At the Brink of Nuclear War: Feasibility of Retaliation and the U.S. Policy Decisions During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

Year 2021, Volume: 10 Issue: 2, 125 - 147, 16.07.2021

Yang Gyu Kim Félix E. Martín

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.938359

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Recent studies in nuclear deterrence show that nuclear punishment is infeasible in most cases due to the opponent’s second-strike capability, tactical redundancy, and the logic of self-deterrence. However, if the challenge against nuclear deterrence is expected to go unpunished, the deterrent policy is not credible and will likely fail. Can the defender violently punish the challenger possessing nuclear weapons? If it can, under what conditions? Thanks to President Kennedy’s tape recordings, the Cuban Missile Crisis provides researchers an exceptional laboratory for testing various theories on the defender’s policy choices after deterrence failure. This article derives a research hypothesis and its competing counterpart and examines their respective explanatory power via a process-tracing analysis of key members within the Executive Committee during the crisis. The study finds that the challenger’s feasibility of retaliating with atomic weapons is a crucial predictor for the defender’s policy choices.

Keywords

Deterrence, nuclear weapons, Cuban Missile Crisis, credibility, feasibility

References

• Allyn, Bruce J., James G. Blight, and David A. Welch. “Essence of Revision: Moscow, Havana, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” International Security 14, no. 3 (1989-1990): 136–72.
• Betts, Richard K. Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1987.
• Blainey, Geoffrey. The Causes of War. New York: Free Press, 1988.
• Borden, William L. There Will Be No Time. New York: Macmillan, 1946.
• Brady, Henry E. “Data-Set Observations versus Causal-Process Observations: the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.” In Brady and Collier, Rethinking Social Inquiry, 267–72.
• Brady, Henry E., and David Collier, ed. Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
• Brodie, Bernard, Frederick S. Dunn, Arnold Wolfers, Percy E. Corbett, and William T. R. Fox. The Absolute Weapon. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946.
• Carnesale, Albert, Paul Doty, Stanley Hoffmann, Samuel P. Huntington, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Scott D. Sagan. Living with Nuclear Weapons. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
• Danilovic, Vesna. When the Stakes Are High: Deterrence and Conflict among Major Powers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
• Fearon, James D. “Selection Effects and Deterrence.” International Interactions 28 (2002): 5–29.
• ———. “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1997): 68–90.
• Fetter, Steve. “Ballistic Missiles and Weapons of Mass Destruction: What Is the Threat? What Should be Done?” International Security 16, no. 1 (1991): 5–41.
• Freedman, David A. “On Types of Scientific Inquiry: The Role of Qualitative Reasoning.” In Brady and Collier, Rethinking Social Inquiry, 221-36.
• Freedman, Lawrence. Deterrence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
• Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
• Geller, Daniel S. “Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Crisis Escalation.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34, no. 2 (1990): 291–310.
• George, Alexander, and Andrew Bennett. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Boston: MIT Press, 2005.
• George, Alexander, and Richard Smoke. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.
• George, Alice L. The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Threshold of Nuclear Wa. New York: Routledge, 2013.
• Gibson, David R. Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
• Goldstein, Lyle J. Preventive Attack and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Comparative Historical Analysis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
• Gray, Colin . Nuclear Strategy and National Style. Lanham: Hamilton Press, 1986.
• Harvey, Frank P. The Future’s Back: Nuclear Rivalry, Deterrence Theory, and Crisis Stability after the Cold War. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. Harvey, Frank P. “Practicing Coercion: Revisiting Successes and Failures Using Boolean Logic and Comparative Methods.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 43, no. 6 (1999): 840–71.
• Huth, Paul K. “Deterrence and International Conflict: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Debates.” Annual Review of Political Science 2, no. 1 (1999): 25–48.
• ———. “Extended Deterrence and the Outbreak of War.” American Political Science Review 82, no. 2 (1988): 423–43.
