Titans of History

Not long after leaving the navy, Kennedy entered politics, serving as a Democratic Party congressman between 1946 and 1952, when he was elected to the Senate. In 1960 he defeated Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas to become the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Running with Johnson as his vice-presidential candidate, Kennedy beat the Republican Richard Nixon, partly as a result of his superior gift for public speaking and his ability to look good on TV. When he was inaugurated as president in 1961, he gave an inspirational speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he told his fellow Americans. “Ask what you can do for your country.”

Kennedy’s presidency was a glamorous one, full of youthful idealism, in which the White House played host to many artists and cultural figures. Kennedy himself was an obsessional, indeed priapic, lothario, having affairs with the film star Marilyn Monroe, society women and Mafia molls: he told British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that if he did not have a woman every day, he suffered from headaches. None of this was known or revealed at the time; he and his elegant first lady Jackie created an American “court” such that it came to be known as Camelot. Politically Kennedy’s presidency was dominated by the Cold War, the global struggle for supremacy between the democratic free world, led by America, and the communist dictatorships of the Soviet Union and its allies. In 1961 Kennedy authorized the CIA-led invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, a fiasco in which Cuban exiles unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Matters escalated in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which Kennedy became involved in a nuclear stand-off with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, spelling acute danger not only for America but also for the world.

Since the 1959 revolution Cuba had been ruled by Fidel Castro, a Soviet ally. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, felt Russia was losing the arms race, so he recklessly bet his foreign policy on changing the balance of power. He had decided to place nuclear warheads in Cuba, which America traditionally considered part of its backyard.

On October 14, 1962 an American U-2 spy plane overflew Cuba, taking aerial photographs. The courage of a CIA spy in the Russian military, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who was later exposed and shot in 1963, enabled American analysts to identify medium-range ballistic missiles near San Cristóbal, only 90 miles (145km) from the coast of Florida.

President Kennedy was briefed on October 16. The next day American military units began to move southeast. Meanwhile, a second U-2 mission identified further construction sites and between sixteen and thirty-two missiles already on Cuba. On October 18, without revealing that he knew about the missiles, Kennedy warned the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, of the “gravest consequences” should the Soviet Union introduce significant offensive weapons to the island.

Four days later, having ruled out an air strike against the missile sites, Kennedy went on national television to reveal the discovery of the Soviet missiles and announce a naval “quarantine” (blockade) of Cuba, which was only to be lifted when the weapons were removed. On October 24 American ships moved into position. Though Khrushchev declared the blockade illegal, Soviet freighters heading for Cuba stopped dead in the water.

In an exchange of telegrams between Kennedy and Khrushchev that evening, neither side gave ground. But American military defenses were moved, for the only time in history, to DEFCON 2, a heightened state of readiness for imminent attack.

On October 25 the United Nations called for a cooling-off period between America and the Soviet Union. Kennedy firmly refused. The next day Khrushchev offered to remove the missiles in exchange for American assurances not to invade Cuba.

On October 27 Khrushchev made another offer: removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for the removal of American missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. Then, around noon, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba by a Soviet missile, and the pilot killed. At a meeting with his military advisers, Kennedy agreed to hold back from an immediate military response and to offer terms in accordance with Khrushchev’s initial suggestion. But there was no expectation that Khrushchev would now accept. Kennedy warned America’s NATO allies to expect war the next day.

However, when the next day dawned, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would remove its weapons from Cuba. Kennedy had negotiated a deal whereby the US missiles in Turkey would be removed in secret. Though few in Moscow, Washington, Cuba or Turkey were entirely satisfied with the outcome, the crisis was over.