Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

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In an attempt to distance the US from the fiasco, President John F. Kennedy disingenuously wrote to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev the next day. ‘I have previously stated, and I repeat now, that the United States intends no military intervention in Cuba,’ Kennedy said. He urged the Soviets not to use the failed invasion as a pretext to foment unrest elsewhere in the world. In fact, it brought the proximity that was familiar to millions of Europeans directly to America’s approaches. Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The balloon incident certainly qualifies as farce as far as superpower confrontations go. But it has a far more serious antecedent that, while not ending in tragedy, brought the world perilously close to a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Cuban missile crisis arose in 1962 after the Soviet Union placed medium- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles on Cuba, bringing much of the eastern seaboard of the US within range. Popular historian Max Hastings has turned his attention to those events in his latest book, Abyss: the Cuban missile crisis 1962. JS Tennant in his review of ABYSS in The Guardian, October 16, 2022 points out that “In January this year, Russia’s deputy foreign minister threatened to deploy “military assets” to Cuba if the US continued to support Ukrainian sovereignty. As has become all too apparent in the past weeks, tactical nuclear missiles are still a threat, along with chemical weapons and supersonic missiles. It’s as if Russia’s desperate scramble to maintain influence will stop at nothing and, as Hastings points out, ‘the scope for a catastrophic miscalculation is as great now as it was in 1914 Europe or in the 1962 Caribbean.’ Abyss provides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted.” One of its most terrifying moments came on 18 October, when President John F. Kennedy and his advisers discussed the prospect that, if US forces invaded Cuba to remove the missiles secretly deployed there, the Soviets would seize West Berlin. Robert Kennedy asked: ‘Then what do we do?’. General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: ‘Go to general war, if it’s in the interests of ours’. The President asked disbelievingly: ‘You mean nuclear exchange?’. Taylor shrugged: ‘Guess you have to’. His words highlight the madness that overtook some key players on both sides. Mercifully, JFK recoiled from the soldier’s view saying: ‘Now the question really is to what action we take which lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure’. Hastings recounts well the rise to power of Khrushchev and his character, the early meeting between Khrushchev and Kennedy and how it set the scene for the Crisis itself. Aided by the recording system Kennedy had installed in the White House, we are given a first hand account of the manner in which Kennedy establish his ExComm team and the masterly way in which he balanced the views and recommendations of the very hawkish advisors, especially Curtis LeMay and others in the US military , against the pacifist recommendations of some diplomats and seasoned policy experts. Robert McNamara had a leading role which is all the more striking given his perceived later failure during the Vietnam War.

He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005. Although the sequence of events is now in the public domain, Hastings manages to convey well the tension of the times as well as describing some close-run events which were not public knowledge for some time but could have triggered the escalation most people feared. Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph I have read more than a few of Sir Max Hastings's books and consider this to be one of his best. Some friends and family members might well be receiving a copy as a seasonal gift!Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar. A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling reassessment of the most perilous moment in history” - Daily Telegraph Hastings correctly argues that the Kennedy brothers became Castro haters due to the Bay of Pigs, an emotion they did not feel previously. They felt humiliated and became obsessed with Cuba as they sought revenge – hence Operation Mongoose to get rid of Castro which Robert Kennedy was put in charge of. As the narrative unfolds a true portrait of Castro emerges. He was considered a beloved politician in Cuba at the time but a poor administrator. He had overthrown Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and at the outset was a hero for his countrymen. However, the crisis highlighted a delusional individual who at times believed his own heightened rhetoric and whose actions scared Khrushchev.

Superb… reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana” - Daily Mail I’d read Max Hastings’ highly accessible books based on World War 2 and appreciate his broad coverage from political and military leaders to the accounts from the trenches.

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Fifth, Kennedy's greatness was confirmed by Cuba. Alone among the Americans, he could perceive the legitimacy of Cuba independently siting Soviet missiles on its territory by invitation. He resisted to the end the bellicosity of his military, who were spoiling for a (nuclear) fight. His discipline in outwardly maintaining a normal schedule during the Thirteen Days was superhuman. He was afraid of nuclear war. He sought compromise. He displayed grace and mordant humour under the greatest pressure. to reflect Cuban thinking at the time. This is contextualised well, as their fervour was then fresh from their revolution. The alternative perspective is easier to convey now that the adventurism of an American empire is better understood. In fact the book begins with the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs.

With access to more information than has previously been available, Hastings provides a balanced and measured account of how the crisis unfolded. It’s a recent account, the author reminding us of just how much peril we are in today with so many nuclear weapons and so many unstable people in control of those weapons.Vladimir Putin’s ill-advised invasion of Ukraine last February has not produced the results that he expected. As the battlefield situation has degenerated for Russian army due to the commitment of the Ukrainian people and its armed forces, along with western assistance the Kremlin has resorted to bombastic statements from the Russian autocrat concerning the use of nuclear weapons. At this time there is no evidence by American intelligence that Moscow is preparing for that eventuality, however, we have learned the last few days that Russian commanders have discussed the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. The conflict seems to produce new enhanced rhetoric on a daily basis, and the world finds itself facing a situation not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 amidst the Cold War. This is a great book. I'm giving it four-and-a-half stars: this is because IMO it is a brilliant treatment of the political and world-context aspects of the Cuban crisis, but a bit less stellar in the technical and temporal aspects of how the events of the 'Thirteen Days' unfolded.