The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen-day long military confrontation in 1962 between the two super powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. It stands out in history as one that “brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before” (Gaddis 80). It is one of the most studied historical moments throughout 40-year long Cold War between the capitalist camp represented by the United States and the communist camp represented by the Soviet Union. The diplomatic steps in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis constituted the most classic case of all international confrontation resolutions. Diplomacy played a crucial role in peacefully and successfully managing and dissipating the issue.

Following 1959’s revolution led by a devout communist Fidel Castro, Cuba was shifting to the Soviet Union’s Eastern Bloc’s influence.  “In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, Castro's government began a program of nationalization and political consolidation that transformed Cuba's economy and civil society” (Lazo 198). After noting the U.S. deploy of nuclear missiles in Turkey with a purpose of deterring Moscow’s aggressive policies and the fiasco of the Pigs Bay Invasion in Cuban in early of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union and its General Secretary of the Communist Party, decided to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba as countermeasure against the U.S. foreign affairs initiatives.

In response to Soviet Union’s threats, the President Kennedy Administration considered several plans of action including the initial tally of the "hawks" and the "doves". Kennedy's advisors took differing positions between favoring diplomacy and advocating immediate force against Cuba and its powerful ally. Hawkish military leaders urged Kennedy to launch immediate sweeping air strikes to destroy all potential missile installations before they became operational. However, Kennedy feared that such an action “will escalate the latent conflict to a full-blown nuclear war” (Diplomacy). Instead of attacking Cuba, the president’s top advisory committee chose to enact a blockade out of these options to prevent more military supplies from entering Cuba first, while seeking direct negotiations with Kremlin and a series of other diplomatic maneuvers to ensure the missiles’ removal. Kennedy’s decision to impose a blockade and to cut off food, supplies and weapons to be delivered to Cuba demonstrated U.S. resolve but created space for intense bilateral diplomacy to find solutions to the crisis. This decision implied “buying time to give diplomacy a chance to work” (MacDonald) because that” meant that a number of days would pass before additional Soviet ships with more missiles would approach the island and a confrontation between U.S. and Soviet naval forces could occur” (MacDonald). The tension began to take a toll. On October 26, 1962, Khrushchev made two quid pro quod offers to President Kennedy. The first offer was that “Soviet Union would withdraw the Soviet missiles if Kennedy would vow publicly not to invade Cuba” (Kennedy) and, the second was that the “Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba only if the U.S. removed its own Jupiter missiles from Turkey” (Kennedy).

After an intense debate among members of Excomm, President Kennedy chose to accept the first offer to maintain appearances of its hardline stance against the Soviet Union and secretly accepted the second offer promising that US would remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey if the Soviets took their missiles out of Cuba in a covert meeting between Robert Kennedy and Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador at Washington D.C. on the condition that the Soviets never make the quid pro quo public. After thirteen long days of unbearable tension, the secret agreement between Kennedy’s administration and Moscow brought the Cuban Missile Crisis to a peaceful resolution.
Meantime, White House kept daily communications with Kremlin. In these daily exchanges, President Kennedy made it clear that “U.S. did not want to plunge the world into a nuclear war which would ineluctably produce lose-lose situation” (Kennedy). But, on Khrushchev’s side, he accused the U.S. of “upright banditry, or … the folly of degenerate imperialism” (Kennedy).  In his response, Kennedy contended that the US would regard any such shipment of weapons as “presenting the gravest of issues” and that he hoped the Kremlin Government “will take the necessary action to permit a restoration of the earlier situation” (Kennedy). While military action in the form of a blockade seemed successful in deterring incoming ships with nuclear missiles, it was the diplomatic action of top leadership that secured peace for the status quo.

On the other hand, the strong willingness that top leadership wants to resolve the confrontation peacefully was a key element to a peaceful conclusion. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev probably realized the devastating consequences of a nuclear war. In one of the cables that Khrushchev sent to Kennedy, he wrote of his “fear of the death and destruction of total war” (Berg). The terror caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced Kennedy and Khrushchev that they needed to improve communication between the two super powers to avoid dangerous misunderstanding after the crisis. They set up famous “Washington-Moscow hotline” (MacDonald) to allow for direct link in times of crisis. The US and Soviet Union also “signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty” (Nuclear) to slow the arms race and the nuclear proliferation.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is a turning point in the U.S. and Soviet Union relationship during the Cold War. After the ending of the crisis, the two nations slowed down the arm race and found a new respect for each other. The diplomacy dialogues played crucial roles in resolving the crisis. “Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- -not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world”(Kennedy, 1962). “Good political officers are big-picture thinker and see how their issues connect to the larger U.S. strategy” (Dorman 25), said Dereck J. Hogan, a political officer at Embassy Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis and its diplomatically peaceful resolution epitomize the advantages of diplomacy over violent force. It should serve as a modern-day crisis management lesson.
Nowadays, though the communist government of the Soviet Union has fallen and the Soviet Union has long been disintegrated, the Kremlin, now representing only Russia, still provokes opposition from the U.S. in many of its major policies, both foreign and domestic. The close communication within top leadership, for example through the hot line, will be one of the most important elements in the current solution to critical situations such as the crisis of Syria, North Korea, and Ukraine. The diplomatic finesse in solving the Cuban Missile Crisis such as initiating close communications, making proper compromises while maintaining the national interest top priority, and holding strong willingness to avoid fatal war offers valuable experience in resolving the current crises.  Above all, the willingness to engage in active diplomatic negotiations rather than engage in belligerent postures is the fundamental element to peace.

Taking the current Ukrainian crisis for example, the United States should employ diplomacy and initiate open ended talks with all nations involved. Other important questions surrounding Russia include the development of its natural gas resources and ethical violations made by its government.  These violations include censorship and secret policing, allegations of torture, and voting fraud, etc. For all these issues, the U.S. should apply good old diplomacy with both carrots and sticks. If the U.S. is able to ensure that we have a good rapport with Russia, the U.S. should be able to wield its influence better in other countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.

Works Cited
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Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. Penguin Press, 2005.
"JFK on the Cuban Missile Crisis". The History Place.10 March 2014
         
Kennedy John F. “Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Soviet
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Lazo, Mario. American Policy Failures in Cuba – Dagger in the Heart. Twin Circle  
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Macdonald, Bruce W. “Looking back on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 50 Years Later.” 
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