Remember, history is written by the survivors

We are urged to learn from history. But what if the history is biased? Here’s a case showing how slanted history can lead to bad decisions.

In October 1962, the Administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy faced its most serious foreign policy crisis.1

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wanted to bolster relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba and act on its promise to defend Cuba from attack by the United States. In May 1960, the USSR began shipping ballistic missiles to Cuba and technicians to operate them. Khrushchev believed that President Kennedy would not confront the Soviets over the move.

'THE BRINK OF WAR'

But he was wrong. Kennedy engaged in extensive consultation with his foreign policy and military advisers. Then, the U.S. blockaded Cuba, putting the two sides on the brink of nuclear war. A chastened Khrushchev capitulated six days later, after back-door negotiations. The Soviet missiles were dismantled. In return, the U.S. disbanded its already obsolete missile sites in Turkey.

The above telling of the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis is derived from how it is presented on the U.S. State Department’s and other web sites.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is usually presented as a case study in “courage, wisdom, and fine-tuned signal sending on the part of Kennedy and his aides.” Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., part of the Kennedy administration, wrote in 1965 that President Kennedy had “dazzled the world” through a “combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve, and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated.”2

Yet, a deeper examination of the official history shows this depiction was incomplete and misleading.

ACCOUNTS AND FACTS DIFFER

Important to note is that Kennedy and his aides made sure their actions were presented in the best light, through interviews, articles and books. Differences between their accounts and the facts that subsequently emerged include:

• Claim: The standoff ended because of stalwart brinkmanship by the U.S. Reality: The standoff ended because of backdoor diplomacy. Kennedy led an intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic effort involving the USSR, other countries and the U.N. secretary-general.
  

• Claim: Kennedy was a tough negotiator who stood down Khrushchev. Reality: The deal for a Turkey-Cuba missile swap was kept secret for about 25 years. Rather than being “tough,” Kennedy yielded to make the deal for a U.S.-Soviet settlement.4
  

• Claim: The President’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was a dove who opposed an airstrike on Cuba and who stood up to other advisors who advocated for military action. Reality: To the contrary, his first instinct was to advocate an invasion of Cuba.5
  

• Claim: Robert Kennedy wrote a response to Khrushchev that ignored Khrushchev’s call for a Turkey-Cuba missile swap and instead accepted what appeared to be his previous offer to remove the missile sites in return for a U.S. guarantee not to invade Cuba. Reality: The letter was a group effort and along with it the President had his brother tell the USSR’s ambassador that the U.S. would withdraw its missiles from Turkey.6
  

• Claim: The deliberations of the ExComm, the informal group of advisors who determined U.S. actions during the crisis, were organized and exhaustive. Reality: The ExComm paid little attention to likely Soviet motives for siting the missiles in Cuba, to view the situation from the USSR’s perspective. The ExComm mostly ignored the not small possibilities of strategic error, such as one side or the other accidently launching nuclear missiles.7
  

• Claim: Discovering the Soviet missiles in Cuba was a great intelligence coup, showing that U.S. intelligence was on top of Cuba-USSR actions and possibilities. Reality: Four pre-crisis intelligence estimates revealed little concern by U.S. intelligence officials about risk of a military threat from Cuba or the USSR, despite increasing intelligence showing a massive arms buildup in Cuba.8
  

• Claim: The U.S. was the winner. Reality: Both sides won. The USSR got the missiles removed and a guarantee that the U.S. would not invade Cuba.9
  

• Claim: U.S. and Soviet ships were “eyeball to eyeball” in the most tense and dangerous moments of the crisis. Reality: Soviet ships carrying nuclear equipment were already 200 miles distant, re-called by Khrushchev, by the time the blockade was established.10

Interesting, but why does it matter, you might ask? Here’s why. This biased initial history of the U.S. success in standing down the Soviet Union led to great U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and loss of that war.

VICTIMS OF HUBRIS

Analysts Eliot A. Cohen, in “Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis,” and Michael Dobbs, in “Why We Should Still Study the Cuban Missile Crisis,” both persuasively make the case that the members of the ExConn including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Counselor Walt Rostow were victims of hubris: They thought they could handle complex politico-military situations without military advice.11 12

Just as Kennedy quarantined Cuba to signal U.S. determination to Khrushchev, they tried to use U.S. air power to signal North Vietnam about U.S. determination not to stand down. But North Vietnam did not back down and instead matched U.S. escalations of the war with their own. The defense secretary who replaced McNamara, Clark Clifford wrote, “Their success in handling a nuclear showdown with Moscow had created a feeling that no nation as small and backward as North Vietnam could stand up to the power of the U.S. They possessed a misplaced belief that American power could not be successfully challenged, no matter what the circumstances, anywhere in the world.”13 14

MISLEAD BY FALLACY AND BIAS

Thus U.S. advisors were mislead by the fallacy of silent evidence, that is, not seeing the full story when looking at history, just seeing the rosier parts of the process reported by the “winners.” U.S. policy was tragically misguided because of survivorship bias, that is, concentrating on and giving undue credit to the people, things or interpretations that "survived" the process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their invisibility.

NOTES

1 https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/cubanmissile

2 https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/sr205.pdf

3 https://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/cuban_missile_crisis_beliefs_endure_after
_50_years/

4 https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2012-10/reconsidering-perilous-cuban-missile-crisis-50-years-later

5 https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/sr205.pdf

6 https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/sr205.pdf

7 https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2012-10/reconsidering-perilous-cuban-missile-crisis-50-years-later

8 https://www.hoover.org/research/cuban-missile-crisis-intelligence-failure

9 https://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/cuban_missile_crisis_beliefs_endure_after
_50_years/

10 https://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/cuban_missile_crisis_beliefs_endure_after
_50_years/

11 Eliot A. Cohen, “Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis,”
National Interest, Winter 1985/86

12 https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/sr205.pdf

13 Eliot A. Cohen, “Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban Missile Crisis,”
National Interest, Winter 1985/86

14 https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/sr205.pdf