You need to read and be familiar with these instructions and the following support material before you come to class for this simulation. In addition, please have thought through possible positions for the Soviet, American, and Cuban sides in this crisis. As you prepare, please keep in mind that this crisis need not play out like the actual crisis of 1962, and that each side will want to secure its interests as much as possible.

Detailed Description and Rules for Each Session

Objectives

Negotiate a peaceful settlement to this international crisis while securing the interests of the people or country you represent. You will want to gain as many concessions from the other parties as you possibly can. Your jobs and reputations depend on it! You will also want to do so within the allotted time. The world depends on it! If the Soviet and American negotiators fail to come up with acceptable terms of settlement--their respective governments must approve them--World War III and nuclear conflict result!!

Players

The Superpowers: The negotiating teams from the Soviet Union and the United States will include two to four members (depending on the size of the class). The remaining people will be part of the Soviet Communist Party or the US Congress. One person will be selected for each side to serve as secretary, preparing negotiating sheets and tallying votes. Party members/legislators may chose through the presiding officers to remove and replace negotiators during timeouts or non-negotiating sessions.

Third Party Representatives: Several class members (appointed by the Secretary General) will be responsible for representing one of two sides (pro- or anti-Castro) in the ongoing Cuban struggle. As Representatives of the Castro government in Cuba you will pressure the Soviet Union to protect your interests. You argue that the missile bases are there for purely defensive reasons. You want as much Soviet backing as possible, especially since the United States has made clear with the Bay of Pigs invasion that it wants to topple the Castro government. Remember, the US has soldiers on Cuban soil at Guatanamo Bay. Representatives of the Cuban Refugees will pressure the United States to take vigorous action against the Castro's government. You claim that you have lost your freedom, property, and even family members due to the oppressive Castro regime. You fear the growing Cuban-Soviet alliance that is bolstering Castro's power and preventing you from returning to Cuba.

Session 1: Background        5 mins.

The General Secretary of the United Nations will announce the crisis. He will divide the class into Americans and Soviets and then announce the secretaries, The Third Party representatives (Cubans), and the governmental officials for each side, along with a neutral timekeeper. The General Scretary will also hand out crisis preparation sheets to each side at this time.

Session 2: Policy Debates        10 mins.

Each of the two superpowers will meet separately (out of hearing distance of each other), and they will complete the following actions.

1.    Discuss the crisis

2.    Decide on objectives in the crisis

3.    Decide on demands, possible actions, and proposals for settlement.

At least two proposals for settlement should be made and ranked in order of preference. The American President and the Soviet Premier will chair the discussions, and the secretary will prepare the crisis preparation sheets in duplicate. The General Secretary will collect a copy from each side.

Session 3: Negotiations        15 mins., including time outs

In this session the three negotiators for each of the superpowers will meet face to face with the rest of the participants acting as members of the American Congress or the Communist Party. The Third Party representatives will sit to the side of the negotiators. They will not take part directly in the negotiations but will answer questions when called upon by negotiators or lobby members of the respective legislatures. They can also initiate discussions with either side in order to bring pressure upon the United States and/or the Soviet Union to respect their interests. Each side will attempt to gain the most for their own nation or people; however, each side will have to consider the time element. Time is very important because with each moment of time in a crisis, tension can increase. Therefore, the time that is taken to settle the crisis will be kept by the timekeeper. For each minute spent in negotiations, a section of a large thermometer located on the blackboard will be filled. If the top of this thermometer is reached before a settlement is reached, it will be assumed that the tension became so great that World War III resulted. Therefore the negotiations will end and both sides will be losers. It is estimated that the crisis negotiation will take approximately 15 minutes. The total limit on actual time for negotiations will be 19 minutes. The General Secretary will, upon request, allow each side one two-minute conference. During this time each of the two panels will be allowed to confer with their legislators/party members. This time will not be added to the tension thermometer. During this timeout, legislators/party members can replace one or all members of the negotiating team. A settlement between the two sides must be in writing and must have the signature of the US President and the Soviet Premier, or their delegated agents.

Session 4: Reaction Session        5 mins.

In this session, the negotiators for each superpower will meet with their own legislators/party members and their actions will be approved or rejected by the members of the legislature/party. If the actions of the superpower that is a democracy (the United States) are not approved by the majority of members or if the actions of the USSR are not approved by at least 1/3 of the party, then a new round of negotiations will be needed. The secretaries will tabulate the results of the votes. In addition, the Congress or Communist Party may remove any of their negotators on their side and replace him or her during one of the time outs or during the reaction session. The new negotiators may be chosen independently of the General Secretary.

NOTE: If the settlement is rejected by the Congress or Cummnist Party, the following will be necessary.

