Cuban Missile Crisis
- Came from Cold War conflict
- US failed to overthrow Castro regime
- Soviet Union reached secret agreement with Cuba to evade future invasion
- Deterrence each other from positioning nuclear weapons
- US’s nukes in Turkey
- USSR’s nukes in Cuba
- Negotiations happened mostly at White House and Kremlin level and not much on Bureaucratic level
- Timeline
- 16 Oct 1962: US discovered USSR missile in Cuba
- US didn’t take actions to publicize the issue
- If publicized: there’ll be public pressure to put pressure on USSR or escalate the issue to save face as the most powerful nation
- 22 October 1962: negotiations began
- 24 October 1962: Khrushchev responded to first message of president Kennedy
- 26 October 1962: US informed USSR missiles are near operating readiness
- Bilateral discussion
- Exchangingmessages between Kremlin and White House
- Serving the frontlines of an International pubic opinion contest between the superpowers such as conducting press cregionsonferences for clarification
Why was the negotiation successful?
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Deterrence against one another for the fear of Mutually Assured Destruction
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Negotiation was conducted bilaterally, directly, and indirectly
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Everyone believed cooperation would lead to better outcome
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Strategy
- Kennedy responded to USSR’s aquiring ICMS, by increasing its own missile program.
- Kennedy feared more the publicity shame from letting USSR situate its nuclear weapons on Cuba more than worrying from the security problems
- Alexander George
- Kruschev conceeded because
- Saving Face
- Limited Demand Approach
- Strategic Gains
References
- 2022-05-25’s Group 4 presenation