• Huth, Paul K., and Bruce Russett. “Deterrence Failure and Crisis Escalation.” International Studies Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1988): 29–45.
• ———. “Testing Deterrence Theory: Rigor Makes a Difference.” World Politics 42, no. 4 (1990): 466–501.
• ———. “What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980.” World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 496–526.
• Jervis, Robert. “The Cuban Missile Crisis: What Can We Know, Why Did It Start, and How Did It End?” In The Cuban Missile Crisis: a Critical Reappraisal, edited by Len Scott and R. Gerald Hughes, 1–39. New York: Routledge, 2015.
• ———. “Deterrence and Perception,” International Security 7, no. 3 (1982/1983): 3–30.
• ———. “Deterrence Theory Revisited.” World Politics 31, no. 2 (1979): 289–324.
• ———. The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution. New York: Cornell University Press, 1989.
• ———. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1976] 2017.
• Jervis, Robert, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein. Psychology and Deterrence. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
• King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
• Knopf, Jeffrey W. “The Fourth Wave in Deterrence Research.” Contemporary Security Policy 31, no.1 (2010): 1–33.
• Khrushchev, Sergei. Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000.
• Lebow, Richard Ned. Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
• Lebow, Richard Ned, and Janice Gross Stein. “Deterrence: The Elusive Dependent Variable,” World Politics 42, no.3 (1990): 336–69.
• ———. “Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter.” World Politics 41, no. 2 (1989): 208–24.
• Luttwak, Edward N. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002.
• May, Ernest R., and Philip D. Zelikow. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997.
• McAuliffe, Mary S. CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Darby: Diane Pub Co, 1995.
• McManus, Roseanne. Statements of Resolve: Achieving Coercive Credibility in International Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Morrow, James D. “Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining.” American Journal of Political Science 33, no.4 (1989): 941–72.
• Munton, Don, and David A. Welch. The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Nitze, Paul. “Atoms, Strategy and Policy.” Foreign Affairs 34, no. 2 (1956): 187–98.
• Orme, John. “Deterrence Failures: A Second Look.” International Security 11, no. 4 (1987): 96–124.
• Pape, Robert A. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.
• Pauly, Reid B.C. “Would U.S. Leaders Push the Button? Wargames and the Sources of Nuclear Restraint.” International Security 43, no. 2 (2018): 151–92.
• Powell, Robert. Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Quackenbush, Stephen L. “Deterrence Theory: Where Do We Stand?” Review of International Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 741–62.
• Sagan, Scott D. “More Will Be Worse.” In Sagan and Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 46–88.
• Sagan, Scott D., and Kenneth N. Waltz, ed. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed. New York& London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
• Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.
• Sechser, Todd S., and Mathew Fuhrmann. Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Slantchev, Branislav L. “Military Coercion In Interstate Crises.” American Political Science Review 99, no. 4 (2005): 533¬–47.
• ———. Military Threats: the Costs of Coercion and the Price of Peace. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Snyder, Glenn H. “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror.” In The Balance of Power, edited by Paul Seabury, 184–201. San Francisco: Chandler, 1965.
• Stein, Jcanice Gross. “Rational Deterrence against ‘Irrational’ Adversaries? No Common Knowledge.” In Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age, edited by T. V. Paul, Patrick M. Morgan, and James J. Wirtz. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 2009.
• Tannenwald, Nina. “Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo.” International Security 29, no. 4 (2005): 5–49.
• Waltz, Kenneth N. “More May Be Better.” In Sagan and Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 3–45.
• ———. “Waltz Responds to Sagan.” In Sagan and Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 125–54.
• White, Mark J. The Kennedys and Cuba: The Declassified Documentary History. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.
• Wu, Samuel S. G. “To Attack or Not to Attack: A Theory and Empirical Assessment of Extended Immediate Deterrence.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34 (1990): 531–52.
• Zagare, Frank C., and D. Marc Kilogue. Perfect Deterrence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.