Averting the Final Failure: JFK and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis

Stanford Nuclear Age Series

by Sheldon M. Stern

The Cuban missile crisis was the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War and the most perilous moment in human history. Sheldon M. Stern, longtime historian at the John F. Kennedy Library, here presents a comprehensive narrative account of the secret ExComm meetings, making the inside story of the missile crisis completely understandable to general readers for the first time. The author's narrative version of these discussions is entirely new; it provides readers with a running commentary on the issues and options discussed and enables them, as never before, to follow specific themes and the role of individual participants. The narrative highlights key moments of stress, doubt, decision, and resolution—and even humor—and makes the meetings comprehensible both to readers who lived through the crisis and to those too young to remember the Cold War. Stern demonstrates that JFK, a seasoned Cold Warrior who bore some of the responsibility for precipitating the crisis, consistently steered policy makers away from an apocalyptic nuclear conflict, which he called, with stark eloquence, "the final failure."

Genres: History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published July 11, 2003

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 5 out of 5]

It all started going downhill as early as 1959 when Cuban guerrillas led by Fidel Castro ousted Fulgencio Batista, a brutal military dictator with close ties to American business and the Mafia. In the beginning, Castro was a hero for many Americans. When he executed hundreds of Batista supporters, postponed setting a date for free elections, seized American property without compensation, and suppressed freedom of expression and political opposition, though, suspicions about him spread quickly. 

Under him, Cuba also become dependent on the Soviet Union. In a January 1961 speech, Khrushchev praised the Cuban revolution and declared that armed efforts to achieve national liberation from colonialism and imperialism were “sacred wars," which deserved the support of the Soviet Union and the world socialist movement. While President Dwight Eisenhower broke diplomatic relations with Cuba just before leaving office, Khrushchev embraced Castro. A combustible international situation was in the making. 

John F. Kennedy was critical of Ike's administration's handling of the Cuban problem even when he was still a senator. The anger and humiliation over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, combined with Cold War ideology, became a powerful motivation for the new President to launch a covert war on the island nation. 

In November 1961, Kennedy authorized the creation of Operation Mongoose to undermine the Cuban regime and economy with clandestine operations and sabotage – including blowing up port and oil storage facilities, burning crops, especially sugarcane, and even assassinating Castro. Mongoose became one of the largest operations in CIA history. Robert Kennedy insisted that the Bay of Pigs had to be avenged and directed Mongoose activities with unmatched fervor. 

It was he, not his brother, who constantly pressure the CIA to assassinate Castro. Although John Kennedy did discuss eliminating Castro with associates and journalists, he also worried that killing the Cuban leader would further increase tensions with the Soviet Union. Bobby, on the other hand, goaded CIA officials so persistently that he made them believe "that the higher authorities would not be unhappy with the Cuban leader’s demise.” 

In 1962, the Kennedy administration imposed a full economic embargo against Cuba and pressured Latin American nations to break diplomatic relations with Castro's regime and expel his government from the Organization of American States. To top the climax, Operation Mongoose plot to provoke a “popular revolt” in Cuba as a justification for American military intervention was being prepared, but Cuban and Soviet agents had infiltrated anti-Castro exile groups and were aware of it. American plans for a blockade, air strikes, and/or an invasion were designed well before the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. 

Thirty years later, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara could understand why Soviet and Cuban leaders thought an American invasion was inevitable. But in 1962 none of the three countries could see the situation through its adversary's eyes. Americans named the episode the “Cuban Missile Crisis”; the Soviets called it the “Caribbean Crisis”; but the Cubans dubbed it the “October Crisis” because it represented only one incident in more than a year of ceaseless American threats to the island nation. “From the Cuban perspective, the October crisis was just one of many," reasoned McNamara. 

In AVERTING 'THE FINAL FAILURE', Sheldon M. Stern transforms a difficult-to-interpret primary source, President John F. Kennedy's secret tape recordings of the National Security Council meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis into a well-constructed, compelling narrative to argue that while President John F. Kennedy bore considerable responsibility for the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis – he harassed Cuba – in the critical week when the world stood on the brink of the nuclear war precipice, he did not choose violence over diplomacy. The President labored tirelessly to dissuade the hawkish ExComm, led by his own bantam cock of a brother (who later presented himself as a dove in his memoir, Thirteen Days), from initiating military action. He discarded his own Cold War orations and activity, and he never once stumbled in the face of the unanimous opposition of his advisers. 

The tape recordings prove that John Kennedy acted more heroically than the widely known version of the events admits. According to Stern, his courageous performance stemmed partially from his lifelong distrust of military leaders and military solutions to political problems, and, most importantly, his horror at the prospect of war in general and nuclear war in particular. 

President John F. Kennedy also understood that History is not a play; there is no script. As he told the ExComm when the hazardous naval blockade around Cuba was about to go into effect, “What we are doing is throwing down a card on the table in a game which we don’t know the ending of.” That is why he was, before everything else, cautious. “Now the question really is what action we take which lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure," he is heard saying on the October 18 tape. Stubbornly digging his heels when faced with determined pressure to bomb or invade Cuba (or mine international waters around Cuba, or declare war in addition to announcing the blockade, or extend the blockade to Soviet aircraft, or seize a Soviet ship that had reversed its course, or enforce the blockade by attacking a Soviet submarine etc. etc. – the list of potentially lethal ExComm advice he received goes on), the President single-handedly averted that final failure.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, not in the sense of bewitch or charm but in the sense of "to transfix or deprive of the power of resistance, as through terror"

The author, head librarian of the JFK library listened and listened to the tapes, and then gave a complete picture of what happened, not by simply giving all the words used but by judiciously choosing and then interspersing commentary on the feelings behind the words. Terror, humor, wisdom, stupidity.

He gives full share of he blame for Cuba to Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs. He understands that Khrushchev may have been more driven by fear of invasion than by a desire to attack.

But having said that, Khrushchev may have received as much bad advice as the ExComm gave. Apparently Kennedy's pragmatism moved him to the least provocative actions to achieve policy.

I am going to have to find Khruschev's son's book on the crisis. I discovered that he moved here after the cold war was over!

The conclusion of the book is a very find summary of the way that a good leader will use others to get advice but also a good picture of the way a decision was made.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hugely important book for understanding the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the main body of it--the detailed narrative of the discussions of the secret ExComm meetings--is not remotely fun and absorbing but instead quite a challenge to stay focused on for 350 pages. (The intro and conclusion took up 72 pages and were a lot more enjoyable and consistently interesting to read.) I read the first half of the "Secret Meetings" section more closely than the second half.

[Don LaFountaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good and insightful book into the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A must read for anyone who likes history, especially American History in the mid-20th century.