The Easy Option: Why JFK's quarantine of Cuba was the obvious choice

The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer—often, indeed, to the decider himself . . . There will always be the dark and tangled stretches in the decision making process—mysterious even to those who may be most intimately involved.

President John. F. Kennedy

On October 22nd 1962, in the midst of a Cold War nuclear stand-off with the Soviet Union, President John F. Kennedy made the fateful decision to implement a naval quarantine of Cuba. This manoeuvre became the United States’ strategic response to the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island nation, and was one of just four viable options considered by the Kennedy administration. The process by which the president and his advisors reached this decision is one of the most exhaustively researched and analysed in military and political history. Much of the literature on this topic is preoccupied with analysis of the contextual complexities confronting the decision-makers and how those decisions fit within particular theoretical decision-making models. Many of these studies reveal fascinating original insights and in some cases appear to validate the efficacy of employing certain decision-making models. When defined within these frameworks, however, the process of reaching the “ultimate decision” is conferred immense, almost insurmountable, complexity. The decision to quarantine Cuba was ultimately a determination made after weighing the political, ideological, and strategic ramifications of prosecuting each of the available options. There is no doubting the gravity of the decision; with whichever response the U.S. chose to implement having far reaching, long-term and potentially catastrophic consequences. Yet, when assessed by their probable outcomes, the strategic responses available to the Americans offer up only one truly compelling option. This essay will argue that the decision to quarantine Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis was fundamentally an easy one to make.

While considering the critical events and circumstances that lead to the crisis, the attitudes and ideologies of those key players at the centre of it, and the social and political context and pressures influencing them, we will examine most closely the available options and how each would likely have “played out”. By assessing the available information through a methodical, dispassionate, and amoral lens, this essay will demonstrate, despite the perceived complexities and “dark and tangled stretches”, President Kennedy and the United States chose not the most perilous, but the most obvious strategic response.

Photographs captured by an American U2 reconnaissance plane flying over Cuba, on October 14th, 1962, initiated a truly seminal event in world history. The photographs showed unmistakably Cuban and Soviet military personnel constructing missile sites; sites capable of deploying intermediate and medium-range nuclear missiles to the United States homeland. This discovery, despite recent high-level Soviet assurances to the contrary, forced the Kennedy administration to immediately consider how, or even if, the U.S. would respond. Despite a significant imbalance in the size and sophistication of their respective nuclear arsenals, in October 1962, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union possessed independently the capacity to cause the death of hundreds of millions of people should they ever decide to use those weapons. The use of nuclear weapons was therefore considered a last resort, an option only when all others had been exhausted. The ensuing thirteen days are known now as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and perhaps never before or ever since, has the world come so close to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

From shortly after the end of the Second World War, the United States and Soviet Union had been embroiled in a Cold War; a conflict which at its heart was a global competition for supremacy of interests and ideologies (Schelling 1980). The contest was, from both nation’s perspective, a zero-sum game; “whenever one side lost, the other gained—and was seen to do so by others around the world” (Dunne, et al 2016: 260). By 1962, the international geopolitical context had reached a crescendo of agitation, fueled by increasingly hostile rhetoric, unrealistic demands, and recent confrontations between the world’s two superpowers.

One such confrontation, and a pivotal event in the lead up to the crisis, was in reality a pseudo “proxy war” - the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. Brigade 2506, a militant group of Cuban exiles, was formed from within the United States in early 1960; the group’s sole purpose being the removal of the Castro regime from power in Cuba. Concerned by the increasingly communist leanings of Cuban Primeminister Fidel Castro, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and by association the Kennedy administration, had strongly supported Brigade 2506’s invasion of Cuba. The mission was an abject failure, and the United States’ participation a humiliation for the Kennedy administration. In failing to remove Castro from power, the invasion achieved the opposite, strengthening his grasp on power and elevating him to national hero status. Portentously, the attempted coup also served to push Castro further into the arms of the Soviets, as he sought greater protections from such future threats. President Kennedy took responsibility for U.S. involvement in the invasion, blithely acknowledging “There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan.” (Kennedy, John F). The incident was regarded as a significant foreign policy failure for the President and remained an unresolved frustration for his administration.

