Best columns: The real lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis

last updated 8 January 2015

Michael Dobbs

The Washington Post

At some point in the next presidency, either Barack Obama or John McCain may face a nuclear showdown with Iran, said Michael Dobbs. How will they react? Both men have invoked John F. Kennedy’s leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis as a supreme example of presidential leadership. If we’re going to use “those 13 terrifying days” as a guide, though, it’s necessary to separate history from mythology. As I learned while researching a book, JFK was forced to make critical decisions amid the chaos of “bad intelligence” and terrible advice. The Joint Chiefs urged him to launch a massive military attack on Cuba, for example, telling him that there were just 8,000 Soviet “technicians” on the island; in fact, there were 43,000 heavily armed troops, equipped with tactical nuclear weapons. Poor judgment, mistakes, and hotheads on both sides had the world on the brink of nuclear war when Kennedy offered the Soviets a secret deal: The U.S. would take its nuclear missiles out of Turkey if they’d withdraw their missiles from Cuba. In the end, based on his distrust of “abstract military theorizing,” JFK narrowly averted a cataclysm. Let’s hope the two men “vying for Kennedy’s old job” realize that “the choice between war and peace sometimes comes down to the decisions and judgment of a single, very lonely individual.”