Imagine
the psychic shock of 9/11 multiplied a hundredfold. Add an imminent nuclear
exchange to kill millions after only minutes of warning. Take away the
Internet, cable news, cell phones and other sources of instant information.
That’s
how the Cuban Missile Crisis struck Americans, almost two weeks of helpless
huddling in the dark awaiting global devastation.
In a
Los Angeles hotel on October 22, 1962, I saw a grim JFK on TV telling the nation
the Russians had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from our borders:
“To
halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military
equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind
bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes
of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if
needed, to other types of cargo and carriers.”
Then he added, “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
Months
later, Kennedy would tell me such an exchange could have led to untold millions
of deaths, but even that night there was no doubt that all humanity was facing
the possible end of the world as we knew it.
Most
of our days go by in a smooth stream of subdued consciousness: family, friends,
work, expected sights and sounds, the low hum of our felt lives. Once in a
great while, something breaks the surface and, for that long, nothing is the
same and nothing else matters.
So it
was in the Crisis. Business executives were drunk at their desks before noon
while supermarkets in Los Angeles were besieged by hoarding inhabitants and ran
out of toilet paper. Madness was in the air.
As
JFK wove through the face-off, declining military advice for a preemptive
strike on Cuba (he had learned his Bay of Pigs lesson well) and offering the
Soviets ways out of the confrontation, we knew little of what was going on.
During
that time, I was reading a novel by a friend who had worked down the corridor
in Manhattan. In that atmosphere, the bizarre world of Joe Heller’s Catch-22
seemed like pure realism.
A
year later, when JFK was looking back during a White House interview, he told
me, “Too many people want to blow up the world. In Cuba, a lot of people
thought we should take more drastic action. I think we did the right thing,
more drastic action would have increased the possibility of nuclear exchange.
The real question now is to meet conflicts year after year without having to
escalate."
Six
years later, I relived it all through his brother’s eyes while publishing
Robert Kennedy’s posthumous memoir, “Thirteen Days.” Ted Sorensen, JFK’s
speech-writing alter ego who was handling the Kennedys’ literary estate, had called
me about it and my company bought all
rights. I oversaw publication in the magazine and around the world.
Decades
later, RFK’s book could have served as a primer for George W. Bush in
confronting his pseudo-nuclear crisis in Iraq. With hard evidence of missiles
90 miles from our shores, JFK rejected military advice for an air strike or
invasion, lined up support from the United Nations, gave the Russians every chance
to back down and, when they did, ordered there be no exultation: No hint of CIA
“slam dunk,” “Mission Accomplished” or “Bring it on!”
RFK
wrote that his brother "permitted no crowing" and ordered "no
interview should be given, no statement made, which would claim any kind of
victory.”
One
of the first calls the President made was to the wife of the only American
casualty, a U2 pilot who had been shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile.
At
the height of the uncertainty, RFK wrote, his brother who had been reading “The
Guns of August,” a book about how Europe had blundered into World War I, told
him, “If anybody is around after this, they are going to understand that we
made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to
move.”
Robert
Kennedy foresaw “other missile crises in the future--different kinds, no doubt,
and under different circumstances. But if we are going to be successful then,
if we are going to preserve our own national security, we will need friends, we
will need supporters, we will need countries that believe and respect us and
will follow our leadership."
Those
of my generation had literally faced the end of the world, and it was mostly
thanks to the mind and heart of John Fitzgerald Kennedy that we survive now to
tell the story.
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