End of a Crisis

With the surprise announcement that Premier Khrushchev has ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, in return for President Kennedy's pledge not to invade the island, the crisis which threatened the peace of the world has ended abruptly.

Given the stated determination of the United States to use military power, if necessary, to estimate the Soviet threat in the Western Hemisphere, Khrushchev's back-down was inevitable. The crisis illustrates once again that when one power is in a position to use direct military power in defense of what it regards as its vital interests, the other power will retreat. This was the lesson of Korea in 1950 and of Hungary in 1956; it is the lesson of Cuba in 1962.

In the light of the prompt Russian retreat, one can only surmise that Khrushchev deliberately created the crisis in order to test American determination, and that having satisfied himself of its firmness, he quickly backed down.

It would be a mistake to assume, however, that to get our way in the Cold War we need only stomp around the world brandishing our rockets and calling on the Russians to back off or be destroyed. For the present crisis was not a triumph of American brinksmanship so much as a failure of past policy.

In the first flush relief at Khrushchev's back-down, it is all too easy to forget that the United States got itself into the crisis. The Eisenhower and the Kennedy Administrations closed off, one by one, avenues of conciliation and negotiation with Castro, invested the Cuban revolution with a significance-the wrong significance at that-far beyond its real meaning, and convinced themselves and the entire country that the establishment of a Socialist dictatorship in Cuba constituted a danger which ultimately could be dealt with only by force.

The unsuccessful Cuban invasion of April, 1961 gave concrete expression to this attitude, and the dynamics of U.S.-Cuban antagonism then proceeded inexorably, until the United States was confronted with the very situation it had wanted to avoid: the creation of a Soviet military base in Cuba.

In this situation prompt unilateral action was called for and taken, but the last thing we need is to congratulate ourselves on the outcome. The real lesson of the Cuban crisis is that a short-sighted and bungling diplomacy will inevitably drive us into a position where diplomacy is impossible, and where our peace and security rest on a naked test of will. We have come through one crisis without war; future Cubas may not end so propitiously.