Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
In October, the world will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, known to Russians as the Caribbean Crisis. The incredibly tense confrontation brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.
The crisis has taken on new relevance today in the weeks following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that using his country’s nuclear weapons stockpile is a possibility, and Western experts have not disputed that such use could happen.
While Putin remains unlikely to use nuclear weapons, experts say some situations could lead to the Russian leader lashing out. These include Russia losing the war badly, the country being crushed by economic sanctions, or Putin who feels his grip on power is threatened. If some or all of these things happened, Putin could potentially use his last resort. A nuclear strike could take the form of a demonstration over an uninhabited area, or perhaps even a tactical battle in Ukraine. Such a move would almost certainly compel a response from the West.
And then? Well, bad stuff, probably.
To understand how quickly things can get out of hand, it’s instructive to revisit the Cuban Missile Crisis. But this article does not delve into the commonly used historical path of the conflict itself. Instead, it offers a look at the Russian side of the story from the perspective of the space program, which attempted to launch a series of Mars probes in October 1962. When tensions reached a crescendo, Russian missile scientists nearly launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. missile (ICBM) against New York City instead.
This report is from part III of ‘Rockets and People’, written by Boris Chertok. He was a key figure in the Soviet space program and later in life wrote an authoritative, four-volume history of the Soviet space program. To a huge credit, NASA translated and published all four volumes and made them available online for free. The works were edited by Asif Siddiqi, a professor of history at Fordham University.
Chertok’s chapter on the Cuban Missile Crisis is compelling today, given the heightened tensions between Russia and the West and the re-emergence of a Cold War mentality. “I actually think the world is a lot more dangerous now, partly because the Russians have a lot more ways to destroy the West than they did in the early 1960s,” Siddiqi told Ars. “They had very limited nuclear power that could potentially be neutralized in the early 1960s.”
The crisis
In the early 1960s, the United States was uncomfortable with the rise of the revolutionary Fidel Castro in Cuba. So, in April 1961, the United States secretly led the Bay of Pigs invasion on the island, which Castro rejected. After the invasion, Castro began to politically align his country with the Soviet Union as opposed to its northern neighbor.
As part of this partnership, Cuba agreed to allow the Soviet Union to place nuclear-armed ICBMs on the island, which is just 300 km from the United States. As part of routine US reconnaissance of Cuba, a U-2 plane captured footage of the missile build-up on Oct. 14, triggering the crisis.
President John F. Kennedy, who had taken office just nine months earlier, had to decide how to respond. One of his options was an air strike on the missile sites. Instead, Kennedy chose a less aggressive path and set up a naval “quarantine” to prevent further missiles from reaching Cuba. This action sparked negotiations between Kennedy and Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. Ultimately, the Soviets agreed to dismantle and remove the missiles in exchange for a public promise from Kennedy not to invade Cuba. Privately, Kennedy also agreed to remove US Jupiter missiles from Turkey that could hit the Soviet Union.
Over time, the Cold War cooled, at least in terms of nuclear tensions.
From Russia with love
Chertok’s story brings the Russian side of this story to life from the perspective of senior Russian space officials.
He recalled that in a May 1961 speech to Congress, President Kennedy said that the United States had committed to land a “man on the moon” by the end of the decade. The Soviet rocket scientists took note of the statement and hoped it would lead to less tensions – and perhaps a working relationship with their US counterparts.
After hearing Kennedy’s speech, the chief Soviet rocket and spacecraft designer, the legendary engineer Sergei Korolev, said, “It would be fun to fly over the ocean and see how they plan to do this.” But such warm hopes did not last, and Chertok said he first learned about the planned shipment of R-12 ballistic missiles to Cuba “under strict secrecy” in the summer of 1962.
By early fall, 24 R-12 missiles and 16 R-14 missiles were in place, capable of destroying 40 strategic targets in the United States. Chertok praised Kennedy’s reticence when the missiles were discovered by US spy planes.
“The US Joint Chiefs of Staff have proposed to immediately prepare and conduct a series of massive air strikes on Cuba,” Chertok wrote. Kennedy found the inner strength to withstand this pressure and decline this proposal. If such a plan had been carried out, World War III would have started the next day.’
