Missiles in Cuba

The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was a volcanic event in American foreign relations and arguably the most perilous moment in world history. For thirteen days, as the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war, a young and charismatic American president faced off with an aggressive Soviet premier over the secret installation of Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba, just ninety miles from the Florida coast and under the Communist government of the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. For many years historians of the crisis have concentrated on the events of those thirteen days in October. Mark White's new study adds an equally intense scrutiny of the causes and consequences of the affair. Missiles in Cuba is based on a wide range of up-to-date scholarship plus Mr. White's own findings in National Security Archive materials, Kennedy Library tapes of ExComm meetings during the crisis, and correspondence involving Soviet officials in Washington and Havana - all newly released. This more rounded picture gives us a much clearer understanding of the policy strategies pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union (and, to a lesser extent, Cuba) that brought on the crisis. Mr. White's almost hour-by-hour account of the confrontation itself also destroys some venerable myths, such as the unique initiatives attributed to Robert Kennedy. And the author's assessment of the consequences of the crisis points to salutary effects on Soviet-American relations and on U.S. nuclear defense strategy, but questionable influences on Soviet defense spending and on Washington's perception of its talents for "crisis management" - which were later to be tested in Vietnam.