Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation.

Jones, David T.

Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation

By President John F. Kennedy

Reviewed by David T. Jones, co-author of Uneasy Neighbo(u)rs, a book on U.S.-Canada relations

Text, audio, and video: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcubanmissilecrisis.html

Reviewing the dramatic speech given over 45 years ago by President Kennedy in response to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba still elicits a frisson of fright. Listening to the speech as a university undergraduate, it was clear that we had moved close--very close--to the edge of nuclear war. The much derided "brinksmanship" of Eisenhower's former Secretary of State Dulles was back--in spades.

So far as its substantive content was concerned, Kennedy laid out the presence of Soviet bombers, medium-range (1,000 mile) nuclear missiles, and their preparations for installation of intermediate-range (2,000 mile) ballistic missiles. The systems were capable of striking most urban centers in North and South America.

Kennedy recounted the lies Soviet leaders had told regarding the purported defensive nature of systems being installed. To each of the Soviet reassurances that Kennedy cited, he flatly noted "That statement was false."

Depicting the Soviet action as an existential challenge to U.S. national security, Kennedy demanded withdrawal of these systems. They were a "clear and present danger," an "explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas," and a "deliberately provocative and unjustified" action "which cannot be accepted ... if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again ..." Kennedy acknowledged the risk of nuclear war, but emphasized that we will "not shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced."

To assure that no further missiles arrived, he declared a "strict quarantine" of Cuba and directed that U.S. armed forces "prepare for any eventualities" as "further action will be justified" if the Soviet deployments did not end.

And while various UN and OAS meetings were requested, it was clear that U.S. pre-emptive strikes were the next step--regardless of nattering from any international organization. Indeed, Kennedy expanded the U.S. global security blanket by declaring that any Soviet "hostile move anywhere in the world ... will be met by whatever action is needed."

In retrospect, it sounds definitively belligerent--far more than current interpretations of "Bush Doctrine" foreign policy.

The results of and lessons from the "Cuban missile crisis" have been much discussed and debated for a generation. Detailed U.S. record keeping and the personal recollections of many of the participants are available for examination; following the end of the Cold War some Soviet material has become available.

And as always, the lessons lie in the mind of the examiner. Were U.S. medium range ballistic missiles stationed in Italy and Turkey a factor in the Soviet deployments? Did Khrushchev, following his June 1961 Vienna meeting with Kennedy, conclude that JFK was weak--a judgment reinforced by the limited U.S. reaction to the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961? Was the crisis less an illustration of Soviet mendacity than a "failure to communicate" subsequently alleviated by creating a Washington-Moscow "hot line"?

Perhaps we can only be sure that JFK's coincident call for a free Cuba remains unmet.