Mid-April 1962: Havana and Moscow Have the Jitters

Thirteenth in a series chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

Havana Gives Moscow the Jitters

In early 1962, Soviet consultants in Havana learned that Cuba was secretly training “partisans” to spread Marxist rebellions throughout Latin America. It was a worrying discovery for three reasons.

The basic worry concerned political strategy. The Kremlin considered violent revolutions counter-productive. It preferred to spread communism by peacefully infiltrating target countries’ governments and by winning elections.

The second worry was the People’s Republic of China. After Mao’s violent revolution succeeded in 1949, the Kremlin and Red China had started vying quietly for leadership of the world communist movement. In 1956, quiet rivalry had broken into open hostility between two irreconcilable communist philosophies.

If Fidel Castro was secretly preparing to start revolutions throughout Latin America, it could mean only one thing: he had converted to Maoism. That conversion threatened the Kremlin’s still-tentative toe hold in the Western Hemisphere and its control of the world communist movement.

Invasion Jitters in Havana and Moscow

The Kremlin had a third worry.

In previous posts, we examined American plans to assassinate Castro and sabotage Cuba’s infrastructure (approved in 1959 and begun in 1960), the very effective U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba (1960), and the Bay of Pigs Invasion (April 1961).

Now, in the middle of April 1962, the just-begun amphibious landing exercises (see the tenth post) aimed at a dictator named “Ortsac” pointed unmistakably to another invasion. The only questions were when the U.S. would invade and under what pretext. The Kremlin now worried that Castro’s revolutionary efforts in Latin America had handed the U.S. a perfect excuse to invade.

Moscow and Havana Were Wrong

Sincerely as he wanted Castro gone, by assassination if necessary, President Kennedy was far too nervous about Soviet retaliation in Berlin or southeast Asia to invade Cuba. And the stinging world-wide criticism he had suffered over the Bay of Pigs was a very strong deterrent to another invasion.

Nonetheless, Kennedy failed to anticipate that Castro and Khrushchev might use America’s hostile behavior to justify the very actions that the United States most wanted to prevent.

Another Kremlin Fear: A U.S. Nuclear Strike

In 1962, the first Polaris submarines were joining the U.S. arsenal and more were coming. Each nuclear-powered Polaris carried 16 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) capable of striking anywhere inside the Soviet Bloc. As a paranoid Kremlin knew all too well, the USSR had no missiles or bombers which could reach the United States. To top it all off, in late March Kennedy had made his “come what may” reference to a nuclear first strike.

As of mid-April 1962, therefore, an already jittery Kremlin had persuaded itself that the United States was preparing to annihilate the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles and bombs before the USSR could develop its own intercontinental weapons.

Next: The Kremlin Acts

As of mid-April 1962, therefore, Khrushchev perceived himself beset by serious problems. He had to find solutions. But what could they be?

Email your questions to phufstader@sbcglobal.net or post comments under this blog post.

Sources

The KGB’s discovery that the Castro government was preparing “partisans” to conduct revolutionary actions throughout Latin America, and the fallout from that discovery, are discussed in Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble.” Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, 167-9.

The tussle between the USSR and the Chinese-Maoist philosophies of socialist revolution is reported in Seymour Topping, “Russia Plays up Unity with China; Peiping hails new manifesto but indicates it will still go own way.” New York Times, 7 December 1960, at 1.

For Castro’s and Khrushchev’s mistaken but self-serving conclusions that a U.S. invasion was certain, I have consulted two familiar sources:

1. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble.” Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, 166-170.

2. Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991, 377-380.

I add that Kennedy might have proceeded with invasion preparations because he was under heavy fire from Republicans during a mid-term election year for caving in to Soviet aggressiveness. The maneuvers would certainly have strengthened his image as a strong, decisively anti-Communist president. And maybe an invasion would be necessary—who knew?

Re America’s hostility toward Cuba: in January 1992 former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara remarked that “with hindsight, if I had been a Cuban leader [in 1962], I think I might have expected a U.S. invasion.” James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002, 41-42. McNamara made this remark at the 1992 Havana Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fear of a U.S. first strike against the USSR is discussed in Edward H. Judge and John W. Langdon, A Hard and Bitter Peace: A Global History of the Cold War. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, 1996, 169-70.

For the U.S. nuclear arsenal in late 1962, see Norman Polmar and John Gresham, DEFCON-2: Standing on the Brink of Nuclear War during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006, 16.

For an interesting analysis of the struggle between the Navy and the Air Force over the Polaris submarine, see "How Much is Enough?": The U.S. Navy and "Finite Deterrence." A Moment in Cold War History when the Fundamentals of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Were at Stake.” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 275. Try this link: gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb275/index.htm