Thirteen Days ― The Autumn the World Almost Ended

In the previous chapter, we saw the era of the ‘balance of terror,’ in which the United States and the Soviet Union acquired hydrogen bombs and stockpiled enough warheads to destroy each other many times over. If the other side fired, so would you ― that conviction alone held war at bay, a precarious peace.

That balance nearly collapsed one autumn, pushed to the very edge. In October 1962, over the island of Cuba in the Caribbean, the world stood at the brink of nuclear war. This crisis, later called the ‘Thirteen Days,’ is often described as the moment humanity came closest to nuclear war. In this chapter, we trace those tense days through the choices of two leaders and of nameless people.

The Fire Brought to the Island

It began with Cuba, a socialist nation just off the tip of Florida. After its revolution in 1959, Cuba grew closer to the Soviet Union. In 1962, the Soviets secretly began shipping medium-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to the island.

Several views of their intent have been set side by side. Some say it was to protect Cuba from an American invasion; others, that it was a response to American medium-range missiles deployed in places such as Turkey. Either way, had the missiles been completed, many of America’s major cities would have come within range in a matter of minutes.

In October 1962, photographs taken by an American high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance plane over Cuba captured a missile base under construction. The report reached President Kennedy on October 16. From here, days filled with tension began.

Blockade, or Strike?

Kennedy convened an inner circle of advisers known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM), meeting on and off to work out a response. The options, it is said, were sharply divided.

Some in the military argued that the bases should be destroyed by airstrike before they were completed, and the island invaded if necessary. Others worried strongly that an airstrike would cause Soviet casualties and could lead directly to total war. After much debate, what Kennedy chose was not an armed strike but a ‘quarantine’ ― that is, a naval blockade. It was a means of stopping further military materiel from being brought to the island, out at sea.

On October 22, Kennedy revealed the missiles’ existence and the blockade to the public in a televised address, sending a shock around the world. A Soviet convoy heading toward the blockade line. An American fleet waiting for it. The nuclear forces of both nations were placed on high alert, and the world held its breath, watching how events would unfold.

In front of the blockade line, some of the Soviet ships said to be carrying missile-related materiel reportedly turned back. On the volatile sea, the worst collision was barely avoided. And yet the crisis was not over.

Black Saturday, and One Man Beneath the Sea

The most dangerous day is said to have been October 27 ― later called ‘Black Saturday.’

On that day, an American U-2 on reconnaissance over Cuba was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was killed. Calls for retaliation grew louder, a moment when the trigger of total war might have been pulled.

Moreover, almost entirely unknown at the time, a crisis was also unfolding beneath the sea, it is said. The American fleet dropped depth charges to force a Soviet submarine hiding in the blockade zone to surface. Inside the submarine, long submerged and cut off from communication, the crew reportedly took this as an attack, and opinion split over whether to fire a nuclear torpedo. A launch required the agreement of several officers, and one of them, Vasili Arkhipov, is said to have objected to the end, so the launch was held back.

Stepping Back from the Brink

As catastrophe drew near, negotiations were moving beneath the surface. Letters arrived one after another from Khrushchev to Kennedy. The Soviet side reportedly asked that the United States promise not to invade Cuba, and that it remove the American medium-range missiles deployed in Turkey.

Kennedy accepted the pledge not to invade Cuba as the overt condition. As for the missiles in Turkey, he did not make it a public bargain but is said to have unofficially conveyed his intention to remove them later. His brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, is said to have met secretly with the Soviet ambassador, where this de facto understanding was reached. It was a hard-won compromise that sought a landing point at which each side could save face.

On October 28, Khrushchev announced the removal of the missiles. The thirteen-day crisis was thus averted at the brink. Not which side had won, but the fact that both stepped back ― that is what spared the world from catastrophe.

This experience is said to have left two lessons. One was that mechanisms were needed to prevent accidental clashes between nuclear-armed great powers. After the crisis, a line allowing the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union to communicate directly (the so-called hotline) was established. The other was the need for dialogue toward arms reduction and the regulation of nuclear testing. The following year, in 1963, the Partial Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting nuclear tests in the atmosphere and elsewhere, was concluded.

Those thirteen days, in which terror froze the world, ironically also opened a small door to dialogue. Yet the fire of the nuclear weapon itself had not gone out. That fire, once belonging only to the United States and the Soviet Union, was by this time already spreading into the hands of more and more nations. In the next chapter, we will look at the era in which the number of nuclear-armed states grew, and the contradiction within the treaty that tried to hold it back.