The Berlin Crisis of 1961, which unfolded between June 4 and November 9, was the other major Soviet/U.S. confrontation that played a defining role in the lead up to the Cuban crisis. The tensions originated with an ultimatum from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the Western powers delivered three years earlier in 1958. The Soviet request called for the withdrawal of all foriegn troops and personnel, and the restoration of Berlin as a “free city”. As a result of overwhelming opposition to this demand by the United States, United Kingdom and France, the Soviet’s informally relaxed their stance the following year in 1959, having failed to achieve any progress. Khrushchev, however, sensing an opportunity with the recently elected young American President, restated his demand on 4th June 1961 at the Vienna summit with a compliance deadline of 31st December. Tensions escalated throughout the next five months, with neither side willing to surrender their strategic positions. The crisis culminated with a tense 12-hour standoff between U.S. and Soviet tanks, just metres apart in the streets of Berlin, and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Whilst in this instance the Soviets and U.S narrowly avoided direct military conflict, as the New Year was rung in, agitation, frustration and suspicion between the two foes had never been so acute.

Examination of why the Soviet Union made the fateful decision to ostensibly “smuggle” nuclear weapons into Cuba has led some historians and political scientists to question the rationality, even sanity, of Khrushchev and his Presidium. However, when assessed from a Soviet perspective there appear myriad reasons to justify a grand strategic move. The Soviets, despite their best efforts at maintaining competitive pace, were witnessing a rapidly expanding imbalance of military sophistication and power (Allison & Zelikow 1997). President Kennedy had implemented effectively the largest peacetime military expansion in U.S. history with a particular focus on strategic nuclear weapons (Schwarz 2013). Graham Allison succinctly summarises the disparity in Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases:

“In 1962 the Soviet government found itself with only twenty intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of launching nuclear weapons that could reach American territory from bases inside the Soviet Union. The Soviets also had well-founded doubts about the technical reliability and accuracy of these missiles. In addition, Soviet strategic forces included 200 long-range bombers and only six submarines with submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The American strategic nuclear arsenal in 1962 was substantially more robust, consisting of at least 180 ICBMs, twelve Polaris submarines (each carrying twelve missiles), and 630 strategic bombers stationed in the USA, Europe, and Asia, from which they could attack Soviet targets from all angles.” (Dunne, Hatfield & Smith 2016: 262)

A bold strategic move by the Soviets, therefore, if successfully executed could have provided some much needed breathing space, allowing them an opportunity to redirect resources from military and defence spending to desperately neglected domestic issues like health, education and infrastructure.

The introduction of Jupiter medium-range nuclear missiles (MRBMs) to Turkey in 1961 represents another critical moment in the events that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and ultimately, in the peaceful resolution of it. Philip Nash in The Other Missiles of October asserts that Kennedy’s deployment of these missiles in Turkey was a central reason for Khrushchev's decision to install nuclear missiles in Cuba (Nash 1997). Though the installation of the Jupiters in Turkey further highlighted the tactical capability differential between the two cold war superpowers (one of whom was decidedly more “super”), their continued presence in the region is also somewhat perplexing. The operational structure of these weapons meant that they were immobile, above ground, and incredibly slow to progress through their launch sequence (Schwarz 2013). Consequently, they were incredibly vulnerable to a disarming attack, and could only be considered an offensive weapon - a “first-strike” weapon. Their very presence could only have been regarded as tremendously antagonistic by the Soviets, something President Kennedy conceded on October 16th, the first day of the crisis, when questioning Kruschev’s motivations: “Why does he put these in there, though?...It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs in Turkey. Now that’d be goddamned dangerous, I would think” (Schwarz 2013). It is unclear whether Kennedy was simply being facetious or had experienced a (very significant) momentary lapse in memory when he uttered these words, either way, it is certain that the Turkish missiles were considered incredibly threatening and dangerous by the Soviets.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the global geopolitical context had steadily built into a classic security dilemma. In political science and international relations, a security dilemma occurs when measures taken by one state to improve their own national security, result in opposition states responding with measures that diminish the first state’s security (Frieden 2009). When applying the logic of the security dilemma to the Cold War context of 1962, the placement of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union in Cuba doesn’t seem such an irrational response to preceding U.S. strategic security deployments.

Though the photographs that revealed construction of nuclear capable missile sites in Cuba were taken on 14th October, transportation, review and verification meant that President Kennedy and his top advisors weren’t briefed on their existence until the morning of 16th October. Analysis of the images by the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) revealed the sites were not yet fully operational. A frenzy of construction activity then underway would, however, very likely have provided only a short window of opportunity before that status changed.

