when armageddon loomed on cuban missile crisis still a case study in diplomacy

8/13/2019 When Armageddon Loomed on Cuban Missile Crisis Still a Case Study in Diplomacy

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When Armageddon loomed on Cuban missile crisis still a case study in diplomacy

The black-and-white image is as familiar as it is iconic. The Oval Office photograph captures the

solitude and solemnity of the U.S. presidency and the overwhelming sense that the young John F.

Kennedy carried the weight of the nation on his ailing back.

The picture, taken from behind, shows Kennedy with his head bent and his hands outstretched on

his desk. It actually was taken in February 1961, only a month after he took office, yet it wouldcome to symbolize the pressures of the Cuban missile crisis that unfolded more than a year later.

The 13-day standoff in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had

installed nuclear weapons in Cuba, is when analysts say the world came closest to nuclear

Armageddon.

The photo, christened The Loneliest Job byThe New York Times,whose photographer George

Tames snapped it, is part of a newwebsiteat theHarvard Kennedy School(HKS) marking the 50th

anniversary of the crisis. The site is devoted to providing background on the conflict and

encouraging reflection on the lessons learned from an event that eventually was viewed as a deftdance of diplomacy and an enduring teaching tool for current and future leaders.

Because it was, I think everybody agrees, the most dangerous moment that human beings have

lived through and survived so far, it has a compelling character, saidGraham Allison,HKSs

Douglas Dillon Professor of Government and director of itsBelfer Center for Science and

International Affairs.We are very interested as a center and as a School in what lessons you can

learn from history that you might apply to help deal with current problems; I think the Cuban

missile crisis is an excellent illustration of that.

The site draws from the Belfer Centers trove of material about the crisis and from other sources. It

includes a historical timeline, archival photos, original documents, video clips, an assessment of

present nuclear fears, and teaching tools for educators, such as a lesson plan with guiding

questions, worksheets and simulations. It also includes lessons learned by key players involved in

the incident. Visitors to the site are invited to offer their own lessons gleaned from the dangerous

stalemate. In collaboration with Foreign Policy magazine, the Belfer Center is sponsoring an essay

contest for students in grades six to 12, for the public, and for international-affairs scholars and

practitioners.

The website is designed around the lessons and the learning opportunities, said James Smith,

the Belfer Centers director of communications, who, together with a team led by Arielle Dworkin,

the centers digital communications manager, helped to develop the site. We want to remind

people that the lessons are still relevant, that there are current crises where the key lessons from

the original Cuban missile crisis are still very useful today.

Allison, an authority on the crisis, wrote in the publication Foreign Affairs in June, The lessons of

the crisis for current policy have never been greater.

His 1971 treatise Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis is widely creditedwith transforming the field of international relations. (Based on the release of new material about

the crisis, he rewrote the book in 1999 with author Philip Zelikow.) The work explores the nature of
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the crisis from three decision-making perspectives: the rational actor, governmental politics, and

organizational behavior.

During an interview in his Harvard office, Allison offered his take on the lessons from the crisis.

The first is that nuclear annihilation is possible. In the aftermath of World War II, tensions

escalated between the United States and the Soviet Union. As worries and distrust mounted

between the two superpowers, so did nuclear arsenals, bomb shelters, and public serviceannouncements that trained countless schoolchildren to take refuge under their desks in a nuclear

attack. The crisis in Cuba looked like a struck match.

From the outset of the conflict, said Allison, it was clear that both President Kennedy and Soviet

leader Nikita Khrushchev were willing to take action that they knew could end in a nuclear war.

Secondly, the world learned that such disaster was preventable, thanks to what Allison calls a

combination of wise policy and good fortune. Both leaders, he said, having peered over the

precipice and seen and felt what a nuclear war could actually mean, determined first to escape the

brink by actions both of them took and never to go there again.

Their decisions had lasting repercussions. The choices the two men made led to what Kennedy

referred to at the time as the precarious rules of the status quo, said Allison, to which each

subsequent generation has strictly adhered. The U.S. and Soviet leaders who followed

assiduously avoided provocations and surprises that could have ended up in confrontations that

could then move inexorably to a nuclear war.

Allison said that while the threats of nuclear terrorist attacks that could devastate a city remain

horrific, they are of a scale far smaller than during the Cold War. Then, the world faced a genuine

nuclear war that might have succeeded in extinguishing the species on Earth. Today the risk of

that kind of nuclear annihilation, he added, has now shrunk to nearly zero.

Of course, the world still has nuclear-armed states to contend with, including the worrying case of

Iran, a country many fear is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. Allison has called the

situation in Iran a Cuban missile crisis in slow motion. Irans leaders insist its interest in nuclear

technology is purely to generate energy, but critics point to Irans use of deep underground

centrifuges used in the production of nuclear fuel as evidence that the country is ramping up its

ability to enrich uranium and develop a nuclear weapon.

In dealing with Iran, the lessons from the Kennedy administration remain relevant, said Allison.

When approaching negotiations with Irans leaders, the United States administration should ask

itself, What would Kennedy do?

According to Allison, Kennedy wouldnt rest until he had the best choice available. Kennedys

advisers offered him an either-or scenario, to attack Cuba or acquiesce. But Kennedy refused

both, judging each option as bad as the other. Instead, he concocted a very imaginative but

strange combination, said Allison, consisting of a public deal (remove your weapons, and we will

not invade Cuba), a private ultimatum (you must respond within 24 hours, or we will conduct actionourselves), and a secret sweetener (if the missiles in Cuba were withdrawn, within six months the

United States would remove its missiles from Turkey, near the Soviet border).


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when armageddon loomed on cuban missile crisis still a case study in diplomacy

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