On Wednesday, 24 October 1962, some 500 miles
from the shores of Cuba, two Soviet merchant ves-
sels, the Gagarinand Komiles, escorted by Soviet
submarines, were heading for the Caribbean
island. At 10.15 a.m. precisely they encountered
patrolling US warships. The Essexhad orders to
sink the Soviet submarine escorts if they should
refuse to surface when challenged. Two days earlier
President Kennedy had announced a naval block-
ade of Cuba after the discovery of Soviet missile
sites on the island. On the US mainland, aircraft
armed with nuclear weapons were on maximum
alert. Special strike forces were readied for an inva-
sion of Cuba. The world held its breath. Was
civilised life on the brink of destruction, on the
threshold of a nuclear holocaust? What if the White
House or the Kremlin in this dreadful trial of
strength miscalculated?
That Wednesday morning the Soviet ships
halted. The news was flashed to the White House.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, with evident relief,
drew his own conclusion: ‘We’re eyeball to
eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.’
People all over the world, anxiously watching
their television sets, were no less relieved: the
dramatic crisis was over. Actually it was not. The
really serious danger of conflict occurred three
days later. On Saturday, 27 October Kennedy
only just drew back from ordering an air strike
on the Cuban missile sites, to be followed by an
invasion of the island. But when on Sunday
morning, 28 October, the White House receivedthe news from Moscow that Khrushchev had
agreed to withdraw the missiles, the crisis really
was over.
Kennedy and his advisers in the White House
and Khrushchev in the Kremlin acted in the
knowledge that one false step could lead to a
nuclear exchange and the end of civilisation. The
strains on the two men were enormous. Neither
wanted to risk starting a nuclear holocaust. The
conflict was not exactly what the public thought
it was about. By placing intermediate and inter-
continental missiles with nuclear warheads just
ninety miles off the coast of Florida, the Soviet
Union would have given the impression that the
military threat to the US had significantly
increased. It was more a question of propaganda
and prestige, of positioning in the global Cold
War. The conflict turned on the Russian claim to
an equal place in the world, to the right to
compete with the US for influence anywhere in
the Third World, in regions of Asia not under
communist control, and in Latin America. The
mere existence of Castro’s Cuba was, from an
American point of view, a breach of the Monroe
Doctrine. After the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs
in the previous year, to accept tacitly the estab-
lishment of a Soviet military base on the island
was unthinkable. It would raise doubts whether
the US, when faced with an ultimate showdown,
would have the toughness to meet resolutely and
effectively such a communist challenge. If the US
failed on its own doorstep, what reliance could(^1) Chapter 52
ON THE BRINK OF A NUCLEAR
HOLOCAUST
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, OCTOBER 1962