NUCLEAR FOLLY

A fresh examination of the historical milestone.

On the heels of last year’s highly praised Gambling With Armageddon, Plokhy, Harvard professor of Ukrainian history, covers similar ground in this companion volume. From John F. Kennedy’s humiliation after the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1962 humiliation when he withdrew Soviet missiles from Cuba, “both Kennedy and Khrushchev marched from one mistake to another…caused by a variety of factors, from ideological hubris and overriding political agendas to misreading the other side’s geostrategic objectives and intentions, poor judgment often due to the lack of good intelligence, and cultural misunderstandings.” Although delighted after the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro had no doubt that America would try again and appealed for Soviet protection. Khrushchev accepted because he was losing the arms race with the U.S. He argued that “since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their…missile installations, we should pay them back in their own coin.” Having detected the missiles in October 1962, Kennedy believed they should be removed, and the debate was between air strikes and an invasion. Shocked at America’s reaction, Khrushchev backpedaled. Most readers know that he ultimately withdrew the missiles in exchange for an American promise to remove missiles from Turkey. Despite a plethora of speeches, diplomatic notes, and editorials, Plokhy keeps the pages turning, and he includes far more Soviet material than earlier scholars. Surprisingly, Kremlin archives contain notes and transcripts of Khrushchev’s secret discussions that parallel Kennedy’s, and there is also no shortage of memoirs. Soviet soldiers hated Cuba and raged at laboring to build the sites just to tear them down. Plokhy concludes that both sides assumed that nuclear war meant the end of civilization, so they relented. Unfortunately, he adds, “there is little doubt that today there are world leaders prepared to take a more cavalier attitude.”

Far from the first account but superbly researched and uncomfortably timely.