the 13 days of the missile crisis

• Soviet deployment had depended on a major nuclear build-up taking place without the USA realising it had happened 
• Secrecy ended on 14 October when a U-2 spy plane flight produced unmistakable evidence of an R-12 missile site at San Cristobal 
• 16 Oct – JFK’s Nation Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, informed him of the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba 
• JFK immediately assembled an advisory committee known as ExComm or the Executive Committee of the National Security Council 
• The group’s main role was to consider policy options and their consequences
• Members: JFK, Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor 
• ExComm consisted of ‘hawks’ who called for US military actions and ‘doves’ who favoured diplomacy
• The real issue was: how could the missiles be removed?
• The USA could do nothing which might risk splitting the NATO alliance, by appearing to ignore the interests of Europe in favour of a purely American policy 
• Anything that remotely exposed Europe to a Soviet nuclear response would be unacceptable to both Europe and the USA
• Increasing detail from U-2 spy plane photos meant it became clear that any kind of air strike against the installation was unfeasible 
• As the scope of any potential air strike widened, the likelihood that a military response would be undertaken narrowed
• JFK opted for a naval blockade that would stem the flow of missiles entering Cuba 
• There were simply too many missiles to guarantee the destruction of all of them before any Soviet retaliatory action against the USA
• After initially supporting a ‘no warning’ attack, JFK agreed to support McNamara’s idea of a blockade on offensive weapon shipments to Cuba 
• US bases were put on maximum alert in prep for a possible military strike against Cuba 
• JFK had not lost sight of the possibility of a Soviet attack against West Berlin
• Next day – UN Security Council met 
• The US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, condemned the Soviet deployment and referred to Cuba as ‘an accomplice in the communist enterprise of world domination’
• Neither the Soviet ambassador to the UN, Valerian Zorin, nor the ambassador to the USA, Anatoly Dobrynin, had been told of the deployment by Moscow
• NK called the blockade ‘an act of aggression…pushing mankind toward the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war’
• By 24 October – the first Soviet ships to reach the quarantine either stopped dead in the water or turned around