In an attempt to contain the spread of this highly sensitive information, President Kennedy formed a sub-committee of the National Security Council that included handpicked advisors he believed to be both trustworthy and necessary to the formulation of a strategic response. This committee became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council or EXCOMM. EXCOMM convened for their first meeting at 6:30 pm on 16th October charged with the task of developing response options for the administration. It was the near impossible task of the committee to recommend a response capable of achieving the primary objective of avoiding nuclear war, while also preserving the cohesion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance, deterring future Soviet incursions of the Western Hemisphere, and protecting the political fortunes of President Kennedy and the Democrats (Welch 1989). In the opinion of Robert Kennedy “the fourteen people involved were very significant—bright, able, dedicated people, all of whom had the greatest affection for the US . . . If six of them had been President of the US, I think that the world might have been blown up” (Kennedy 1969: 22).

When analyzing the options considered and decisions made by EXCOMM during the crisis, it is critically important to, inter alia, attempt to understand the motivations of the membership of EXCOMM, identify any prevailing attitudes within the committee, consider potential cognitive biases, and discern the level of influence exerted on the group by individuals within it.

We are incredibly fortunate, in this instance, to have an accurate record of the meetings conducted by EXCOMM, and the individual contributions made during these meetings in the form of audio recordings. Unbeknownst to the committee members, President Kennedy had directed their meetings to be secretly recorded. That EXCOMM members were unaware of the recordings very likely resulted in a much greater display of candour on their part than had they known they were being recorded - the thought of a record of posterity may have cautioned some members against speaking their mind. Accordingly, the “secret” recordings provide the opportunity, ex post, for historians to gain a more accurate and genuine insight into the inner-workings, opinions and decision making processes employed by the committee.

Analysis of transcripts of the EXCOMM meetings demonstrate an almost immediate division of the membership into “hawks” and “doves”; hawks being those inclined to an aggressive military response and doves those preferring a negotiated diplomatic response. According to the recordings, and additional notes made by Robert Kennedy, the doves included: Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, his deputy, Roswell Gilpatric, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and his assistants, George Ball, Alexis Johnson, and Edwin Martin, Undersecretary of State and former Defense Secretary Robert Lovett, Soviet experts Llewellyn Thompson and Chip Bohlen, as well as speech writer Ted Sorensen. The hawks comprised National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, CIA Director John McCone, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze. The Joint Chiefs of Staff uniformly favored a military response (May & Zelikow 1997; Dunne, et al 2016). It is fascinating to observe that the division of hawks and doves within the group corresponds almost exactly to the nature of their role within the administration - military or diplomatic.

It is difficult to state categorically whether it was design or coincidence that resulted in EXCOMM including such divergent backgrounds and opinions, however, this diversity did provide for greater scrutiny of the proposed options, and avoided the trap of “group think” - a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides rational analytical decision making. The dynamic of EXCOMM is expertly summarised by Graham Allison in his article Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Note the environment in which the game is played: inordinate uncertainty about what must be done, the necessity that something be done, and crucial consequences of whatever is done. These features force responsible men to become active players. The pace of the game - hundreds of issues, numerous games, and multiple channels - compels players to fight to “get each other’s attention” to “see the facts,” to assure that they “take time to think seriously about the broader issue”. (Allison 1969: 710)

It was in this overwrought and combative context that the committee weighed how to respond to the Soviet’s manoeuvre; relentlessly formulating, debating, revising and eliminating strategic options.

The first response to be ruled out was the “do nothing” option. Robert McNamara made the observation that the overall nuclear balance between the Soviets and the U.S. would not be materially changed by the presence of missiles in Cuba. The U.S. retained the strategic advantage both in weapons positioning and capabilities. An argument could be made that allowing the missiles to be placed in Cuba might have restored, even if notionally, a sense of equilibrium to the Cold War power balance; perhaps even facilitating detente. Yet, a variety of factors made this option an impossibility. President Kennedy had stated publicly, only a month before, that the U.S. would not allow or accept the placement of nuclear weapons in the region - “Last month I should have said we don’t care.” (May & Zelikow 1997: 92). Some in EXCOMM, and the administration more broadly, saw this as a domestic and international political contest as much as a military one. The Kennedy administration, still smarting from the failure at the Bay of Pigs the previous year, was facing looming midterm elections, and waning public support for the party. Warring factions within the Democratic party also sought to disrupt the president’s domestic agenda, and even undermine his leadership (Herek 1989). Hardline posturing by the president on the Soviet issue meant that a failure to adequately respond to this “red-line” act would likely result in catastrophic electoral results, and reputational harm not just to the president and party, but the country. A do-nothing response might well have emboldened the Soviets to pursue other audacious strategic goals, crossing other red-lines, and further undermining the U.S.’ global hegemonic status.

