Abstract
In December 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao called for the building of a strong, modern navy. Hu declared that Chinese territory included “a large sea area,” and stressed that a powerful navy was “of vital importance in defending state interests and safeguarding national sovereignty and security.“2 Hu no doubt had in mind China’s persistent territorial disputes with its neighbors over the Spratlys and Paracels, and with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands; but by far and away China’s most pressing “territorial” dispute is over the status of Taiwan. Beijing evidently thinks its hand would be strengthened in a possible future confrontation with Taipei and Washington if it wielded greater maritime power.
I don’t think the Cuban missile crisis was unique. The Bay of Pigs, Berlin in ‘61, Cuba, later events in the Middle East, in Libya, and so on—all exhibit the truth of what I’ll call “McNamara’s Law,” which states, “It is impossible to predict with a high degree of confidence what the effects of the use of military force will be because of the risks of accident, miscalculation, misperception, and inadvertence.” In my opinion, this law ought to be inscribed above all the doorways in the White House and the Pentagon, and it is the overwhelming lesson of the Cuban missile crisis. “Managing” crises is the wrong term; you don’t “manage” them because you can’t “manage” them.
—Robert S. McNamara1
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Notes
The author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of James Blight, Jacques Hymans, Robert Patman, the participants at the U.S.-China Strategic Dialogue, Honolulu, HI, November 6–7 2006, and two anonymous reviewers. Any errors are the responsibility of the author alone.
James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Noonday, 1990), 100.
“Chinese President Calls for Strengthened, Modernized Navy,” People’s Daily Online (English), December 27, 2006.
For further discussion, see Robert Jervis, “The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?,” International Security 16, no. 3 (1991/92); Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986); David A. Welch, Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 10–14.
Joseph S. Nye, “Old War and Future Wars: Causation and Prevention,” in The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 11.
Bruce Berkowitz, “Proliferation, Deterrence, and the Likelihood of War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 29, no. 1 (1985); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and William H. Riker, “An Assessment of the Merits of Selective Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 26, no. 2 (1982); John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (1990); John J. Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 3 (1990); Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Origin of War in Neorealist Theory,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (1988); Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi Paper (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Toward Nuclear Peace,” in The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics, ed. Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993).
For the “Proliferation Pessimist” position, see Bruce Blair, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1993); James G. Blight and David A. Welch, “Risking ‘the Destruction of Nations’: Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis for New and Aspiring Nuclear States,” Security Studies 4, no. 4 (1995); Lewis Dunn, Containing Nuclear Proliferation, Adelphi Paper No. 263 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991); Lewis Dunn, Controlling the Bomb: Nuclear Proliferation in the 1980s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Peter D. Feaver, “Proliferation Optimism and Theories of Nuclear Operations,” Security Studies 2, no. 3/4 (1993); Scott D. Sagan, “The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” International Security 18, no. 4 (1994); Leonard Spector, New Nuclear Nations (New York: Vintage, 1985); Leonard Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today (New York: Vintage, 1984). Cf. David J. Karl, “Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers,” International Security 21, no. 3 (1996–1997); Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: Norton, 1995).
Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 226–288.
Faten Ghosn, Glenn Palmer, and Stuart Bremer, “The Mid3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description,” ConflictManagement and Peace Science 21, no. 2 (2004); Daniel M. Jones, Stuart A. Bremer, and J. David Singer, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 15, no. 2 (1996). The latest version of the MIDS dataset is available online at http://correlatesofwar.org/COW2%20Data/MIDs/MID310.html. Accessed on February 14, 2008.
Don Munton and David A. Welch, The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Many of the themes I emphasize in this chapter are explained and contextualized in greater detail in this work, but draw broadly upon the extensive “Critical Oral History” of the Cuban missile crisis and for the period from 1987 to 2002, supplemented by the findings of scholars who have recently exploited the erstwhile secret archives in the United States, Russia, and elsewhere: Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, “Essence of Revision: Moscow, Havana, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Security 14, no. 3 (1989/90); Bruce J. Allyn, James G. Blight, and David A. Welch, eds., Back to the Brink: Proceedings of the Moscow Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, January 27–28, 1989 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992); James G. Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990); James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse, rev. and enl. ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); James G. Blight, David Lewis, and David A. Welch, eds., Cuba between the Superpowers: The Antigua Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Providence, RI: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, Brown University, 1991); Blight and Welch, On the Brink; James G. Blight and David A. Welch, eds., Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Frank Cass, 1998); Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, ed. Robert F. McCort (New York: Random House, 1991); Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, rev. ed. (New York: The New Press, 1998); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1997); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “Using KGB Documents: The Scali-Feklisov Channel in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (1995); Raymond Garthoff, “Documenting the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (2000); Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1989); Gen. Anatoli I. Gribkov and William Y. Smith, Operation Anadyr: U.S. And Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago: Edition Q, 1994); James G. Hershberg, “New Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis: More Documents from the Russian Archives,” Cold War International HistoryProject Bulletin, no. 8–9 (1996/97); Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Mary S. McAuliffe, ed., CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency History Staff, 1992).
