Week Four- The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Camera Shot Heard Round the World

This week in class we studied in depth the  role of remote sensing in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As I said in my earlier post, the Cuban Missile Crisis started when a type of US spy plane called a U-2 captured pictures of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba during the Fall of 1962.  For those who are not too familiar with the 13 most tense days of the Cold War, I'll give a quick rundown of what transpired, but first, some background.  In 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban leader Batista and set up an unofficial but effectively Communist state. 

Revolutionary Castro

http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fidel-castro

Batista was friendly to large United States investments, but Castro was a hardline nationalist, and he kicked lots of US influence off the island.  The US government saw Castro as a Communist-sympathizing threat to the West, and they planned to oust him from power.  At the start of Kennedy's presidency, in the Bay of Pigs invasion, funded by the US, Cuban exiles attempted to coup, but they were quickly defeated.  A hard blow to Kennedy's infant presidency, Americans started to doubt Kennedy as a viable leader.  Threatened by the United States, Castro announced Cuba as an official Communist state and aligned himself with Nikita Khrushchev in the USSR. 

The best of friends: Nikita and Fidel

http://www.jfklancer.com/ccrisis.html

Fast forward one year, Russian nuclear missiles shipped to the Cuban shores to defend against the US.  In October of 1962, an American U-2 plane collected photographic evidence of these missiles, which is what sent the world in a tailspin.  Although the U-2 aerial reconnaissance is what really gained solid evidence of nuclear missiles in Cuba, I found out through further research that the United States knew about Russia's arms shipments to Cuba as early as July of that year (Hilsman 19).  Regardless, after the photographs of nuclear warheads in Cuba surfaced, Kennedy created a naval blockade of Cuba, and he appeared on national television threatening to invade Cuba if the missiles were not removed: "Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed...will be met by whatever action is needed" (Kennedy).  In the following days, the world held it's breath, with the US and USSR on the brink of nuclear war.  Eventually the United States and the Soviet Union hammered out a deal: Cuba would dismantle their missiles if the US removed its missiles in Turkey and promised never to invade Cuba.  Since we see the full picture now, it seems a fair deal, but historically, this was a victory for the United States.  This is due to the fact that the United States kept the removal of its missiles in Turkey a secret.  In the published version of Robert Kennedy's diary detailing the event, there is no mention of the US conceding the removal of these missiles.  In 1989 at the Moscow Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, though, member of ExComm during the crisis Theodor Sorenson admitted to editing out any mention of removing Turkish missiles in the diary.  Since this information came much after the fact, the world perception concerning the missile crisis was that Kennedy had reestablished himself as a strong, competent leader, and alternately, that Khrushchev had lost his edge.

I find it interesting that in such a grave situation with the world on the brink of a nuclear war, image would still play such an important part.  When Kennedy went public with the discovery of Cuban missiles on television, he put Khrushchev in a much harder position to back down.  Many historians argue that this was in an attempt to show that he was an assertive leader, making up for the terrible Bay of Pigs blunder.  Concerning the missiles in Turkey, the US government was quite resistant at first to the idea, and then they felt the urge to cover it up.  In my opinion, if I were about to be responsible for NUCLEAR WAR, I would be eager to make any concessions to avoid the destruction of my country.  Even so, according to Russian ambassador at the time Anatoly Dobrynin, Robert Kennedy emphasized the importance of keeping the Turkish missiles a secret in order to keep the deal because "some day – who knows – he might run for president," and a leak could potentially tarnish his reputation (Dobrynin 90).  Although the Kennedy's were instrumental in avoiding a nuclear war, I still find it insane how important image is seen in politics.  But hey, that's the Cold War for you, one giant crazy mind game!



Bibliography:

Dobrynin, Anatoly. In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962-1986). New York: Times Books, 1995

Hilsman, Roger. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1996. Print.

Kennedy, John F. "Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation." Washington DC. 22 Oct. 1962. Address.