Altogether some 200 Cubans, Americans, and Russians--many of whom were directly involved 40 years ago in what is widely known as the "missile" crisis--exchanged views on the origins and consequences of those events. The U.S. administration of John F. Kennedy came within a few steps of launching an attack on Cuba that would, in all probability, have rapidly escalated into nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

At the conference, former secretary of defense Robert McNamara, whose tenure in that post spanned both the "missile" crisis and the massive escalation of U.S. forces in Vietnam, argued that the Kennedy administration’s Operation Mongoose had been "stupid." It was nothing but a sideshow, he said.

Mongoose was an extensive U.S. government program of assassination, sabotage, and subversion, personally directed from the White House by Attorney General Robert Kennedy on behalf of his brother, the president. It had been initiated in the aftermath of the crushing defeat dealt by Cuba’s armed forces and militia in April 1961 to a U.S.-organized invasion by Cuban mercenaries at the Bay of Pigs. The objective of the invasion was to prepare the way for the direct use of U.S. military forces to overthrow Cuba’s revolutionary government.

With a full dose of imperial arrogance, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was special assistant to John F. Kennedy at the time, labeled Operation Mongoose a mere "pinprick," declaring "surprise" that it had caused such "problems for the Cubans." U.S. policy makers were really not interested in Cuba, he proclaimed. The only issue was eliminating potential Soviet military bases in Latin America.

Each of these lies and more were taken up and answered in the course of the meeting, especially by the conference participants from Cuba. The origin of the "missile" crisis was not Soviet weapons but Washington’s determination to try to crush the Cuban revolution. What prevented a U.S. invasion--for which military plans were far advanced--was neither Kennedy’s "moderation," nor Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s abrupt decision to withdraw the missiles without consultation with the Cuban leadership. What stayed Washington’s hand was the knowledge that an invasion of Cuba would entail unacceptable political costs due to the determination of the Cuban people to defend their socialist revolution. Pentagon planners at the time predicted that U.S. casualties would have been incredibly high just in the first few days of such an assault.

The Cuban delegation, whose members helped set the record straight about Washington’s aggression, included President Fidel Castro, Vice Presidents José Ramón Fernández and José Ramón Balaguer, other leaders of the Cuban government and Communist Party directly involved in the October 1962 events, and a number of authors and researchers. Among those who opened a conference session with a presentation was Tomás Diez Acosta, author of the new book October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen from Cuba, which draws on a wealth of information from Cuban archives and from interviews with direct participants in the events (see excerpt from book on the facing page).

Future issues of the Militant will carry full coverage of the conference activities.
 
 
Related articles:
Book ‘vividly captures’ Cuban victory at Bay of Pigs
Cuba’s response to 1962 U.S. military threats  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home