1.    Sessions 3 & 4 will be repeated.

2.    The amount of time allowed for negotiations will be reduced to a maximum of 8 minutes for new negotiations, and 2 minutes for conferring with the legislature/party.

3.    The time meter will start with only 10 minutes remaining before doomsday, with no time outs.

4.    If the same result should occur--the settlement is rejected by either side--then negotiations will be considered a failure and World War III will result.

Brief Summary of Events

It is October 1962. Since 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon, the United States and the Soviet Union have been engaged in a nuclear arms race. This competition has included the development of strategic striking forces: long-range bombers and missiles of short, medium, and long-range capabilities. Russian missile bases can direct strikes over the North Pole at the United States. US missile bases both at home and in several allied countries (most notably Turkey, which is shares a southern border with the Soviet Union and therefore causes the Soviets much concern!!) can direct strikes at the USSR. (In 1962, however, the President has ordered the removal of the obsolete American Jupiter missiles from Turkey, since American Polaris submarines can now reach the same Soviet targets from the Mediterranean Sea.)

In Cuba, ninety miles off the US coast, the seven-year-old dictatorship of Batista was overthrown in 1959 by Fidel Castro with the initial support of the Cuban business and professional classes. This support has rapidly declined, and tensions with the United States have mounted as Castro has moved toward his avowed goal of social revolution. He has claimed for the Cuban people 1/3 of the sugar industry, 95% of public utilities, and the entirety of the Cuban oil refining industry, all owned by American corporations! When the US government rejected Castro's proposals for compensation to the owners as unsatisfactory and Castro moved simply to seize their holdings without any compensation, President Eisenhower virtually cut off American purchases of sugar, Cuba's chief export. Since October 1959, moreover, the US government has embargoed most American exports to Cuba. Increasingly dependent for markets and essential imports upon the Soviet Union, Castro has abandoned his early assurances that he was not a Communist and imprisoned or executed thousands of opponents of his regime. He has not, however, actively challenged the continued presence of American military forces that occupy one corner of Cuban soil--the historic US base at Guantanamo Bay.

In January 1961, John F. Kennedy became President of the United States after narrowly defeating Richard M. Nixon. Later that year, following a plan developed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under former President Eisenhower, a band of anti-Castro Cubans, largely recruited among the refugees in Florida, landed on the Cuban coast at the Bay of Pigs. This invasion proved a humiliating failure for Kennedy, as the expected uprising of Cuban people against the Castro regime failed to develop in response to the landing. Despite this failure, as Cuba's political, diplomatic, and military alignment with the USSR and the Communist bloc continued to develop, demands were voiced with increasing frequency, both in the United States and throughout Latin America, for action against Castro. Cuba has been expelled from the Organization of American States with its headquarters in Washington. Some Americans have suggested an invasion of Cuba to overthorw Castro and eliminate the only Communist oupost in the Western Hemisphere. The Sovet Union has claimed that the military equipment it is now supplying in profusion to Cuba is for purely defensive purposes, to repel any such eventual invasion. Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko has given Kennedy specific assurances in this regard.

Now, in October 1962, one month before US congressional elections, US aerial photographic reconnaissance has discovered that the Soviets are building missile launching sites in Cuba. The CIA's evaluation of this intelligence is that the missile sites can be operation within a week, providing an atomic warhead potential equal to one-half of the entire previous ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) capability of the Soviet Union. If the 16 to 32 missiles, which have a range of 1,000 miles, are fired upon the United States, 80 million Americans, it is estimated, will die.

The confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union is well established as a classic foreign policy crisis. it summoned up in the minds of participants the nightmare of all-out nuclear war, and forced both sides to make life-and-death decisions quickly and under conditions of psychological wear and tear that grew greater as the crisis consumed one week and extended into another. Then with the same suddenness that it had appeared, the crisis came to a resolution-to the relief of tension-wracked policymakers in Moscow and Washington.

In the United States the Cuban missile crisis has figured as the golden hour in the Camelot drama staged by the administration of President John F. Kennedy. The drama began with Kennedy entering office after a slim election victory over Dwight Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon. During the election Kennedy had attacked the political torpor of the Eisenhower years and promised to get the country "moving again." His inaugural address continued that activist theme. "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility-I welcome it." He singled out Latin America as a critical front in this battle for freedom.

But in fact the world proved more obdurate than Kennedy had expected. And so, rather than getting the nation going again, JFK almost at once suffered foreign policy failures that left the young president's skill and resolution in doubt and his administration vulnerable to criticism.

His first fiasco was an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's new revolutionary regime in Cuba by dispatching a force of Cuban exiles trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Eisenhower had approved planning for Castro's overthrow in January 1960, only a year after the latter's triumph over the dictator Fulgencio Batista. The goal was to put in place a Cuban government "more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the U.S " while avoiding "any appearance of U.S. intervention." By the time Kennedy entered the White House, plans for an invasion by Cuban exiles were well advanced, and Kennedy agreed to let the invasion go forward.

