During the horrid thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, had President Kennedy not been made privy to proper and punctual intelligence, the entire crisis might have had unfolded differently. Chairman Khrushchev had time and again attempted to reassure President Kennedy of the innocuous nature of Soviet shipments to Cuba (Kennedy, 1999). The reality differed considerably, however.
“As the representatives of the CIA explained the U-2 photographs that morning, Tuesday, October 16, we realized that it had all been lies, one gigantic fabric of lies. The Russians were putting missiles in Cuba, and they had been shipping them there and beginning the construction of the sites at the same time those various private and public assurances were being forwarded by Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy,” (Kennedy 22). This was one of the early fruits, which American intelligence technological edge had bore.
To be sure, conventional intelligence gathering had its contribution in cultivating President Kennedy’s shrewdness. It was in 1961, when a remarkable figure, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky rendered his services to the ‘special-partners’ i.e. the British and the Americans. “…He was able to provide highly convincing documentary material about the Soviet rocket forces that so concerned the West. This material allowed to determine that the Soviet’s had fewer missiles than had been thought. This intelligence really helped Kennedy face down Khrushchev during the Cuban Crisis,” (Fitzgerald & Packwood 101).
The KGB, too, had its contributions to the preservation of peace throughout the 1960s and 1970s; despite that it may seem a bit ironical in retrospect, but the efficiency of Eastern-bloc intelligence gathering, and successful penetration of Western governments, namely the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), was not all inimical for the West. The East German intelligence service (Stasi) penetration of the government in West Germany would be an exemplary showcase.
“Through espionage against West Germany, the Stasi gained a formidable capacity to penetrate NATO headquarters during the Cold War. East German officials and diplomats enjoyed ready access through West Germany to Western intelligence and NATO offices…the East Germans learned about the nature of NATO’s military planning and could see that, contrary to Soviet fears an Eastern-bloc propaganda [my formatting], NATO was not planning to launch an attack. On the contrary, NATO was truly a defensive alliance.” (Fitzgerald & Packwood 108)
It is critical to note that, it is not in my intention here to suggest that penetrative intelligence operations promote peace, regardless of the identity of the conducting party. Notwithstanding, my meaning herein is that, making the ‘right piece of information’ available for those in decision-making positions [i.e. ‘the right person’] ‘at the right time’, could reduce friction and prevent war [emphasis added]. The CIA had also penetrated the Warsaw Pact in the 1970s; and that penetration provided intelligence which aided the West in developing strategies making aggression against NATO less appealing to the Warsaw Pact (Fitzgerald & Packwood, 2013).
“For nearly a decade beginning in 1972, the Americans received top-secret documents from Polish colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, who worked with the Soviet general staff on Warsaw Pact war plans. Kuklinski passed on to the CIA documents containing the Warsaw Pact plans for conducting military operations in Central Europe in the event of a war with NATO. The Russian had always been terrified that if a conflict started in Central Europe, it quickly would escalate into a nuclear conflict. Their tactics and strategy shifted in the 70s. Still determined to avoid war if possible, the Russians decided it was best to develop capacity to overwhelm NATO forces so fast that the conflict did not have the time to go nuclear. NATO learned, thanks to the documents provided by Kuklinski, that the Warsaw bloc would open their offensive with a massive attack of 2,000 aircraft, followed by a force of two million men on a front extending from Norway down to Turkey [my formatting].” (Fitzgerald & Packwood 101)
Given that the Americans had the advantage in intelligence technology during that period;“It was fair to say that by the 1970s, the White House knew as much about Soviet missiles as the Soviet Politburo. It can also be said that the Americans may, in some cases, known about just as much as did the Soviet Ministry of Defense itself,” (Fitzgerald & Packwood 100). The effects of this kind of knowledge had reverberated positively in the American DOD. As former Secretary of the Navy John Warner once remarked,
“Every morning we got up in the Department of Defense, the five years I was there, and had our intelligence briefing at around 7:30 in the morning… We understood how military decisions were made in the Soviet Union. They were done very carefully, very methodically, and were consistently reviewed with utmost care from the bottom to the top of the command system [my formatting].” Anticipation is a function of shrewdness; hence, ‘informed’ anticipation results in an active and rather positive shrewdness [emphasis added]. “…[B]ut we had confidence in the Soviet command and control system. They also had confidence in ours. We at DOD recognized that when tensions between the United States and the USSR rose too high, steps had to be taken to alleviate them so as to avoid a global catastrophe. And we did just that [my formatting,” (Fitzgerald & Packwood 54).
This was the temperament around the DOD in the late 1960s and early 1970s i.e. post the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It should be perspicuous that this temperament varied significantly from the erstwhile predominant cynicism at the DOD during the aforementioned crisis.
Read the full version on Apple Books: “U.S.-Russian Exceptionalism: Intelligence, MAD, and Détente”
Related Publications: “Sleepwalking back to 1914: A State of Imminent Danger of War?” “Why the “Russians Are Abandoning Their Posts and Fleeing Battle” Fairy Tale Is, Simply, Too Good to Be True: Away From Strategy, Just Pure Logic;” “Nord Stream 2: More Than a Pipeline [Part IV: The Apparition of Sarajevo 1914];” and, “An Excerpt From My Magisterial Thesis: “U.S.-Russian Exceptionalism: Intelligence, MAD, and Détente”
Reference
Fitzgerald, Michael R., and Allen Packwood, Out of the Cold: the Cold War and its Legacy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2013.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen days: a Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. London & New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.
