Cuban Missile Crisis Essay

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Soviet Deception in the Cuban Missile Crisis,

The world came to a standstill about five decades ago in late October when people learned that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had built nuclear missiles stations in various clandestine locations in Cuba. This tension lasted until the Cuban missile crisis was ended officially-although unknown to the American public, only officially (Chomsky 2012).

The Cuban Missile Crisis as it was a confrontation among the United States (U.S.), the Soviet Union and Cuba that began in October 1962. Later in September 1962 after several missions by the United States such as "Operation Mongoose" and "Bay of Pigs" failed to overthrow the Cuban regime, the regime and the Soviet Union secretly began to build several medium and intermediate range ballistic nuclear-armed missiles that could hit and destroy most of continental USA. The participation of the Soviet Union was perhaps partly in response to an earlier deployment of Thor intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (IRBMs) in Great Britain (Project Emily) in 1958; as well as further deployment of Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey and Italy. These deployments added to more than a hundred U.S.-built nuclear-armed missiles within a striking distance of most of Western Russia. The crisis officially began in October 14th 1962; when during a reconnaissance trip a United States Air Force (USAF) plane captured photographic evidence of USSR nuclear bases being built in Cuba (Saylor Academy n.d.).

The Cuba Missile Crisis and the infamous Berlin Blockade are two of the major confrontations during the Cold War. The Cuban missile crisis is also regarded as the point during that war that the conflict came closest to degenerating into a nuclear war. The crisis also led to the inclusion of the danger of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) in discussions as a determining factor in major agreements pertaining to international arms (Saylor Academy n.d.).

This paper describes the crisis in detail and also examines instances whereby the U.S. military or politicians might have erred in the period before the Cuban Missile Crisis. It also addresses their miscalculation of the ability of USSR to effectively deploy nuclear-armed missiles in neighboring Cuba. As well, it describes the response of the U.S.S.R. To the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instances where U.S. military officials and politicians were cognitively biased in their analyses and how this happened are discussed. They include the missed signals that would have helped the United States to stop the deployment of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba by the U.S.S.R. By extension this would have changed the conflict greatly if they had been reported and analyzed.

II. Instances where U.S. military officials or politicians might have erred in the build-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis

1st Instance

The first estimate was given January 17th 1962, in an article by Big-think group which analyzed Caribbean region threats to the continental U.S. For the next two decades. The intelligence estimates by the group regarded the possibility of communism spreading throughout the region as "very likely" over the next ten years. However the group also concluded that it was very unlikely that the U.S.S.R. would build bases in the near future in the Cuban region because the psychological and military value of these bases would not be sufficient to take priority over the risks involved (Zegart 2012).

2nd Instance

The second intelligence estimate was given in March 21st 1962. This particular estimate detailed the situation on the ground in Cuba and the links between the Castro-led Cuban government and the U.S.S.R. And other Latin America countries over the next 12 months were also analyzed. This estimate too miscalculated; it underestimated the possibility of the U.S.S.R. intervening to defend the Castro regime or to place its ballistic missiles in Cuba. The estimate detailed how the U.S.S.R. had avoided any commitment, in spite of the many attempts made by Castro to obtain a military commitment to protect Cuba. Later intelligence estimates were in a more confident language and stated that, the Soviets would most probably not respond by deploying their own troops (Zegart 2012)

Reason why the above intelligence estimate was believed to be correct

The second estimate still regarded Soviet policy as fundamentally unchanged. Faced by a political threat of a stronger communist republic in the west, the second intelligence estimate looked into the likelihood of a military offensive by the U.S.S.R.; the threat was however dismissed in the report. The second intelligence estimate concluded that the building of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba by the U.S.S.R. would be against the Soviet policy. It gave a good reason for this conclusion stating that the deployment of nuclear-armed weapons even in other soviet nations apart from Russia would create numerous and unwanted command and control challenges and these weapons would necessitate the deployment of a visibly large number of USSR servicemen in Cuba, an action which the Soviets would most certainly regard as one that would provoke a severe response from the U.S. (Zegart 2012)

III.

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Instances when the U.S. military officials and politicians were cognitively how this happened

1st Instance

The rise in number of military activities between Cuba and the U.S.S.R. was just perceived as usual military exercises build up by American analysts. When Soviet military experts were being flown to Cuba via newly established passenger air route Moscow to Havana, the American intelligence analysis knew that the new Tu-114 passenger flights flew in not only Soviet military experts but also sensitive military equipment to Cuba (Brugioni 1991, as cited in HC Blog 2013). The belief that only the conventional military expertise would be stationed in Cuba was widespread within the U.S. intelligence community. However, in reality, these experts were often nuclear ballistics experts travelling in disguise as agricultural specialist and machine operators (HC Blog 2013).

2nd Instance

The most critical cognitive bias that led to the making false conclusions was the response of the U.S. intelligence community to numerous human intelligence reports from the Cuban exiles. These reports plus those received by allied diplomats, journalists and other sources provided the intelligence analysts with sufficient proof to conclude that there were dangerous and undesirable activities going on in Cuba. The U.S. intelligence community however rejected the reports, regarding a majority of them as outrageous and exaggerated (Hansen 2002, as cited in HC Blog 2013). The Cuban government exploited this situation by intentionally leaking accurate information, at times even allowing the posting of letters that had critical information to the Cuban community in Miami to strengthen this deception (HC Blog 2013).

IV. Signals that the U.S. could have acted upon to stop the U.S.S.R. from deploying nuclear-weapons in Cuba and how that could have changed the crisis

There were signals that would have allowed the U.S. To quickly realize what was happening and stop the Cuban missile crisis

1st signal

The most obvious indicator or signal would have been the unusual operations in the Cuban ports at night. Even though sensitive operations were carried out at night, it is reported that there was restriction of movement of all foreigners;-huge cylinder walls were also constructed to cover the unloading berths and locals were evacuated from nearby houses (Hansen 2002, as cited in HC Blog 2013). It would be nearly impossible to detect the presence of missiles because of the many restrictions. However the excessive restrictions should have indicated that there were clandestine and sensitive operations being carried out to the local U.S. human intelligence officers. Such data could have resulted in earlier conduction of reconnaissance trips by USAF planes (HC Blog 2013).

2nd Signal

One of the other key pointers was the huge number of goods being transported from USSR to Cuba. Even though all of the nuclear ballistics related components and personnel were concealed below the decks, -and most of these ships only entered agricultural equipments and trucks on their shipping logs, however these ships were needlessly large to carry just the logged equipment and personnel. Actually some U.S. analyst thought that the cargo ship, Poltava, was likely to be transporting ballistic missiles within its hold, because the U.S.S.R. had a tendency of utilizing such large-hatch ships for such purposes. If this speculation received more attention, attempts could have been made to investigate these claims by searching the ships and revealing the real intentions of the Soviets (HC Blog 2013).

Conclusion

Despite the deception mechanisms that were effectively utilized by the Soviets, there were many instances when the U.S. analysts could have employed several mechanisms of their own to re-analyze their initial speculations. Though analysts don't have the luxury of responding to each and every threatening intelligence report, they however have to investigate an undesirable situation if there are repeated reports about the same. Utilizing mechanisms such as Paul and Elder's model or the dis-confirmatory approach, the U.S. analysts could have stopped the crisis from happening. In any case, some of the signals were in plain sight and definite proof could have been collected with very little effort if there were no biases (HC Blog 2013)......

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