The Cuban Quarantine
EDITORIAL, AN
EDITORIAL The Cuban Quarantine President Kennedy's speech October 22 imposing a "quarantine" on offensive military weapons to Cuba could not have come as a surprise to Fidel Castro. Three...
...At about the same time, public opinion polls showed that there was no such popular pressure for intervention in Cuba as some politicians had claimed...
...The Cuban crisis has become more serious than the Berlin crisis precisely because the balance of forces is even more engaged...
...If the only forces in the correlation were Cuban and U.S., there would have been much less consternation in Washington, however serious the situation might have been considered...
...On the contrary, there has not been enough criticism of the right sort, such as the kind of Cuban refugees to whom we have given the most support...
...But there can be no accepting a defensive disguise for an essentially aggressive act...
...It was, in fact, taken by a man so reluctant to initiate any overt action that he has opened himself to the charge of waiting too long...
...As long as this situation prevailed, he was content to consider the Cuban buildup "defensive" in nature...
...At bottom, then, the fundamental problem is not the abstract definition of one or another weapon but the whole balance of forces and the nature of Soviet policy...
...There is, of course, no such thing as a defensive or offensive weapon by itself...
...The "peaceful" victory of world Communism requires, paradoxically, piecemeal victories obtained with or without force...
...hostility to the Castro regime...
...Kennedy would have to "make up his mind...
...But the overriding issue has become one on which our freedom and survival may well depend...
...It might unite behind Castro all those who are willing to fight against "American imperialism" but who would otherwise join in the fight against "Russian imperialism.' Only the most peremptory imperative of national security could counterbalance these hazards...
...it proudly observed that the Russians did not need to send Cuba weapons capable of "a retaliatory blow" or rockets "so powerful" that they could be launched from the USSR...
...But more than words are obviously needed to prove the point...
...As of September 13, Mr...
...The discovery of Soviet intermediate range missiles and jet bombers in Cuba made a sensation in Washington because of their larger implications, not because of a narrow preoccupation with individual weapons...
...Thus, the decision to "quarantine" Cuba was not taken by a man who had, as long ago as last July, "made up his mind...
...Yet, in July and for many weeks thereafter, it was apparent to even the most superficial observer of U.S...
...First, they brought them in under cover of denials that they were there...
...Whatever the circumstances, this is such a thankless and depressing prospect that it can be envisaged only as a last, desperate expedient-and even then the dangers and difficulties should not be minimized...
...In Berlin, the struggle has until now been conducted largely as a test of wills...
...In the end, the test of Soviet superiority must be military as well as political and social, which is why Soviet propaganda has flaunted its rockets and missiles at every opportunity...
...It would have to be followed in all probability by an occupation for which we could not be less prepared...
...would "do whatever must be done" if the range of Cuban-based missiles increased or nuclear bombers were introduced...
...This imperative of national security was clearly defined by President Kennedy on September 13...
...The time factor at such short range has perhaps made our warning systems inoperable...
...This concept is fundamental to the familiar Khrushchevian doctrine of the peaceful victory of world Communism...
...This was the implicit understanding behind the President's statement of September 13...
...Three months ago, on July 26, the ninth anniversary of the abortive assault on the Moncada barracks which gave his movement its name, Castro assailed Mr...
...There is a correlation of forces within which certain weapons may be considered defensive or offensive...
...As late as October 13, in his speech in Indianapolis, he campaigned against one of the most aggressive interventionists, Senator Homer E. Capehart of Indiana, and spoke scornfully of the "self-appointed generals and admirals who want to send someone else's sons to war...
...President Kennedy was wise to have held out against "loose talk" of invading Cuba...
...It is clear from President Kennedy's speech that Soviet duplicity played a major part in the decision to call a halt in Cuba...
...One of the by-products of Castro's military build-up is that an invasion would have to be on such a massive scale there would be little opportunity to distinguish between warring on Castro's band from warring on the whole Cuban people...
...It was reaffirmed, according to Mr...
