In light of this economic shortfall, Khrushchev ordered his three top economic advisers—Frol Kozlov, Aleksei Kosygin, and Anastas Mikoyan—to review the figures for defense spending for the coming year to see if they could cut more than three billion rubles—roughly three billion U.S. dollars from defense appropriations.58 Despite Khrushchev’s belief in the nuclear missile as an equalizer of international relations, he had never agreed with those who just wanted more of them. In 1959 he had scaled down requests for launchpads because of the cost of each one, and he was prepared to make the same call again in 1962 if necessary to protect his domestic economic agenda.
The tension with the United States in Laos, Berlin, and Cuba was placing an even greater burden on the Soviet economy. This was preventing Khrushchev from reducing the workweek as he had hoped to and from increasing capital investments in agriculture and industry. His instinct was to do all he could to assist his socialist allies, but he could no longer escape the costs of these efforts.59
Evidently amid this torrent of domestic disappointments Khrushchev asked Malinovsky in April if there was a cheaper shortcut to becoming competitive with the Americans in ICBMs. Khrushchev was convinced that there was enormous waste in the Soviet missile program, and he could no longer predict when Soviet industry and science would produce the nuclear deterrent he craved.60 The timing of this discussion remains vague. But it may have been prompted by news about changes in the U.S. nuclear forces. Khrushchev received weekly surveys from Malinovsky of the status of deployed U.S. forces. On April 20, 1962, the first eighteen of fifty-four U.S. Titan missiles, a first-generation ICBM, were being deployed in Colorado. Meanwhile the United States was continuing its deployment, begun in 1961, of intermediate-range Jupiter missiles pointed at Moscow, thirty in Italy and fifteen in Turkey.61
“What about putting one of our hedgehogs down the Americans’ trousers?” Khrushchev reportedly asked Malinovsky.62 The hedgehog was a Soviet nuclear missile, and by “down the Americans’ trousers,” Khrushchev meant in the Caribbean. At some point in the winter of 1962 the ever-creative Khrushchev connected the two ideas of Soviet military assistance for Cuban defense and the strategic advantages for the Soviet Union of Cuba’s location. Why could it not become Moscow’s Italy or Turkey? Malinovsky responded that though it was a sound idea from the military point of view, a significant political decision would be required to put a nuclear hedgehog off the coast of Florida. Khrushchev asked that for the time being Malinovsky gather a small group to consider how one might implement this idea.63 Khrushchev had not yet made up his mind whether to take the huge risk of putting missiles in Cuba, though the idea did appeal to his love of bold improvisation.
THE PATHET LAO, the Chinese, and the Vietnamese launched their much-anticipated spring offensive on May 6. As the Kremlin had hoped, it was a rout. Within a matter of days General Phoumi Nosavan’s garrison in Nam Tha collapsed. Phoumi had inadvisedly deployed six thousand men inside a natural basin formed by a mountain range, a perfect setting for an ambush. Once the combined Vietnamese and Pathet Lao force surrounded the position, Phoumi and his generals fled, causing their American advisers to rate their military effectiveness as “nil.” Ultimately the entire garrison retreated as far away as it could get from the battlefield. In the polite words of American observers, it was a retreat that could be characterized as “far outdistancing any pursuit.”64
As Prince Souphanouvong had predicted in trying to sell the operation to the Soviets, the seizure of Nam Tha completely altered the balance of power in the field. The Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese now controlled all of eastern Laos from north to south. The CIA estimated that the Pathet Lao had the strength to launch Nam Tha–like offensives to capture the remaining major centers in the interior.65 In fact U.S. intelligence believed that though Phoumi Nosavan’s forces outnumbered the Pathet Lao and Souvanna’s forces two to one, they were still no match for them, and the whole of Laos could come under Pathet Lao control within two weeks. The presence of North Vietnamese forces made the difference. In the words of the CIA, the North Vietnamese were “superior” fighters who “press home coordinated attacks with great skill and disregard for losses.” All that was holding them back was uncertainty over the possible U.S. reaction.