Similar considerations led to the elimination by EXCOMM of a purely diplomatic response to the crisis. There were a range of direct diplomatic approach options available to the U.S.; Kruschev and the Soviets; Castro and the Cubans; The Organization of American States; and the United Nations. A direct approach to Fidel Castro was promptly dismissed by the committee. The committee was confident they could communicate to Castro the dire consequences facing the Cubans as participants in this crisis. What they weren’t confident of was Castro’s likely response. There was skepticism amongst the group that Castro could be enticed to abandon the Cuban alliance with the Soviet Union, and in revealing to Castro their awareness of the presence of the weapons, the U.S. sacrificed a strategic advantage. According to Robert McNamara the decision not to engage directly with Castro was vindicated years later, when on a visit to Cuba, Fidel Castro casually dropped into their conversation the fact that he’d implored Khrushchev to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. during the crisis, fully aware that the total destruction of Cuba would likely have ensued (The Fog of War 2003).

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson was one within the EXCOMM that believed a diplomatic solution was the simplest and most rational path to achieving the removal of the Cuban missiles (May & Zelikow 1997). The leverage required to achieve their removal, however, proved deeply unpopular with the majority of the committee. Proponents of the diplomatic option advocated for an exchange - the Soviet’s Cuban missiles for the American Jupiter missiles in Turkey. As previously discussed, the combination of vulnerability and the offensive nature of the Turkish missiles made their removal ostensibly a “low-cost” tactical move for the U.S.. Those within the committee who were opposed to this option raised concerns about the negative impact such an exchange would have on the NATO alliance. They argued that this withdrawal would appear to their European partners an abandonment, a “selling out” of their allies, motivated solely by self-interest. Which, in turn, would undermine the ongoing strength of the alliance, while also undermining U.S. standing, influence, and power in the global context. A suggested alternative, the withdrawal from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in south-eastern Cuba, was dismissed with little consideration. It should be noted that Stevenson was roundly condemned by the “hard line boys” within the committee for advocating a purely diplomatic response, a response they deemed weak. Yet history would demonstrate that there was little substantive difference in the eventual deal struck, which saw the removal of nuclear missiles from Cuba, and the diplomatic solution originally proposed by Stevenson.

The EXCOMM was fairly evenly split on the strategic option of launching an airstrike against Cuba with the intent of neutralising the nuclear missile sites. There were those on the committee that were adamant it was the only strategy worth pursuing, and those who saw it as the first step to an inevitable nuclear war. Numerous airstrike variants were considered, but the committee eventually landed on two options: a surgical strike, with the primary focus of disabling the nuclear weapons sites and deployment capabilities, or an alternative large-scale strike designed to eliminate the missiles and comprehensively disable Soviet/Cuban response capabilities.

Despite it having been an “early favourite” amongst the committee, there were considerable impediments to achieving a consensus position on any airstrike option, beyond the purely strategic factors. General Curtis LeMay, Airforce Chief of Staff during the crisis, was supremely confident of the ability of the air force to execute an attack that would disable the missile sites currently under construction. This confidence stemmed, in no small part, from American technical understanding of the nuclear equipment utilised by the Soviet’s in Cuba. The U.S. intelligence services were able to identify the deployed missiles as SS-4s - missiles notoriously complex and slow to prepare for launch. The probability of a successful Soviet/Cuban nuclear counterattack in response to any U.S. airstrike on the Cuban missile sites is described by David A. Welch in his article Crisis Decision Making Reconsidered:

In fact, there was sufficient information available to suggest that the risks of a launch during the envisioned air strike were negligible. Even with assumptions of ample warning and unrealistically high attrition rates by Cuban air defenses, and granting all benefits of the doubt to the Soviet crews manning the missile sites, the odds against a launch-under-attack were overwhelming because of the extensive period of time needed to fuel, arm, and target an SS-4 missile (8 to 20 hours), the complexity of the task (requiring 20 calm men), and the vulnerability of the sites (Welch 1989)

Armed with this knowledge LeMay saw a clear-cut solution to the crisis - fly in, drop bombs, fly out, threat eliminated. The advantages of a surgical strike were obvious; removal of the missiles before they became operational; the element of surprise ensuring the risk was neutralised before the Soviets even became aware of the U.S.’ discovery of the missiles; “first-mover” advantage for the U.S. would have allowed them to position diplomatically and militarily for the aftermath of the strike. When considered in isolation, the probable outcome of this strategy appeared compelling. The airstrike plan, however, failed to adequately address the broader ramifications of launching an offensive strike against the nation of Cuba.