The landing at the Bay of Pigs on 17 April 1961 went all wrong. Kennedy cut back on the already limited air support for the landing. Castro, having correctly concluded that the United States would not tolerate a revolutionary regime nearby, had his army at the ready. And the Cuban people, defying the planners' predictions, did not rise up to support the landing. The setback was galling to Kennedy. He had electioneered against the Republican failure to hold Cuba, and now he had failed to redeem the loss.

Kennedy's initial dealings with Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the USSR and chairman of its Communist Party, was also a cause for chagrin. The two leaders had met for the first time in Vienna in June 1961. For three years Khrushchev had been challenging four- power occupation rights in Berlin, with the aim of extracting U.S., French, and British recognition of the eastern regime within a permanently divided Germany. His insistent, sometimes belligerent handling of this sensitive issue had raised tensions with the other three powers sharing control of the city. The Vienna meeting failed to open the doors to a diplomatic settlement. Indeed, the two leaders engaged in a bruising exchange that raised the possibility of war over Berlin. The two parted, with Khrushchev contending that he would act unilaterally by December and Kennedy muttering, "It will be a cold winter." In August Khrushchev imposed his own dramatic and simple solution on Berlin: he constructed a wall blocking Population movement out of the Communist-controlled eastern part of the city. Kennedy decided to acquiesce. But his earlier defense of the status quo made his response now look weak. Castro also helped set the stage for the crisis. He was determined not only to defend his revolution but also to take his country out of the tight U.S. orbit ill which it had moved for half a century. Castro rejected the view commonplace among North Americans of a benevolent relationship between teacher and student. He instead saw the United States intent on subordinating the island nation to mainland political and economic interests beginning formally with the U.S. intervention in 1898 to end Spanish colonial control. After a three-year military occupation Washington had maintained its own control by military interventions, the backing of a line of "responsible" Cuban leaders (most recently Batista), and the promotion and protection of private investments. Cuba could not shape its own destiny, whether revolutionary or even reformist, so long as this deep and complex pattern of Yanqui control continued. Castro was thus defiant in the face of mounting American pressure. As early as the spring of 1959 the CIA had begun small-scale operations including support for anti-Castro guerilla groups. In the summer of 1960, following the forging of Cuban diplomatic and trade ties with the USSR, Washington had retaliated by suspending Cuban sugar's favored access to the U.S. market, imposing a trade embargo, and setting in motion the first plot to assassinate Castro. In January 1961 the outgoing Eisenhower administration broke diplomatic relations in response to Cuba's nationalization of U.S. investments and Castro's tightening military and economic ties with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy came into office determined to keep up the pressure and bring Castro down. In November 1961 he authorized a covert operation whose code name, Mongoose, revealed Washington's hope to direct a fatal strike at Castro's regime. Run by Edward Lansdale, a veteran of counterinsurgency programs in the Philippines and Vietnam, Mongoose was one of the largest Cold War covert efforts. It included in its menu of options an invasion by U.S. forces, and military preparations for just such a contingency intensified through the summer and fall of 1962. Reflecting the priority Mongoose enjoyed, the president assigned his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor the responsibility for overseeing the project. Impatient for results, the oversight group pressed Lansdale forward into the fall and even into the first day of the missile crisis . Along with Mongoose, the CIA continued planning for Castro's assassination. Finally, in January 1962, the Kennedy administration secured Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States, a prelude to a program of intensified pressure on Castro's government.

Khrushchev watched the American campaign against Cuba with growing apprehension. He still wanted "peaceftil coexistence" with the United States, a position he had first laid out in 1956. In January 1961, just before Kennedy entered the White House, the Soviet leader repeated his call to compete with and overtake the capitalist'economies. "The quicker we increase economic construction, the stronger we are economically and politically, the greater will be the influence of the Socialist camp on historical development, on the destiny of the world." At the same time, in remarks read nervously in Washington, he made clear that he endorsed wars of national liberation. Such wars "will continue to exist as long as imperialism exists, as long as colonialism exists. These are revolutionary wars. Such wars are not only admissible but inevitable, since the colonialists do not grant independence voluntarily-" Cuba's "uprising against the internal tyrannical regime supported by U.S. imperialism" was a prime example of a trend in the "third world" that Khrushchev regarded as favorable to the USSR. The Vienna summit conversations between the Russian and American leaders brought the divergence of views on the third world in general and Cuba in particular sharply into focus.