No one in the Kennedy White House advocated a wait and see attitude. From the sidelines former President Eisenhower still believed that control of Laos was the key to saving South Vietnam and Thailand from Communist domination. But he did not want any U.S. troops to be sent to Laos and promised his successor not to make any such public appeal. Instead he counseled Kennedy to put more troops into Thailand and South Vietnam to stiffen backs in Bangkok and Saigon and to free up the Thais and the South Vietnamese to engage in operational activity in Laos.66
It was a relief for Kennedy to hear that Eisenhower would not publicly or privately advocate putting U.S. troops into Laos. He did not want to do it either. However, like his predecessor, Kennedy believed that a show of strength was necessary to have any chance of deterring the Communists from continuing their offensive. On May 14 he ordered eighteen hundred marines plus two air squadrons, one marine and one air force, to land in Thailand the next morning. Within two weeks there would be between five and six thousand U.S. troops in Thailand.67 Kennedy hoped that these troops would lead the Kremlin and its Asian allies to seek a cease-fire.
Khrushchev received news of the U.S. move into Thailand just after arriving in Bulgaria for a routine visit to a socialist ally.68 The Soviet military reported that eighteen hundred U.S. marines, supported by twenty attack planes and twenty helicopters, had landed in Thailand May 16 and 17. Besides this contingent, which was between thirty-five and fifty miles from the Laotian border, the Soviets reported on another group of twelve hundred U.S. troops that had stayed on in Thailand after recent maneuvers and was about thirty-five miles from the border. Just south of the Thai capital of Bangkok, Soviet intelligence detected a U.S. air group consisting of twenty-five fighters, some transports, and a refueling plane.69
The arrival of more U.S. soldiers in Southeast Asia was exactly what Khrushchev had hoped to avoid. That he had turned a blind eye to the Nam Tha operation did not mean he had forgotten his long-standing assessment of the dangers in the region. He had consistently disagreed with the Chinese over the balance of power there. While Chinese representatives, seconding the public fears of capitalist enemies, spoke of a series of dominoes that would fall from Laos to Malaysia if the senior Communist parties gave a hard enough push, Khrushchev believed that U.S. military power, if allowed to operate unchecked in Southeast Asia, would carry the day.70 Given that the Pathet Lao and its allies were already outnumbered by Phoumi Nosavan’s forces, this American force could easily tip the balance in favor of the rightists.
Khrushchev sent word to Moscow on May 17 to arrange contact with the Kennedy brothers. Concerned that the U.S. deployment to Thailand was just the beginning, he resorted to the Bolshakov back channel to explain to President Kennedy that he was not behind the assault on Nam Tha. “The trouble in Nam Tha,” Bolshakov was to explain to Robert Kennedy, “was really isolated and brought about by people in the area who got fed up with Phoumi’s troops. This is as far as it is going.” Bolshakov was to convey the personal message from Khrushchev that he still stood by their Vienna agreement to achieve a peaceful, neutral Laos.71
The need for this urgent message to prevent a larger U.S. intervention was deeply humiliating to Khrushchev. Kennedy’s rapid projection of additional military might into Southeast Asia in May 1962, however minor, was one reminder too many of the unfavorable balance of power and its consequences for Soviet policy. Never a patient man, Khrushchev found his frustration at these international realities nearing a breaking point. Already in March, while complaining about U.S. power to Anatoly Dobrynin, Khrushchev had vowed, “It’s high time their long arms were cut shorter.”72
The day he found out about the U.S. move into Thailand, Khrushchev spoke publicly about the role of fo
rce in U.S. foreign policy, “What logic can imperialism call upon? Only the logic of strength; and with that logic as their guide, they are trying to pursue the position-of-strength policy. The late Dulles was very frank about this.”73
At his last Presidium meeting before leaving for Bulgaria Khrushchev had participated in yet another discussion of the lack of progress of Soviet strategic weapons programs—on land, on sea, and in the air.74 The issue was still on his mind. So too was the idea he had kicked around with Malinovsky in April about perhaps using Cuba as a shortcut to a stronger strategic position in the superpower arms race. Just before Khrushchev flew to Bulgaria, he had signed a letter to Castro laying out the panoply of Soviet military assistance that would be coming to the island over the next year or two. Moscow, which did not anticipate a U.S. attack in 1962, sought to prepare Castro for any U.S. provocations in the runup to Kennedy’s expected reelection campaign in 1964.