General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was less confident of the efficacy of a surgical strike. Taylor acknowledged that the missiles sites would be disabled by the surgical option, but worried that Soviet aircraft in Cuba (MiG-21s/IL-28), left untouched by the strike, would have the capacity to counterattack southeastern United States. To mitigate the risk of counter-airstrikes the scope and scale of any U.S. airstrike would need to increase dramatically, encompassing potentially hundreds of targets across Cuba (Allison & Zelikow 1999). In this scenario the death of Cuban civilians and Soviet personnel would be entirely unavoidable, and could only be regarded by the Soviets as an attack on their citizens. This would place unprecedented pressure on the Soviets to retaliate, with the most likely targets either Berlin or Turkey. It was considered unlikely that the Soviets would respond by using nuclear weapons in the first instance. As Graham Allison posited “Soviet use of nuclear weapons in response to American use of lower levels of violence would be wildly irrational, since it would mean the virtual destruction of the Soviet Communist system and the Russian nations” (Allison 1969: 696). President Kennedy identified Berlin as the most probable target for a Soviet response, suggesting that whatever attack the U.S. carried out in Cuba, “it gives him [Kruschev] the chance to do the same with regard to Berlin” (May & Zelikow 1997: 256). The larger issue from the perspective of EXCOMM, was that any attack on Berlin or Turkey would have left the U.S. with little or no option other than to launch a counter-counter response against the Soviets using nuclear weapons. The use of nuclear weapons and the inevitable catastrophic loss of life was regarded by the committee as a prime failure, and to be avoided at all costs.

Each of the proposed air strike options raised further irreconcilable issues for some members of EXCOMM. Either iteration, large-scale or surgical, called for the strikes to harness the advantage of the element of surprise and go completely unannounced or remain unannounced until the last possible moment. For many of those sitting around the table the no advance-warning strategy held uncomfortable similarities to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese. Both Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk firmly believed that a surprise attack was immoral, and would be considered as such by the international community. For Robert Kennedy there was something desperately un-American about the proposed airstrikes, on which he reflected in his memoir recounting the crisis, Thirteen Days:

“I could not accept the idea that the United States would rain bombs on Cuba, killing thousands and thousands of civilians in a surprise attack. Maybe the alternatives were not very palatable, but I simply did not see how we could accept that course of action for our country.” (Mahoney 1999: 205)

The massive imbalance in size and military might between Cuba and the United States also added weight to the likely characterisation of America as an aggressive bully should they have decided to pursue an airstrike option. It was considered vitally important that the U.S. maintain a certain moral and reputational superiority when contrasted with the Soviets, the Cold War was after all, at its heart, a war of ideologies. Under Secretary of State George Ball succinctly summed up EXCOMMs prevailing attitude to an airstrike with no-advance warning when he stated “It’s the kind of conduct that one might expect of the Soviet Union. It is not conduct that one expects from the United States” (Tierney 2007).

The option of an airstrike accompanied by an invasion of Cuba was also comprehensively debated by the committee. The dual-pronged option provided the opportunity not only to remove the missiles, but also Castro the Kennedy administration's “Achilles heel”. Some within the EXCOMM saw this option as a means of completing unfinished business from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion the previous year. The Department of Defense actually already had plans for a Cuban invasion that had been drawn up prior to the Bay of Pigs. These plans called for the movement into Cuba of more than a quarter of a million American troops, immense military apparatus, and astronomical financial resources - and considered somewhat of a “white elephant”. An invasion strategy would have resulted in the first instance of direct U.S./Soviet combat during the Cold War, and the resulting casualties would have produced fundamentally the same outcomes as a large-scale airstrike - a Soviet invasion of Berlin or attack on Tukey, a retaliation by the U.S, and escalation to nuclear war. This strategic option, though not completely ruled out, was kept as an absolute last resort.

