HIGH NOON IN THE COLD WAR

An engaging account of those six days in October when it seemed as if the world were coming to an end.

Veteran New York Times journalist and editor Frankel (The Times of My Life, 1999) covered Khrushchev in Moscow and Kennedy in Washington, and he brings a balanced appreciation for the motivations driving and obstacles facing both leaders as they confronted each other in the fall of 1962. Many things were at issue, Frankel writes, but one factor was that the Soviet premier worked from a sense of insecurity: “It was to offset a debilitating weakness, not to imperil America, that Khrushchev careered into the crisis.” At the same time, he suggests that the Soviet decision to place intermediate-range missiles in the satellite state of Cuba was not without provocation: Khrushchev and many of his lieutenants were deeply resentful of a recent US decision to locate Jupiter missiles in neighboring Turkey, aimed directly at the Soviet Union. Interestingly, writes Frankel, the Soviet ploy—which would have required the presence of more than 40,000 technicians, soldiers, and support staff—barely involved the Castro regime, which was largely kept out of the loop even as Fidel clamored to advertise the deployment of missiles as a nose-thumbing to the hated Yanquis. Though he growled convincingly, Khrushchev, Frankel believes, was “decidedly less menacing than the man we had all pictured from afar”; he was more concerned with making symbolic gestures and attained face-saving concessions than with actually touching off the next holocaust. Similarly, Frankel writes, Kennedy had no desire for war, and—by sharp contrast with the current administration—he took pains to consider how European and Latin American allies would view his actions. They rattled sabers with not much intention of using them, and in the end, Frankel holds, both leaders “found it useful to exaggerate the danger they had surmounted” for political reasons, though it did neither any good. A crisis, then, but less dangerous than we thought.

A useful corrective to the historical record by a trustworthy narrator.