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By Root 1473 0

raids. In an invasion the Soviet commander, General Issa Pliyev, had originally been authorized to use them, but on October 27, Moscow changed that directive, requiring formal authorization from officials in Russia. In the lexicon of the nuclear age, these were not major weapons, but anyone within half a mile of the center of the blast would die, most of them immediately, though a few would survive only to succumb within a few weeks to radiation poisoning. Once the Soviet launched their Lunas against the invading Americans, Kennedy would doubtless respond with nuclear weapons too, and World War III would likely begin.

The danger was that Kennedy and the others might become so immersed in the minutiae of the moment that they would not be able to stand back and see the full scale of what was at stake. Only Kennedy seemed able to distance himself enough to see this crisis set in the context of history and human conduct.

“If we appear to be trading the defense of Turkey for a threat to Cuba, we’ll just have to face a radical decline in the effectiveness [of NATO],” Bundy told the president on October 27. Kennedy’s NSC adviser probably did not know that, through Bolshakov, the administration had informally and secretly proposed such a trade.

“This trade has appeal,” Kennedy replied. “Now, if we reject it out of hand, and then have to take military action against Cuba, then we’ll also face a decline [in NATO].” Kennedy faced square on the natural self-interest of men, even if they wore the badge of allies. He knew that those same Europeans who would condemn him for withdrawing the Jupiter missiles would complain even louder if America went to war over Cuba.

When Kennedy spoke of these allies, he displayed a passion that he rarely displayed to his nation’s enemies. “We all know how quickly everybody’s courage goes when the blood starts to flow, and that’s what’s going to happen to NATO,” he told his colleagues. “When we start these things and they grab Berlin, everybody’s going to say, ‘Well, that was a pretty good proposition.’ … Today it sounds great to reject it [trading off the Turkish missiles], but it’s not going to after we do something.”

The other part of the deal was the promise not to invade Cuba, which to Bobby was almost as big a problem as Turkey. “Well, the only thing is, we are proposing in here the abandonment …” he began.

“What?” Kennedy said urgently. “What? What are we proposing?”

“The abandonment of Cuba,” Bobby repeated.

“No, we’re just promising not to invade,” said Sorensen, always the wordsmith.

“Not to invade,” McNamara repeated. “We changed that language.”

No matter what pledges their government made, men such as Bobby, McCone, and LeMay would not accept a Communist sanctuary in the Caribbean. The diplomats might believe otherwise, but there was a misunderstanding here much like that between Kennedy and Khrushchev at the summit conference. Then Kennedy criticized the Soviet leader for tinkering in the affairs of other nations, but Khrushchev said that a liberation struggle like that against the Portuguese colonies in Africa was “a sacred war” and the Soviet Union would always support such struggles. For Bobby and his allies within government, Cuba was just such a sacred war.

As Kennedy attempted to find some peaceful resolution that would not be condemned as cowardice, events conspired to push him closer to raising war’s banner. A U-2 plane had wandered off course in the Arctic and been chased out of Soviet air space by a menacing squad of MIGs. The Cubans had started firing at low-level reconnaissance planes, forcing them to turn back. And Kennedy learned that in Cuba a missile had been fired at a U-2 plane flying high above the island, bringing the plane down and killing the pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson.

Kennedy and the Ex Comm team were strong men at the height of their intellectual powers, but they had been working day and night for eleven days, living with an intolerable level of stress. They were tired, and even as they tried to use good judgment, some of them were ready to strike back