As a somewhat harrowing postscript, we are, with the benefit of hindsight able to make a conclusive determination that in electing not to conduct an airstrike, invasion, or combination EXCOMM chose a path that would otherwise have almost certainly led to nuclear conflict. Though the Kennedy administration was aware of the presence in Cuba of Soviet MRBMs and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs), they were unaware until much later in the crisis that the Soviets had also smuggled in tactical nuclear weapons (weapons with a range of less than 100 miles). Soviet General Pliyev, Group of Forces commander, responsible for Soviet forces in Cuba, had authority to deploy these tactical weapons as a last resort (Dunne, et al 2016). American military strategists had dismissed the likelihood of the Soviet/Cuban forces employing battlefield atomic weapons (tactical nuclear weapons), based on a rational assessment that ground forces wouldn’t want the responsibility or risk of an escalation to nuclear engagement - in this analysis they were mistaken. The ingress of U.S. attack aircraft or troops would have fit the operational criteria of “last resort” scenario for Soviets on-the-ground in Cuba, and almost certainly triggered a nuclear conflict.

The option of a blockade of Cuba was raised by Robert McNamara during the first meeting of the EXCOMM on October 16. This plan offered two main variants; either a U.S. naval blockade surrounding the island nation, effectively prohibiting all Soviet shipments to Cuba, or the alternative blockade restricting the shipment of offensive military hardware only (Welch 1989). There were few possible military confrontations or contexts that would have presented as more advantageous to the U.S. than a naval engagement in the Caribbean; to EXCOMM a naval blocked on their very doorstep was considered invincible (Allison & Zelikow 1999). In contrast, nowhere else in the world, excepting mainland U.S.A., were the Soviets weaker than in the Caribbean. According to Graham Allison “In the Caribbean, American superiority was overwhelming; it could be initiated at a low level while threatening with high credibility, an ascending sequence of steps short of the nuclear threshold” (Allison 1969: 698).

President Kennedy initially dismissed the idea, believing it would convey a message of weakness to the international community and the Soviets - a message that the United States lacked the courage of their convictions. As the committee began eliminating the available alternatives, however, the advantages and appeal of this response became more apparent.

This strategy did offer significant complexities to navigate in its execution. A blockade was considered a hostile act and, as a number of President Kennedy’s advisors highlighted, would likely require an accompanying declaration of war against Cuba - a move that would almost certainly have provoked a Soviet retaliatory escalation. Legal experts from the State and Justice Departments were able to identify a potential loophole - opting instead to term the strategic response a “quarantine”. By adjusting the language, the quarantine would fall within the jurisdiction of the Rio Treaty for Defense of the Western Hemisphere (Rio Treaty 1947), and be considered a legal act, if ratified by a two-thirds vote of the membership of the Organization of America States. This vote, when eventually held on October 23rd, secured unanimous support for the quarantine, after an earlier abstention from Uruguay was amended to a “yea” (Cuba had been expelled from the organisation earlier in 1962).

The blockade option posed other potential problems that mirrored those stemming from the airstrike option. In the event Soviet ships failed to adhere to the restrictions and broke the quarantine line, American’s ships would be forced to fire upon these vessels. This act would be considered a U.S. initiation of hostilities, and demand a retaliatory response from the Soviets. Though not formally considered “military clashes”, in reality there were several instances during the quarantine when U.S. and Soviet seacraft brushed up against one another, resulting in damage to Soviet vessels. Secretary McNamara had authorised the use of Practice Depth Charges (PDCs) by U.S. ships on October 23rd. The purpose of a PDC was to signal to a submarine that it had been detected, and force it to the surface. When deployed, however, these PDCs were difficult to distinguish from standard depth charges and could cause minor damage to the vessels - triggering panic amongst the Soviet seamen who believed they were under attack. Indeed, Captain Nikolai Shumov, onboard the Soviet submarine B-130, ordered the arming of a nuclear torpedo after PDCs were deployed against them by USS Blandy. Thankfully, the political officer onboard objected and the Captain stood down the order (Roblin 2019). This event was not an isolated one, with numerous such anecdotal reports of “near misses” reported. These anecdotal accounts serve as an excellent reminder of the extremely delicate balance required to navigate the precarious context the “actors”, at all levels, found themselves in.

