2008-06-25. The Latell Report June 2008, Cuba Transition Project (CTP)
at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American
Studies (ICCAS)
Dr. Brian Latell*
More has probably been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis than any
other episode of the Cold War. Dozens of histories, memoirs, and
scholarly tomes were thought to have squeezed the story dry after
forty-five years of examination. But in a new book, One Minute to
Midnight, Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs seizes on those
tortured thirteen days in October 1962 as no one has before.
Using interviews with American and Russian veterans of the superpower
confrontation, recently declassified Kennedy-era documents, and obscure
archival materials, Dobbs has written a gripping day-by-day account of
the crisis that brought the world even closer to conflagration than
previously thought. Most of his story, and the most startling
revelations, are crowded into vivid descriptions of just two days late
in the crisis --October 26 and October 27, the latter known as Black
Saturday.
Jack and Bobby Kennedy are depicted as more fallible, less heroic than
their Camelot mythologizers have portrayed them. Nikita Khrushchev, the
Soviet leader, comes across as more calculating and decisive than had
generally been believed. And Fidel Castro, though often portrayed as
merely a pawn in a superpower contest of wills, was the long-term big
winner. In terms of what was at stake for him and his regime, he could
not have done much better.
Never mind that Castro raged and sulked for many weeks after Khrushchev
agreed to remove the medium and intermediate range nuclear missiles he
had installed on the island. Fidel was humiliated when Khrushchev failed
even to inform him of the decision, learning how the crisis was to end
from an aide, Carlos Franqui, who had just heard it announced by Soviet
media.
Franqui asked Fidel, "what should we do about this news?"
"What news?" Castro retorted. And Franqui then read the news bulletin to
him and, as Dobbs writes, "braced himself for an explosion."
Castro went on to retaliate with self-indulgent fury by defying the
Americans, the Soviets, and the United Nations by refusing to allow
on-site inspections. It would be more than another six months before he
and his patient patron Khrushchev finally began to get their relations
back to normal. At the time Castro did not appear to have emerged
victorious.
But as Dobbs writes, a little over a year later Kennedy was dead,
murdered by a Fair Play for Cuba activist. And a year after that
Khrushchev was gone too, sacked by successors who deplored his handling
of the strategic showdown. Only Castro survived unscathed, in fact
stronger than ever, guaranteed in power by the no invasion pledge
Kennedy made to secure the removal of the missiles.
Khrushchev always insisted he had placed the missiles in Cuba to defend
the Cuban revolution against American aggression. In his own colorful
phrase, he wanted above all to "protect the communist infant in its
crib." Dobb's account of the crisis, and of the Kennedy brothers covert
machinations to dethrone Castro before, and even during the Missile
Crisis, demonstrate how central that motive was.
Ironically too, Castro's behavior on Black Saturday was decisive in
causing Khrushchev early in the Moscow morning of October 28 to cut his
losses and capitulate to Kennedy without achieving all of his key
objectives. A crucial consideration for the beleaguered Soviet premier
was his mounting concern that, as Dobbs notes, "Soviet commanders in
Cuba were following Castro's orders" and not those of their own commanders.
An American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft had been shot down by a Soviet
surface-to-air missile (SAM) late in the morning on Black Saturday and
its pilot killed. Two missiles were fired from a battery near Banes, in
eastern Cuba, the town where Fidel Castro had been married almost
exactly fourteen years earlier.
Dobbs, however, does not give Fidel sufficient credit for this first
precipitously hostile act of the crisis. Castro himself told
participants in a conference about the crisis in Havana in 1992 that
"it's still a mystery what led the Soviet (SAM base commander) . . . to
issue the order to open fire. . . we couldn't give them any orders, but
we cannot say they were solely responsible.
" He meant that when he gave the orders the same morning to Cuban
anti-aircraft batteries to open fire on low-flying American aircraft
conducting reconnaissance and harassment sorties across the island,
Soviet personnel were energized to follow suit. Khrushchev's concern
about his own generals losing control of their subordinates was not a
fantasy. Castro told the 1992 conference:
"These soldiers were all together. They had a common enemy. The firing
started, and in basic spirit of solidarity, the Soviets decided to fire
as well . . . I can add that Khrushchev for some time believed that we
had shot down the (U-2) plane."
It was also early in the morning on Black Saturday that Castro composed
what has been described as his Armageddon letter. Perhaps the most
contemptible document produced anywhere and at any time during the
nuclear age, Castro's letter to Khrushchev recommended that a preemptive
Soviet nuclear attack be launched against the United States if Cuba were
attacked. Castro wrote:
"I say this because the imperialists' aggressiveness has become
extremely dangerous, and if they do indeed perform an act so brutal . .
. that would be the moment to eliminate that danger forever, in an act
of the most legitimate self-defense. However hard and terrible the
solution might be, there is no other."
The existence of the letter was not revealed until 1989, by Khrushchev's
son Sergei. Furious denials by Soviet and Cuban authorities followed.
But after the third volume of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs was published
the following year, in which he discussed the letter, Cuban authorities
reluctantly released the text. Castro ever since has done his best to
put his own spin on what he wrote. But nothing he ever contemplated or
resorted to through his long and violent revolutionary career even
remotely compared to the barbarity of that apocalyptic message to
Khrushchev.
**********
* Dr. Brian Latell, distinguished Cuba analyst and recent author of the
book, After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next
Leader, is a Senior Research Associate at ICCAS. He has informed
American and foreign presidents, cabinet members, and legislators about
Cuba and Fidel Castro in a number of capacities. He served in the early
1990s as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America at the Central
Intelligence Agency and taught at Georgetown University for a quarter
century. Dr. Latell has written, lectured, and consulted extensively.
*********
The CTP, funded by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), can be contacted at P.O. Box 248174, Coral Gables,
Florida 33124-3010, Tel: 305-284-CUBA (2822), Fax: 305-284-4875, and by
email at ctp.iccas@miami.edu.
Welcome to The Latell Report. The Report, analyzing Cuba's contemporary
domestic and foreign policy, is published monthly except August and
December and distributed by the electronic information service of the
Cuba Transition Project (CTP) at the University of Miami's Institute for
Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS).
The Latell Report is a publication of ICCAS and no government funding
has been used in its publication. The opinions expressed herein are
those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ICCAS
and/or the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=15940
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