connecting*the*dots

Dangerous Times - One Word Away From Nuclear War (pg. 74)

The missile crisis “was the most dangerous moment in human history,� Arthur Schlesinger commented in October 2002 at a conference in Havana on the fortieth anniversary of the crisis, attended by a number of those who witnessed it from within as it unfolded. Decision-makers at the time undoubtedly understood that the fate of the world was in their hands. Nevertheless, attendees at the conference may have been shocked by some of the revelations. They were informed that in October 1962 the world was “one word away� from nuclear war. “A guy named Arkhipov saved the world,� said Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive in Washington, which helped organize the event. He was referring to Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer who blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed torpedoes on October 27, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when the submarines were under attack by US destroyers. A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading to a major war.

Participants in the decisions at the time, and at the retrospective forty years later, did not have to be reminded of President Eisenhower’s warning that a “major war would destroy the Northern Hemisphere.� The parallel between Kennedy’s handling of the crisis and President Bush’s deliberations over Iraq was a recurrent theme at the meeting,� the press reported, “with many participants accusing Bush of ignoring history, and to offer lessons for today’s crises, most notably George W. Bush’s deliberations about whether to strike Iraq.� Schlesinger was surely not the only one to bring up the fact that “Kennedy chose quarantine as an alternative to military action [while] Bush is committed to military action�; nor, presumably, was he the only one to have been taken aback to learn just how close the world came to destruction even under the less aggressive choice.

In his authoritative account of the missle crisis, Raymond Garthoff observes that “in the United States, there was almost universal approbation for President Kennedy’s handling of the crisis.� That’s a fair assessment, though whether the approval is warranted is a separate question.

The confrontation finally came down to two basic issues: (1) Would Kennedy pledge that the US would not invade Cuba? And (2) would he make a public announcement that the US would withdraw its Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, on the border of Russia and aimed at its heartland? On both issues, Kennedy ultimately refused. He agreed only to a secret commitment to withdraw the missiles, which had in any case already been scheduled to be replaced by Polaris nuclear submarines. He refused to make any formal commitment not to invade Cuba, Rather, he continued “to conduct an active policy of seeking to undermine and displace the Castro regime, including covert operations against Cuba,� Garthoff observes.

In a highly provocative gesture as the crisis intensified, the missiles were turned over to Turkish command “with ceremonial fanfare� on October 22. Garthoff comments: the event was “certainly noted in Moscow, but not in Washington.� There it was presumably regarded as just another exercise of “logical illogicality.�

As history is crafted by the powerful, the most dramatic moment of the missile crisis was provided by UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the Security Council on October 25, when he exposed Soviet deception by unveiling a photograph of a missile site in Cuba taken by US spy planes. The concept “Stevenson moment� has entered into historical memory, in celebration of this victory over a vicious foe aiming to destroy us.

As an intellectual exercise, let’s imagine how the “Stevenson moment� might be viewed by a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer. Call him Martian, and assume that he is free from earthly systems of doctrine and ideology. Martin would surely note that there is no “Khrushchev moment� in history: no moment at which Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev or his UN ambassador dramatically unveiled photographs of the Jupiter missiles placed in Turkey in 1961-62, or of the provocative transfer of the missiles to the Turkish military with “ceremonial fanfare� just as the most dangerous moment in human history approached. Reflecting on this distinction, Martian should recall that the Jupiter missiles were only a small element of a far greater threat to Russia, and that Russia had repeatedly been invaded and almost destroyed in the preceding half-century – twice by newly rearmed Germany, its richer Western part now within a hostile military alliance led by the world’s mightiest superpower; once in 1918 by Britain, the US, and their allies. And he might observe that there was, of course, no Russian threat to invade Turkey, nor any large-scale Russian terrorist campaign or economic warfare against Turkey, not even a lesser counterpart to the crimes that the Kennedy administration was carrying out against Cuba at the time.

Despite all this, only the “Stevenson moment� exists in historical memory. Martian would surely grasp how the distinction reflects the balance of global power. He would also presumably recall a principle that must be close to a historical universal of intellectual culture: We are “good� (whoever we happen to be), and they are “evil� if they stand in our way. Therefore, the radical asymmetry makes perfect sense, within the framework of established doctrine.

The contours of the asymmetry become even sharper when we consider the occasional effort at extenuation: the crime of the Russians in Cuba was stealth, while the US surrounded Russia with lethal offensive weapons quite openly. That is true. The world ruler not only has no need to conceal its intent, but prefers to advertise it, to “maintain credibility.� The subordination of the ideological system to power ensures that virtually and action – international terrorism (as in Cuba), overt aggression (as in South Vietnam at the same time), participation in mass slaughter to destroy the only mass-based political party (as in South Vietnam and Indonesia), and many others – will either be dispatched to oblivion or reshaped into an act of legitimate self-defense or an act of benevolence that perhaps went astray.

The importance of owning a properly crafted “history� was revealed once again in February 2003, when Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council, informing its members that the US would go to war with or without UN authorization. The question pondered by commentators was whether Powell would be able to provide a Stevenson moment.

Some thought he had. New York Times columnist William Safire triumphantly reported Powell’s “Adlai Stevenson momentâ€?: a satellite image of trucks next to a bunker allegedly storing chemical weapons, then another with the trucks gone – clear proof that Iraq had deceived the inspectors by removing the illegal weapons before they arrived, and that the devious Iraqis had penetrated the inspection team, confirming the US thesis that the team was unreliable and hence could not be provided with intelligence data that Washington claimed to have. It was later concluded, with Powell’s silent nod of agreement, that for a range of reasons – the time lapse between the taking of the photos, the uncertain use of the site in question — the photographs proved nothing, one of a series of similar cases, which later became a torrent. Still, this was deemed a “Stevenson moment,” though Adam Clymer pointed out that there was a “stark difference” between the two: Stevenson’s moment was “one of real fear about Soviet missiles, of imminent nuclear confrontation.” Apparently, there could have been no fear, anywhere, about missiles on the Russian border.