When he received the news about Laos, Khrushchev began rethinking his entire approach for 1962. Perhaps it was the time to act. Perhaps he should not wait until 1963 to press for a settlement that would solve the German tangle, relieve his domestic economic pressures, and eliminate his military vulnerabilities in the third world, especially in Cuba. “I paced back and forth,” he later recalled, “brooding over what to do.”75 Khrushchev, who kept this “private agony” to himself, was tired of leading a second-ranked power, always concerned that its initiatives would be thwarted by the stronger superpower. Cuba became the funnel through which Khrushchev’s various frustrations flowed.76 In Bulgaria the idea for using Cuba as nuclear ballistic missile base, as a strategic stopgap, ripened. “The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons,” Khrushchev later said in explaining his thinking at the time, “and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we’d be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine.”77
Had Kennedy not sent troops to Southeast Asia in response to the capture of Nam Tha, would Khrushchev have still decided to take the risky step of sending missiles to Cuba? It is impossible to know with certainty, but it is likely that the Cuban solution was too good an idea for the impatient and disappointment-averse Khrushchev to resist for long. By 1962 Khrushchev was in a strategic bind largely of his own creation. He had based Soviet military strategy since 1959 on the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The program for developing those weapons had been slower and more costly than expected, and he refused to pour even more money down what looked to be a black hole. At the same time, he had opted to flex what muscle he had to achieve changes in the status quo in Central Europe. The fact that the United States called his bluff in 1958 and again in 1961 made him appear vulnerable to his Communist allies, especially East Germany and China. In 1962 his lingering vulnerability after the Berlin crisis of the previous year, coupled with his inherent impatience and the ambitions of his chief foreign rivals for international influence, Kennedy and Mao, emboldened him to take additional risks.
Khrushchev worked quickly once he returned home on May 20. He shared his Cuban missile idea with Gromyko on the flight back and had instructions sent to Malinovsky so that he would be ready to support the idea at a formal Presidium meeting the next day. He also conferred with Mikoyan, who was characteristically unhappy with this latest Khrushchevian scheme. Mikoyan assured Khrushchev that the Americans would never accept Soviet missiles in Cuba. Mikoyan, who had been to the island, was very fond of the young Cuban revolutionaries, but Khrushchev’s idea was potentially self-defeating. “We have to defend Cuba,” Mikoyan told the Soviet leader, “but with this approach we risk provoking an attack on them and losing everything.”78
Less than twenty-four hours after his return, Khrushchev formally presented his scheme to the Presidium for approval. He had a full house. In addition to the twelve members of the Presidium, Malinovsky, Gromyko, some Central Committee secretaries, and the chief of Soviet strategic rocket forces, Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, all were in attendance.79 The release of additional Presidium materials in 2003 revealed for the first time how Khrushchev formally explained his idea that day. To second-tier officials, Khrushchev later emphasized the altruism of this scheme. He claimed to be purely motivated by the defense needs of Cuba. But in front of his colleagues, he said, “This will be an offensive policy.” Although hinged on Castro’s need to deter U.S. aggression, it was designed to do much more for the Soviet Union.80 Khrushchev in January he had spoken confidently of the growth in Soviet power that by 1963 would force the United States to accommodate Moscow’s perceived needs in Central Europe and elsewhere. The Cuba ploy would ensure that this necessary change in the balance of power occurred.
Khrushchev, who explained that the missiles would have to be delivered secretly, assumed that the United States would not willingly accept this change in the balance of power. Although it is not known when he originally expected to reveal this change to the world, in outlining his idea, he explained that he would reveal the presence of the missiles in Cuba only after their deployment. He left the timetable of deployment to Malinovsky and Biryuzov, but there is evidence that he wanted the operation to be completed quickly.81 The missiles were to remain under Soviet command. The Cubans, however, would be given a joint defense agreement to assure them that Soviet military means would be used to defend their country.