We must also give due regard for Khrushchev’s evident wishful thinking that the deployment would succeed, driven in large part by his anxieties over Soviet nuclear inferiority and his fears of American hostility to the Cuban Revolution. On the U.S. deployment of Jupiter missiles to Turkey, see especially Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
Janice Gross Stein and David A. Welch, “Rational and Psychological Approaches to the Study of International Conflict: Comparative Strengths and Weaknesses,” in Decision-Making on War and Peace: The Cognitive-Rational Debate, ed. Nehemia Geva and Alex Mintz (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997).
See Benjamin Frankel, ed., Realism: Restatements and Renewal (London: Frank Cass, 1996); Robert G. Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
Raymond L. Garthoff, “US Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” in Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis, ed. James G. Blight and David A. Welch (London: Frank Cass, 1998).
Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 81–90, 137.
Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” in Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis, ed. James G. Blight and David A. Welch (London: Frank Cass, 1998); William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003).
In this incident, allegedly, the submarine’s second in command and deputy political officer talked the commander down. Svetlana Savranskaya, “Recollections of Vadim Orlov (USSR Submarine B-59): We Will Sink Them All, but We Will Not Disgrace Our Navy,” (National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/020000%20Recollections °/o20of%20Vadim%20Orlov.pdf: 2002). Accessed on February 14, 2008.
The analysis that follows draws liberally upon a variety of works, the most important of which include Thomas J. Christensen, “The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan Conflict,” Washington Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2002); Thomas J. Christensen, “Posing Problems without Catching Up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy,” International Security 25, no. 4 (2001); Bernard D. Cole, Taiwan’s Security: History and Prospects (London: Routledge, 2006); Edward Friedman, “Chinese Nationalism, Taiwan Autonomy and the Prospects of a Larger War,” Journal of Contemporary China 6, no. 14 (1997); Stephen P. Gilbert, “East Asian-Pacific Security: An Assessment,” Comparative Strategy 19, no. 4 (2000); A. James Gregor, “East Asian Stability and the Defense of the Republic of China on Taiwan,” Comparative Strategy 16, no. 4 (1997); David L. Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Chih-yu Shih, “Psychological Security and National Security: The Taiwan Factor in China’s U. S. Policy,” The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies 16, no. 4(1991); Xinbo Wu, “To Be an Enlightened Superpower,” Washington Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2001); Philip Yang, “From Strategic Competitor to Security Collaborator? New U.S.-China Tri-Level Strategic Relations and Taiwan Security in a Post-9/11 World,” Issues & Studies 39, no. 4 (2003). For a historical perspective, see H. W. Brands, Jr., “Testing Massive Retaliation: Credibility and Crisis Management in the Taiwan Strait,” International Security 12, no. 4 (1988).
Cf. Jianxiang Bi, “Uncertain Courses: Theater Missile Defense and Cross-Strait Competition,” Journal of Strcttegic Studies 25, no. 3 (2002); Christopher M. Farricker, “Chinese Military Modernization and the Future of Taiwan” (M.A. thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2003); A. F. Klimenko, “The Evolution of China’s Military Policy and Military Doctrine,” Military Thought 14, no. 2 (2005); C. Dennison Lane, Mark Weisenbloom, and Dimon Liu, eds., Chinese Military Modernization (Washington, DC.: AEI Press, 1996); Tai Wei Lim, “Implications of the People’s Liberation Army’s Technocratization for U.S. Power in East Asia,” Asian Affairs 31, no. 1 (2004); Michael McDevitt, “The Security Situation across the Taiwan Strait: Challenges and Opportunities,” Journal of Contemporary China 13, no. 40 (2004); Mark A. Stokes, China’s Strategic Modernization: Implications for the United States (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1999); Vincent Wei-Cheng Wang, “China’s Information Warfare Discourse: Implications for Asymmetric Conflict in the Taiwan Strait,” Issues & Studies 39, no. 2 (2003); Adam Ward, “China and America: Trouble Ahead?,” Survival 45, no. 3 (2003); Peter Kien-hong Yu, “Modernizing China’s Military: A Dialectical Critique,” Issues & Studies 40, no. 2 (2004).
Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 388–389.
On differences between U.S. and Chinese civil-military relations, see especially Peter D. Feaver, Takako Hikotani, and Shaun Narine, “Civilian Control and Civil-Military Gaps in the United States, Japan, and China,” Asian Perspective 29, no. 1 (2005).
The contextual peculiarities of the Cuban missile crisis led Eliot Cohen to argue in 1986 that it held no valuable lessons. But cf. Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball.
Graham T. Allison, Albert Carnesale, and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds., Hawks, Doves, and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War (New York: Norton, 1985); Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Nuclear Learning and U.S.-Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization 41, no. 3 (1987).
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 119–121. Perhaps the most brilliantly graphic descriptions of what Clausewitz called “friction” may be found in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1994).
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Welch, D.A. (2008). Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis for Nuclear Crisis Management and Their Implications for U.S.-Chinese Relations. In: Twomey, C.P. (eds) Perspectives on Sino-American Strategic Nuclear Issues. Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613164_2
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