A final, and some might say glaring, issue with the blockade option was the failure to address the missiles already in Cuba. President Kennedy hit on this problem immediately upon its proposal, asking “What do we do with the weapons already there?” (Allison & Zelikow 1999: 119). The answer was provided by U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn Thompson:

“Demand they’re dismantled, and say that we’re going to maintain constant surveillance, and if they are armed, we would then take them out. And then maybe do it. I think we should be under no illusions, that is probably in the end going to lead to the same thing [a strike]. But we do it in an entirely different posture and background and much less danger of getting up into the big war.” (Allison & Zelikow 1999: 119)

The addition of a missile withdrawal ultimatum to the blockade option provided a clearer more defined structure to the overall strategy. In the opinion of the EXCOMM it achieved four critical outcomes. First, there was some concern within the group that a blockade, in isolation, could drag on for months, Robert Kennedy called it “a very slow death”, and allow the Soviets time to complete construction on the Cuban missile sites. An ultimatum with a deadline ensured a result, good or bad, on a timeline decided by the U.S. Second, the blockade plus ultimatum response, provided options on which to negotiate that were separate and disconnected from the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, and U.S. presence in Berlin. In essence, it allowed the focus of the American strategic response to be wrenched away from the ostensibly binary choice of attack or do nothing facing them at the missile sites, and cleared pathways to conduct either official (public) or back channel negotiations. Third, by reframing the immediate conflict domain from the missile sites in Cuba to the waters surrounding the island, the military context modified from a nuclear missile engagement into a conventional naval confrontation - a situation that provided the opportunity for resolution through more traditional military interactions. As outlined earlier, the Carribean naval theatre was one in which the United States had overwhelming superiority. Fourth, in pursuing this course of action, the U.S. shifted the burden of response back on to the shoulders of Khrushchev and the Soviets.

The quarantine plus missile removal ultimatum the strategic option that EXCOMM ultimately decided on. By making the tactical decision to prosecute this strategic response, the administration walked delicately the midline between inaction and attack - this option was “aggressive enough to communicate firmness of intention, but not as precipitous as a strike” (Dunne, et al 2016: 269). The announcement by President Kennedy of a blockade was “greeted not with fear, but with relief by the Soviet leadership” (Dunne, et al 2016: 269), who understood there existed now an opportunity for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis

Beyond simply demonstrating the United States’ determination to see the Cuban missiles removed, the blockade also provided Khrushchev and the Soviets space and time to withdraw without suffering a great humiliation - a critical factor in the success of this response, worthy of in-depth analysis though not explored in any detail in this paper.

The sheer volume of literature on this topic is daunting in its breadth. There are few gaps in the ideas, concepts, variations, and probing analysis that can be easily identified. In researching this paper, however, there appeared in the literature a preponderance of analysis of decision making processes. The application by academics, political scientists and historians of decision making models to this problem (i.e, the Rational Actor Model, Prospect Theory, Crisis Decision Making model, etc.) has produced fascinating and contrasting results. Yet, the human factors, the physical and psychological conditions of the crisis’ major actors, haven’t attracted nearly as much dissection across the topic material. For instance, what was the impact on the decision making process of President Kennedy’s infamous health issues? According to the prescription records of President Kennedy's personal physician, Janet Travell, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the President was taking a staggering variety of medications: painkillers for his back; antispasmodics for colitis; antibiotics for urinary-tract infections; antihistamines for allergies; steroids for Addison's disease; and antipsychotics (Dallek). It is difficult to imagine the combination of these ailments, and the therapies utilised to relieve them didn’t have a material impact on the manner in which decisions were made by the President, and those around him aware of his conditions. A study of the hierarchy of influence on the President might also produce fascinating insights into the crisis. The fraternal relationship and impact of Robert Kennedy on his brother’s decisions are well documented, but which of the other figures close to the president held great sway? In particular, there is a lamentable scarcity of research into the role Jaqueline Kennedy played in influencing the decisions made by her husband throughout the crisis. It could be argued that greater research in these areas would reveal new insights capable of better informing the decision making models applied by political scientists to the crisis.