Once Khrushchev finished his monologue, the meeting descended into discord. “The debates went on for a long time,” recalled Colonel General Semyon P. Ivanov, a note taker for the Ministry of Defense. Repeating the arguments he had made privately to Khrushchev, Mikoyan led those who believed that the scheme was dangerous. It is unclear how many shared this view, though Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko later said that he harbored similar concerns. Khrushchev’s principal sparring partner opposed sending not only the missiles but also Soviet troops to Cuba. Seeing that his proposal was in trouble, Khrushchev halted the meeting and asked for a recess.82
Three days later they gathered again in formal session to consider the proposal. Khrushchev had used the intervening days to rally support. Malinovsky had also used the time to generate a plan of action to show the Presidium how the operation might work. Eleven members of the Presidium, Malinovsky, and Gromyko spoke at this meeting. Whatever misgivings there might have been were not in evidence on May 24. The vote was unanimous. Even Mikoyan was recorded as speaking in favor of the plan.83
The only realistic obstacle to the missile plan that remained was Fidel Castro. The Cubans, who assumed that conventional weapons and a solemn defense commitment from Moscow would be enough to hold off the United States, had not asked for any nuclear weapons.
When Aleksandr Alekseyev, the KGB resident who was to become Moscow’s new ambassador to Havana, was told about the plan, he warned Khrushchev that Castro “[would] be scared” and doubted the Cuban leader would take the missiles.84 Alekseyev’s pessimism annoyed the Soviet defense minister, who had been mulling over the idea for nearly two months. “How could your celebrated socialist Cuba not take the missiles?” screamed Malinovsky, “I fought in bourgeois-democratic Spain, and they openly took our weapons, but Cuba, socialist Cuba, which has an even greater need to take them…how could they not!”85 Despite Malinovsky’s passion, Alekseyev, who understood the Castro regime better than any other Soviet official, was listened to. The Presidium decided not to implement its approved plan before receiving Castro’s agreement.
Khrushchev wanted a high-level Soviet delegation to sell the missile base idea to Castro. Commandeering an agriculture mission that had already been staffed and credentialed for Cuba, he added Marshal Biryuzov and Alekseyev. On the eve of the delegation’s departure to Havana, Khrushchev revealed to some of its members a little more of the complex thinking behind this risky initiative. Over tea, he intoned about the importance of the mission upon which these men were embarking. “The missiles have one purpose,” he said, “to scare them, to restrain them…to give them
back some of their medicine.” He admitted that his efforts to build Soviet power had not proceeded as rapidly as he had hoped. “The correlation of forces is unfavorable to us, and the only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there.”86
Khrushchev also explained that if the Cubans accepted his offer, he intended to keep the operation a secret until after the November 6 congressional elections in the United States. The American people were hawkish, and he would not want to give Kennedy an excuse to respond aggressively to the missiles. Once the missiles were in place and the elections were over, he intended to travel to the United States to reveal the existence of the missiles and to talk to Kennedy. Then he would visit Cuba to sign a defense agreement with Fidel Castro. This was his plan. But first he needed to know if Castro would accept the nuclear weapons.
CHAPTER 18
“I THINK WE WILL WIN THIS OPERATION”
THE SOVIET OFFER of nuclear missiles surprised Fidel Castro. In the past year Moscow had been giving him less of the conventional weaponry that he and his commanders believed Cuba needed. It had taken Moscow almost a year to agree to give him the much less dramatic defensive assistance he had requested in September 1961. As of May 1962, not only had the surface-to-air missiles not yet arrived, but the Soviets were now making noises that they could not supply as many as the Cubans wanted. The story was the same regarding the Sopka shore missile system. The Soviets had balked at Castro’s initial request for three batteries in September 1961, and when they finally relented in April 1962, they said they could promise only one battery. Castro had also asked for ten thousand Soviet troops to be deployed to the island. He had been careful not to describe them to the Soviets as a trip wire, but no doubt he hoped they would serve as a guarantee that any U.S. invasion would be interpreted by Moscow as an attack on the Soviet Union. The Soviets then counteroffered only three thousand men. So, with all this evidence that the Soviets were having a hard time agreeing to give Castro the defensive strength he wanted, out of the blue came an offer of offensive ballistic missiles.
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