Crisis of 1962

Until recently, the efforts of scholars in the West to understand the events of October, 1962, suffered from a structural onesidedness. American policymakers were readily available for questioning, but Soviet policymakers were not, and the little published Soviet material on the subject could not be regarded as reliable. With the "opening" of the Soviet Union in the Gorbachev era, this has begun to change, and we are now increasingly able to fill in the Soviet side of the picture. Soviet changes also mean that the danger of a future confrontation of the superpowers is greatly reduced, but other nuclear crises will undoubtedly recur in the future, especially as nuclear weapons proliferate into the Third World. The problem of defusing nuclear crises thus remains as critical as ever.

To understand how the crisis ended, it is obviously necessary to have some understa

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sile Crisis: October 1962 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 18990. The hawks' Cuban missile crisis was relatively understandable, predictable, controllable, and safe. The doves', on the other hand, was inexplicable, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and above all, dangerous ... They differed, in short, on power, perception, and policy.4 Briefly, the "hawks" felt that the U.S. had in fact overwhelming nuclear superiority, and that therefore the U.S. could freely take a hard line towards the Soviets. The "doves" were doubtful that "nuclear superiority" meant anything in the real world, given that the Soviets did have some deliverable nuclear weapons.5 The doves' anxiety was sharply increased by their inability to comprehend Krushchev's motives for making such a risky move; they were seriously concerned that he was irrational and unpredictable.6 Kennedy's essential response was to "escalate" the U.S. response slowly  to give Krushchev and the Kremlin leadership plenty of time to absorb the implications of U.S. actions and U.S. resolve.7 If in fact Krushchev was irrational, nothing could be counted on to work (save perhaps cooler heads in the Kremlin). The on
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Approximate Word count = 1956
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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