Political Repercussions

...Doubt has already been cast upon the "discovery date" of the Russian missiles...

...But it is also possible that the game of brinksmanship will continue in exacerbated form...

...And what will save us next time: the proposed direct telephone between White House 3-0030 and Kremlin 6-0800...

...Khrushchev's case for the first time since his assumption of full power five years ago...

...The Cuba crisis involved another effort—this time a particularly bold one by the Russians—to shift the balance of world power...

...And surely a good deal more remains hidden...

...that Khrushchev will learn tactical lessons from Kennedy...

...That the possibility of his having advocated an exchange of bases with the Russians should be regarded as evidence of political "softness," speaks poorly of our political climate...

...It may be as Richard Lowenthal writes, that the outcome "has greatly increased the chances of a serious attempt to limit the risks of the world-wide conflict between the Soviet bloc and the system of alliances centered around the United States...

...with Western Europe and its independent Common Market...

...The indispensable condition for an agreed limitation of risks is that neither side should count on being able to tip the balance quickly and decisively by the bold use or threat of force...

...This concentration of "credible power," to use the current jargon, conflicts head-on with the growing com plexities of the real world: that is, with the emergence of whole continents of independent nations striving to assert larger amounts of non-dependency...

...Only some neon lights to be put out, some amplified voices to be silenced, some ideas almost forgotten to be quite forgotten...

...Nor will it do to cry emergency...

...Each of these developments offers the possibility, admittedly modest at the moment, of a growing opposition to a centralized power-ruled world in which essential decisions rest in the hands of two capitals...

...the readiness to brush past the usual diplomatic means for handling such crises which offer opponents a mode of retreat that is not too politically damaging...

...How long will it be before one or the other side tries once again to "adjust" that balance...

...And it speaks poorly for the integrity of the Kennedy Administration that influential figures in its upper echelons should have been willing to use this weapon against Stevenson, whose futility has, in any case, been sufficiently demonstrated by now...

...that the two power contenders will become increasingly locked in the strength of each other, grappling with desperate sudden thrusts that, in any single case, could mean war...

...In the short run, it may be that the consequences of the Cuban crisis will be favorable...

...I would agree with some critics who urged that the U. S. first go to the United Nations before instituting a blockade...

...But the essential fact remains that in the crisis the ultimate appeal was to war and that Khrushchev's retreat came in response to an open threat of war...

...They wonder what Kennedy is going to do about Cuba, with little sense that the decisions he makes are supposed to be on their behalf...

...One may argue, accurately enough, that all of Europe, including Russia, has lived for years under the immediate threat of missiles and that this makes somewhat less than morally unimpeachable the American desire to continue as a privileged sanctuary...

...it is still too early to say...

...The world is worse off since Cuba, not better...

...and with the disintegration of the Communist monolith...

...The timing, for example...

...The only question is: what kind...

...The atmosphere of specious "national unity" does not bode well, no matter how great a victory the Administration scored and no matter how much we all share the sense of relief that Khrushchev had the sense to pull back...

...The show is lavishly produced at enormous cost with an all-star cast, but the script is repetitive and longwinded...

...But there was another void, in American political life, that few people remarked upon: the almost complete absence of any serious opposition or even restraining influence as the Administration mounted its skillful answer to the Russians...

...Those sections of the American "peace movement" which failed to acknowledge the urgency of popular response to the Russian bases in Cuba, and which in effect argued against any kind of countermeasures, were simply cutting themselves off from even the most modest political effectiveness...

...It is simply awful that a man—who like Stevenson has passed for the spokesman of liberalism—has to purge himself of the suspicion that he had proposed a more moderate approach than the one adopted by the Administration...

...The Cuba crisis raised the most disturbing questions about the workings of our governmental machinery in crisis situations: how the increasingly concentrated executive power is to be reconciled with democratic norms, what the role of Congress and its war-making powers is to be, etc...

...But to the extent that the outcome of the Cuban crisis contributes to maintaining a balance of terror as the dominant system of international relationships—the very system which was itself a main cause of the crisis— there is no particular reason for optimism concerning the future...

...Something had to be done to redress the disturbed balance of terror...

...If the cry of emergency, the clamor for efficiency and speed of response, becomes the effective standard of national response, then there will have occurred a still further erosion of democratic proc esses...

...If the U. S. decided to destroy the new bases by preven tive action, they would be branded aggressors and arouse widespread indignation, especially among the Latin American nations...

...Even the dread prospect of nuclear destruction lose its terrors when there is nothing to destroy...

...still more difficult to grasp is the lightning speed and the meshed-in sequences of the vast operations that followed hard upon the "discovery...

...the exclusive reliance upon military threat...

...In a keen analysis (Encounter, December 1962) Richard Lowenthal puts the matter well: The real purpose [of Khrushchev's gamble] must have been political ly offensive...

...If they failed to act effectively, they would demonstrate their impotence before all the world and above all before those same neighboring states, among whom Castro's ideological appeal would henceforth be rein forced by his new power of in timidation...

...and it now seems possible that, as a result of the Cuban affair, this condition may be fulfilled in Mr...

...The relief everyone felt that the bombs did not fall, we share...

...Meanwhile, it is hard not to sympathize with the remarks of Malcolm Muggeridge in the New Statesman (November 2, 1962): They [the American people] cannot believe that it makes much difference and have come to think of government as something apart from themselves...

...More than ever, the fate of the world depends upon power relationships: how many operational and deliverable missiles, short, medium and long range, do you have...

...Within a few days, as we later learned, the United States called forth powers capable of mounting the apocalypse...

...Does this offer any grounds for an improvement in future relationships between the contending blocs...

...Nevertheless, given the present balance of power, Khrushchev brought the world to the brink of war...

...The sound effects, however, are excellently contrived...

...Everyone in Washington agrees on the effectiveness of the news blackout during the days of crisis...

...History today is in Technicolor, and we, the human race, sit in our dark seats and watch...

...Decisions as to the future of humanity rest increasingly on the tug and pull exerted by the two great powers...

...By literally "bring ing home" the nuclear threat to the American people, the bases would confront them with an un precedented psychological situation, calculated to weaken their capacity for rational response, and would force on their government a choice of evils...

...Certain aspects of the Cuba crisis remain a mystery...

...Special editions an pouncing: "Russians yield: 'We'll Quit Cuba,' " caused as little obvious excitement as the President's original announcement of the crisis...

...Temporarily disturbed, the balance of terror was temporarily restored...

...What was alarming in the crisis, and what merits the most stringent criticism, was the unilateralism of the American response...

...But more than serious news—for what was also blacked out was the possibility of public discussion, of domestic participation, of popular consultation...

...I would share the curiosity of those critics who wondered whether any effort was made through conventional diplomatic means to apprise Khrushchev of how serious the situation had become in the eyes of the U. S. government and to urge upon him a retreat before the possibility was cut off through public gestures of defiance...

...For there is no proper basis of comparison between the Cuba crisis and a presumed enemy attack in response to which the Administration must make instant decisions...

...He can go to war or not go to war, and they will follow...

...One may have a variety of estimates as to the tactical or strategic military significance of the missile bases...

...that new provocations will be made in geographical and technical conditions more favorable to the Russians...

...Perhaps...

...For unless he were so ill-informed about the political atmosphere of the United States as to suppose his maneuver would go unchallenged, he must have realized that it would have to encounter some kind of check...

...I would share the dismay of those critics who felt that the U. S., acting as it did, reduced all the other nations to a state bordering upon impotence and thereby helped perpetuate that fateful concentration of power in the hands of two great super-states which is itself a major source of our recurrent crises and approaches to war...