...Kennedy that it would be willing to accept a self-limitation on its military build-up in Cuba if he would accept a selflimitation on U.S...
...In Cuba, the balance can be changed physically by missiles and nuclear bombers capable of breaching the entire Hemispheric defense system...
...On October 22, President Kennedy pointed out that both great powers had previously "deployed strategic weapons with great care, never upsetting the precarious status quo...
...Kennedy was prepared to take considerable political risks resisting the clamor for military intervention...
...But he warned that the U.S...
...Whatever the technical explanation may be, the new Cuba-based Soviet missiles apparently opened a gap in our defenses that alarmed the President to such an extent that he was forced to take drastic action or face the future with a pistol at his head...
...The reference to what the military knew "means of defense" to be shows that the Soviet statement concerned specific weapons and not the general concept of defense...
...He made clear in his press conference on September 13 that only the most serious threat to U.S...
...Later that same day, the Defense Department admitted that the U.S...
...Moscow seemed to be telling Mr...
...The basic premise of Nikita Khrushchev's foreign policy has been the contention, as the "Statement of the 81 Communist Parties" of December 5, 1960 put it, that the world has entered a "new stage" in which the "balance of forces" has shifted in favor of the Soviet system...
...had no specific defense against the ballistic missiles now being installed in Cuba...
...Every forward thrust of Soviet policy has been designed as an object lesson to demonstrate the new balance of forces and to set in motion a chain of capitulations...
...As has so often happened, the Cuban leader created the conditions which forced those who oppose him to do what he had prematurely accused them of already having done...
...But the real correlation of forces is between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the Cuban bases are, on a world scale, an extension of Soviet power...
...The Soviet statement went on to make even more precise what Moscow understood by weapons for "defensive purposes...
...A basis for settlement may exist by going back in practice to the Soviet statement of September 11 and Mr...
...There was, it may be assumed, a direct connection between the upsetting of "the precarious status quo" and the breach in our defensive system...
...Kennedy based his policy on information that the Soviet missiles in Cuba were short ranged and that no jet bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons had arrived...
...But all these questions have now been transcended by another question-the balance Of forces...
...Kennedy for having "made up his mind to attack Cuba.' We now know that the Soviet military influx began the last week of July, just as Castro was denouncing the President...
...The Soviet statement of September 11, as the President noted, made much of this distinction...
...Apparently Fidel Castro knew as long ago as July 26 that such an imperative would begin to operate and that even Mr...
...These larger implications were basically two-fold: the impact on our military position as a whole, and the influence on our estimate of Soviet policy...
...security would make him depart from a policy of watchful waiting...
...The Soviets would like to forget their commitment to keep longer range weapons out of Cuba...
...Kennedy's statement of September 13...
...United States policy with respect to the Cuban problem-past and present-is not beyond criticism...
...The degree of seriousness depended on the range of Soviet-installed missiles and the presence of jet bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons...
...For if the Soviets had not been so keenly aware of the fact that their new weapons in Cuba would give them offensive capabilities which we could not afford to tolerate, they would not have gone to such lengths to conceal them...
...That system evidently never contemplated a nuclear threat so close to home from a southerly direction...
...One sentence, of which the President quoted only the first part, declared: "The armament and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes and the President of the United States and the American military, just as the military of any country, know what means of defense are...
...They will be with us whatever the outcome of this present crisis...
...If the non-Communist world could be made to believe that the odds had already turned against it, that all resistance was doomed, the Soviets might well not have to fight for final victory...
...Kennedy, by Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko on October 18 after the President had received "hard information" that the Soviets had not lived up to their part of the bargain...
...now they want to keep them on the grounds that what they have there is none of our business...
...politics that Mr...
...Kennedy was able to make the distinction between "defensive" and "offensive" weapons with some assurance only because the Soviets had made it before him...
...We are not unmindful of the complexities and perplexities of many aspects of the Cuban problem...
...In effect, he made the determinant the seriousness of the military threat...
...And on this issue, we stand with the President...
Vol. 45 • October 1962 • No. 22