This paper looks at the crisis in the simplest of forms; asking what were the available options considered, and what were the likely outcomes of pursuing each? Of the four major options considered by EXCOMM (do nothing, diplomacy, blockade and airstrike) the blockade was the only response that realistically provided the chance of achieving the committees four overarching goals - prevention of nuclear war, preservation of the NATO alliance, deterrence of future Soviet forays into the Western Hemisphere, and protecting the administration's political reputation. Doing nothing ran the risk of emboldening the Soviet’s to further test U.S. resolve in other areas of military and diplomatic tension; and when eventually discovered would devastate the political credibility of the President both domestically and internationally. A purely diplomatic response would universally have been considered as weak, a capitulation to the Soviets of U.S. hegemony, further undermining President Kennedy’s already compromised political capital, and perhaps irrevocably, damaging the NATO alliance. Any of the airstrike options (surgical/broad/plus invasion) produced a common and unacceptable ultimate outcome - nuclear war. By avoiding the complexities of how the decisions were made and why, it is possible to dispassionately and confidently state that President Kennedy, in implementing a blockade of Cuba in response to the placement of Soviet missiles, chose the easy option.

APPENDIX A: Key events leading up to and during the Cuban Missile Crisis

• 1960: Cuba and the Soviet Union develop economic ties, U.S. imposes a trade embargo against Cuba. Cuba nationalizes all foreign banks, aligns itself with the Soviet Union's policies.

• April 1961: Bay of Pigs; failed US-backed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles

• 4 June – 9 November 1961: Berlin Crisis - Soviets demand withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the Western forces in West Berlin. The crisis culminated with erection of the Berlin Wall and partition of the city.

• April 1962: U.S. Jupiter missiles become active in Turkey

• September 1962: President Kennedy makes a speech stating the U.S. would not tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba

• October 14-15 1962: A U.S. U2 bomber flies reconnaissance over Cuba and takes photographs of missile sites under construction

• October 16: President Kennedy is advised that missile sites capable of delivering medium-range nuclear weapons are under construction in Cuba.

• October 16: The first Executive Committee of the National Security Council meeting is conducted.

• October 22: President Kennedy delivers an Oval Office address to the nation announcing the discovery of missiles in Cuba and the government's intention of imposing a quarantine of Cuba,

• October 24. Soviet vessels en route to Cuba begin to reverse course or stop entirely.

• October 26: President Kennedy receives a private message from Khrushchev in indicating a willingness to remove Cuban missiles in exchange for a U.S. guarantee to not invade Cuba.

• October 27: Excomm and the President are advised Soviet officials in New York have commenced burning documents files, a possible indication that war is imminent.

• October 27: A second more formal message from Premier Khrushchev is received, this time requesting a missile trade-off: removal of the Cuban missiles in exchange of the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey.

• October 27: A U.S. U-2 accidentally encroaches Soviet airspace. Fighters scramble to intercept the plane, however, the U2 is escorted out of Soviet airspace by nuclear-armed U.S. fighters before Soviet interception.

• October 27: An American pilot is killed when his U2 is shot down over Cuba.

• October 27: A meeting is held between Robert Kennedy and Ambassador Dobrynin. Kennedy insists if the Cuban missiles are not removed by the following day the U.S. would be forced to “remove them themselves”. Kennedy offers a pledge not to invade Cuba, and separate off the record removal of Turkish missiles.

• October 27: Premier Khrushchev receives intelligence from Soviet sources and Prime Minister Castro indicating a U.S. attack on Cuba is imminent.

• October 28: Radio Moscow makes a broadcast accepting President Kennedy’s pledge not to invade Cuba, and announcing the withdrawal of missiles from Cuba.

APPENDIX B: Important Actors of the Crisis

• General Anatoli Gribkov - Senior Soviet General Staff - involved in inspection and installation of missiles in Cuba

• General Issa Pliyev - Group of Forces commander - overseeing Soviet military buildup in Cuba

• Andrei Gromyko - Soviet Foreign Minister

• Nikita Khrushchev - Soviet Premier

• Anatoly Dobrynin - Soviet Ambassador to the United States

• John Fitzgerald Kennedy - President of the United States (JFK)

• Robert S McNamara - United States Secretary of Defense

• Robert Kennedy - Attorney General of the United States

• Dean Rusk - United States Secretary of State

• McGeorge Bundy - United States National Security Advisor

• Lyndon B. Johnson -Vice President of the United States

• C. Douglas Dillon - Secretary of the Treasury

• John McCone - Director of Central Intelligence

• General Maxwell D. Taylor - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

• George Ball - Under Secretary of State

• Llewellyn Thompson, -Ambassador to the Soviet Union

• Roswell Gilpatric - Deputy Secretary of Defense

• Dean Acheson -Former United States Secretary of State.

• Fidel Castro - Cuban Prime Minister during the Cuban Missile Crisis

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