Kennedy’s finest hour

Forty years ago the Americans won what I hope will be the nearest thing to nuclear war between superpowers – of which only one is left – ever fought; and the fact that they won it without firing a shot should not diminish but rather increase the extent of the victory.

What I am referring to is known, of course, as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is how it will go down in history. But for those of us who lived through that extraordinary fortnight in October 1962, it was more than a crisis. First, the placing of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, within 90 miles of the American coast, was an explicit and unequivocal casus belli; as explicit and unequivocal as would have been the placing of American nuclear missiles in Tito’s anti-Soviet Yugoslavia. What followed was a fortnight of bloodless battle in which nuclear armed missiles were deployed by both sides – with the Russian commanders, at least, free to use them – and finally a Russian surrender when her ships carrying nuclear reinforcements to Cuba were threatened with force by the American navy and air force unless they turned back. So if thermonuclear war can be defined as the confrontational deployment of thermonuclear weapons to alter the balance of power, then that is, indeed, what did take place. It was not unlike one of those mediaeval conflicts when opposing armies rushed about making lots of noise without actually being joined in battle.

Almost from the moment President Kennedy announced to the world the discovery of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, to the moment he announced that first secretary Khrushchev had agreed to withdraw them, a state of war, to all intents and purposes, existed between East and West. We did not expect the sirens to start sounding, as they had after Chamberlain’s announcement of war in 1939, but that was only because we knew full well that on this occasion there would be no time for them to sound.