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- <text id=93HT1059>
- <link 93XP0217>
- <title>
- 60 Election: The Backdown
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1960 Election
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- November 2, 1962
- COLD WAR
- The Backdown
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> "There was danger in standing still or moving forward. I
- thought it was the wisest policy to risk that which was incident
- to the latter course."
- </p>
- <p>-- James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson (1822)
- </p>
- <p> Last week that perilous choice confronted another, younger
- President of the U.S. Generations to come may well count John
- Kennedy's resolve as one of the decisive moments of the 20th
- century. For Kennedy determined to move forward at whatever risk.
- And when faced by that determination, the bellicose Premier of
- the Soviet Union first wavered, then weaseled and finally backed
- down.
- </p>
- <p> Staggering Proof. To Kennedy, the time of truth arrived when
- he received sheaves of photographs taken during the preceding few
- days by U.S. reconnaissance planes over Cuba. They furnished
- staggering proof of a massive, breakneck buildup of Soviet
- missile power on Castro's island. Already poised were missiles
- capable of hurling a megaton each--or roughly 50 times the
- destructive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb--at the U.S.
- Under construction were sites for launching five-megaton
- missiles.
- </p>
- <p> Into early October, the Soviets proceeded covertly, masking
- their operations with lies and claims that they were sending only
- "defensive" weapons to Cuba. Then they threw off stealth, lunging
- ahead in a frantic, scarcely concealed push to get offensive
- missiles up and ready to fire. Their aim was devastatingly
- obvious: they meant to present the U.S. with the accomplished
- fact of a deadly missile arsenal on Cuba.
- </p>
- <p> If the plan had worked--and it came fearfully close--Nikita Khrushchev would in one mighty stroke have changed the
- power balance of the cold war. Once again a foreign dictator had
- seemingly misread the character of the U.S. and of a U.S.
- President. At Vienna and later, Khrushchev had sized up Kennedy
- as a weakling, given to strong talk and timorous action. The U.S.
- itself, he told Poet Robert Frost, was "too liberal to fight."
- Now, in the Caribbean, he intended to prove his point. And Berlin
- would surely come next.
- </p>
- <p> The Decisions. Kennedy shattered those illusions. He did it
- with a series of dramatic decisions that swiftly brought the U.S.
- to a showdown not with Fidel Castro but with Khrushchev's own
- Soviet Union. Basic to those decisions were two propositions:
- </p>
- <p>-- It would not be enough for the Russians to halt missile
- shipments to Cuba. Instead, all missiles in Cuba must be
- dismantled and removed. If necessary, the U.S. would remove them
- by invasion.
- </p>
- <p>-- Any aggressive act from Cuba would be treated by the U.S.
- as an attack by the Soviet Union itself. And the U.S. would
- retaliate against Russia with the sudden and full force of its
- thermonuclear might.
- </p>
- <p> As a first step, and only as a first step, President Kennedy
- decided to impose a partial blockade, or quarantine, on Cuba,
- stopping all shipments of offensive weapons--ground-to-ground
- and air-to-ground missiles, warheads, missile launching
- equipment, bombers and bombs. When Kennedy first made known this
- plan, there were some complaints that it was not enough. But
- Kennedy meant it only to give Khrushchev an opportunity to think
- things over; more precipitant action by the U.S., Kennedy felt,
- might cause Khrushchev to lurch wildly into nuclear war. The
- decision to start with the quarantine also gave the U.S. time to
- rally support in Latin America and forestall criticism that
- Europeans might have directed at an immediate invasion.
- </p>
- <p> The Only Course. President Kennedy announced his decisions
- on television to a somber nation and found that nation
- overwhelmingly behind him. Perhaps David Heffernan, a Chicago
- school official who listened to the speech in a crowded hotel
- lobby, best expressed the American mood: "When it was over, you
- could feel the lifting of a great national frustration. Suddenly
- you could hold your head up." Political leaders of both parties
- swung swiftly behind Kennedy's Cuba policy. G.O.P. congressional
- leaders issued a joint statement saying: "Americans will support
- the President on the decision or decisions he makes for the
- security of our country." New York's Republican Senator Kenneth
- Keating, who had repeatedly criticized Kennedy for moving too
- slowly against Cuba, now said that the President's stand "will
- have the 100% backing of every American regardless of party."
- Declared ex-President Herbert Hoover: "There is only one course
- for the American people in this crisis of Communist aggression--to stand by the President."
- </p>
- <p> From the governments of the U.S.'s allies in NATO and SEATO
- too came strong, heartening assurances of support. Even more
- remarkable was the unanimity of the Latin American republics in
- endorsing the U.S. stand: at a Washington meeting of the
- Organization of American States, the delegates by a vote of 20 to
- 0 adopted a resolution calling for the "immediate dismantling and
- withdrawal from Cuba of all missiles."
- </p>
- <p> Against this surge of feeling, Khrushchev reacted
- hesitantly. Twelve hours after Kennedy's speech, the Kremlin
- issued a cautiously worded statement. Then Khrushchev sent a
- peace-rattling message to British Pacifist Bertrand Russell.
- Next, Khrushchev grasped eagerly at a suggestion by U Thant,
- Acting Secretary General of the United Nations, for a two or
- three weeks "suspension," with Russia halting missile shipments
- to Cuba and Kennedy lifting the blockade. Kennedy politely
- declined, writing U Thant: "The existing threat was created by
- the secret introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba, and the
- answer lies in the removal of such weapons."
- </p>
- <p> But Khrushchev had one more trick up his sleeve. He offered
- to take his missile bases out of Cuba if the U.S. would dismantle
- its missile bases in Turkey. With a speed that must have
- bewildered Khrushchev, the President refused.
- </p>
- <p> That did it. Early Sunday morning came the word from Moscow
- Radio that Khrushchev had sent a new message to Kennedy. In it,
- Khrushchev complained about a U-2 flight over Russia on Oct. 28,
- groused about the continuing "violation" of Cuban airspace. But,
- he said, he had noted Kennedy's assurances that no invasion of
- Cuba would take place if all offensive weapons were removed.
- Hence, wrote Khrushchev, the Soviet Government has "issued a new
- order for the dismantling of the weapons, which you describe as
- offensive, their crating and returning to the Soviet Union."
- Finally, he offered to let United Nations representatives verify
- the removal of the missiles.
- </p>
- <p> If carried out, it was capitulation. Kennedy said he
- welcomed Khrushchev's decision. In his stand against Khrushchev,
- the President had not once missed sight of the central point:
- that the Soviet missile capability in Cuba was a threat to U.S.
- survival. By directly challenging Soviet aggression in the
- hemisphere, Kennedy was acting on the fundamental principle of
- the Monroe Doctrine. And he had given momentous meaning to the
- principle of moving forward.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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