy consulted Robert Lovett about the matter. Aside from McCloy on that first day, Kennedy had sought counsel from only two other outsiders, Robert Lovett and Dean Acheson. Lovett had been present when Stevenson made his pitch for diplomatic concessions, and now Kennedy wanted to know whether Lovett thought Stevenson would not take a tough enough stance at the U.N. Lovett recommended that McCloy be brought back to the U.N. Kennedy agreed. Lovett called McCloy’s secretary at home and got her to track McCloy down in Europe. He was reached in the middle of a business meeting in Frankfurt, and after taking the phone call McCloy turned to his colleagues and said, “Sorry, boys, I hate to drop names, but the President needs me/’26 He had been scheduled to hunt partridges in Spain that week, but instead a U.S. Air Force plane was dispatched to ferry him to New York.27
The obvious tensions between Stevenson and the Kennedy brothers placed McCloy in a delicate spot when he arrived in New York. “In some respects,” McCloy later recalled, “this was a rather awkward relationship because I am sure that President Kennedy’s motive in asking me to come to New York was to counteract what he thought might be a too soft attitude on the part of Adlai.” Ironically, things were not what they seemed. “When I got to New York,” McCloy said, “I did not find that he had any such attitude. . . . I even found him tougher than I was prepared to be. . . .”28
For the first couple of days, McCloy concentrated on taking aside small groups of U.N. delegates and briefing them on the crisis.29 Many people, including some of Washington’s European allies, still needed to be convinced that even a naval blockade was necessary. After talking to several of his banking friends in London and Zurich, Lovett told Michael Forrestal, an aide to Mac Bundy on the National Security Council, that “documentary evidence is essential, since a number of countries—some of them our friends—will not take the President’s word alone.”30
Consequently, two days later, Stevenson spoke to the Security Council and this time went through the exercise of displaying U-2 photos of the missile sites. The focus of the mounting crisis was now rapidly shifting from the White House to the United Nations. Since Kennedy had imposed the “quarantine” of Cuba and issued his ultimatums on Monday evening, tensions had risen considerably. More than two dozen Soviet freighters and submarines were steaming toward the quarantine line; an incident on the high seas might occur at any moment, which could lead to the death of Soviet sailors and thus precipitate another round of escalation in the crisis. To postpone this confrontation, the acting secretary general of the U.N., U Thant, proposed on Wednesday, October 24, that Khrushchev should voluntarily agree to suspend further arms shipments into Cuba while Kennedy simultaneously lifted the quarantine for a period of two or three weeks.31 This proposal set the scene for another debate within the administration.
To McCloy’s astonishment, a strong current of opinion within the U.S. delegation to the U.N. now favored a suspension of the quarantine. Stevenson himself called the president from New York to urge him to accept U Thant’s proposal. McCloy was thoroughly “disgusted” by Stevenson’s position and concerned that the administration might “back down on the quarantine in the face of blandishments from [Khrushchev] and U Thant.”32
He need not have worried, for later that afternoon the president sent U Thant an answer to his proposal: the United States was willing to engage in some form of negotiations with Soviets at the U.N., but the quarantine would remain in place. The same day, Khrushchev fully accepted the proposal, and halted any further shipment of arms into Cuba. This was certainly a concession, but it was not enough, in the view of Kennedy’s advisers, to change the situation.
That day, George Ball arranged for McCloy to come down for an Excomm meeting. Though McCloy had initially favored forceful military action, he had done so with the assumption that the Soviets would never risk nuclear war for the sake of Cuba. But now, ten days into the crisis, things seemed to be getting out of hand. He left for Washington on Thursday evening, October 25, in a somber mood, thinking to himself that he might just possibly be saying goodbye to Ellen for the last time.33 On arriving at the State Department in time for a rump session of Excomm, he found the atmosphere extremely tense.34 Thirteen Soviet ships were still steaming toward the quarantine line. The next morning, for the first time, a U.S. destroyer stopped and inspected a third-country freighter, and in Moscow Khrushchev told a visiting U.S. businessman that his submarines would sink any U.S. ship that interfered with Soviet shipping.35 None of this weakened McCloy’s resolve that the quarantine must continue.
In the Excomm meeting on Friday morning, the president’s advisers once again divided themselves into two camps: those who advocated a lessening of military pressure, and those who argued against any compromise until the Russians began dismantling their missiles. When Dean Rusk suggested that perhaps the U.S. quarantine could be replaced by a U.N.-administered quarantine, McCloy interjected “that our quarantine was vital and should be kept in place until the Russians had accepted all of our conditions.”36
McCloy’s uncompromising position had the attraction of seeming tough-minded and clear-cut. But as the discussion continued, it also became clear that, unless Khrushchev intended to engage in general nuclear warfare, the Soviet premier at some point would make Washington a counteroffer. Again and again the men in the room that morning had to ask themselves what concessions they would be willing to give in exchange for the removal of the Cuban missiles. Stevenson predicted the Soviets would ask for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba in the future and the dismantlement of U.S. strategic missiles in Turkey. CIA Director John McCone vigorously objected to this linking of the Cuban and Turkish missiles. But the president himself
confessed that he doubted the quarantine alone could produce a withdrawal of the missiles. The missiles would come out, he said, “only by invading Cuba or by trading.”37 McCloy himself finally muttered something about how they had to “get them (the missiles) out or trade them out.”38
Kennedy observed that there was little support for Stevenson’s negotiating track. No one else in the room, including McCloy, wanted to concede anything by way of loosening the quarantine until the Soviets capitulated on the major issue and actually began to dismantle their missiles. McCloy returned to New York reassured that the quarantine would stay in place. But though once a “hawk”—a term that came into usage during the missile crisis—by October 26 McCloy was beginning to go through the process of reconsidering his outlook. Later that day, at the U.N., Secretary General U Thant suggested to him that an American pledge not to invade Cuba might be traded for a Soviet commitment to withdraw the missiles.39 McCloy was not automatically inclined to dismiss the idea. In his eyes, the Castro regime may have been a nuisance and reprehensible, but its removal was not essential to U.S. security. As long as Cuba did not become a Soviet nuclear base, McCloy did not on ideological grounds rule out a noninvasion pledge.