Sometime during the spring of 1962 Khrushchev conceived his missile initiative. By then Cuban agents who had penetrated the exile groups had brought to light the invasion plans built into Operation Mongoose. U.S. military exercises in the Caribbean in April and May confirmed the possibility of an invasion. Khrushchev later recalled that he was then "haunted by the knowledge that the Americans could not stomach having Castro's Cuba right next to them. They would do something. They had the strength, and they had the means." Khrushchev was also agitated by the placement of U.S. Jupiter intermediate-range missiles in Turkey right on the Soviet border and within easy reach of Soviet targets. Kennedy himself had made the decision, in 1961, to place these already obsolete missiles in Turkey, and they had become operational in March or April 1962 just as Khrushchev was vacationing nearby on the Black Sea.

After discussions with his advisers, the Soviet leader decided in May to deploy clandestinely to Cuba forty-eight SS-4s (medium-range ballistic missiles or MRBMS) and thirty-two SS-5s (intermediate-range ballistic missiles or IRBMS). The SS-5s, with a range Of 2,200 miles, could reach virtually any part of the continental United States, while the SS-4s, with their 1,020 mile range, put under threat a broad arc extending as far north as Dallas, Saint Louis, Cincinnati, and Washington. These missiles were to be accompanied by forty-two light IL-28 bombers. Though outdated and vulnerable, they had a range of six hundred miles and thus could reach the southern United States. To protect the missiles and repel any invaders, surface-to-air missiles (SAMS), coastal defense missiles, and forty-two MIG-21 intercepters were also to go to Cuba. Khrushchev later recalled being assured by his security specialists that forests of pahn trees would keep the missiles out of American sight before they were operational. Once they were ready, he would publicly announce the missiles' presence in order to deter an American attack. The Soviet leader put his defense minister, Marshal Rodion Ya. Malinovsky, in overall charge of the deployment, while directing General of the Army Issa A. Pliyev to proceed to Cuba to lay the groundwork.

Early in June Havana agreed in principle to the Soviet plan. But Castro and his chief associates engaged in negotiating terms were soon at odds with Moscow's approach. They did not like the secretive nature of the Soviet plan, preferring a more ostentatious display of outside support based on a forthright claim to self-defense. The Cubans appear to have thought that basing the missiles in Cuba was significantly if not primarily intended to right the nuclear imbalance and strengthen the position of the socialist world. Once in place, these missiles would surely stay as a deterrent to any American attack against either the Soviet Union or Cuba. Finally, Havana was prepared to call the missiles offensive since their purpose was to strike the United States in case of war.

By August the CIA had begun to notice a major increase in Soviet personnel, equipment, and construction activity in Cuba. On io August John A. McCone, the agency's director, began to press for stepped-up use of high-altitude American reconnaissance aircraft (U-2s) on the suspicion that this buildup presaged the placement of surface-to-surface missiles aimed at the United States. By late in the month the president and his advisers were following developments closely, prompted in part by this unsettling intelligence and in part by Republican cries that the Soviets were creating a bastion right on the U.S. doorstep. But most of the leading figures in the Kennedy administration did not believe that Khrushchev would gamble with missiles, a view confirmed by a special intelligence review issued on 19 September. Thus with no sense of urgency in Washington, U-2 flights remained limited. Poor weather further slowed the pace of information gathering. In any case Kennedy wanted to keep Cuba out of the news so as not to inject "a new and more violent Cuban issue" into the congressional election campaign then in progress. If Cuba was the president's chance to prove himself, he was slow to recognize or embrace the challenge.

To deter Moscow as well as to quiet Republicans, Kennedy resorted to public diplomacy. On 4 September he issued a warning against the introduction of offensive weapons, and he followed up at a press conference on 13 September. Soviet officials including Khrushchev responded with denials that aid to Cuba involved "offensive" weapons, while insisting that Russia had the right to give Cuba military assistance as long as a threat of invasion hung over the island. They held to this position even into the first days of the crisis. For example, Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko arrived at the White House on 18 October for a longstanding appointment. Questioned by Kennedy, he denied that any of the Soviet assistance to Cuba was offensive or meant to threaten the United States. It was intended, rather, to help Cuba stave off an American attack.

A U-2 flight over Cuba on 14 October finally captured the incriminating images--and plunged the Kennedy team into crisis. On the morning of the sixteenth Kennedy himself was informed and then given a briefing that quickly turned into a discussion of potential American responses. Over the next several days the CIA filled out the alarming picture: Cuba held between sixteen and thirty-two missiles, which would probably be operational within a week and might be able to inflict as many as eighty million casualties on American cities. Neither then nor later in the crisis was American intelligence certain that nuclear warheads for these delivery systems had yet reached Cuba. (In fact, thirty-six warheads ultimately arrived and were placed some distance apart from their missile carriers.) The next several days were marked by intense discussions as Kennedy and his aides met as an executive committee (ExComm) of the National Security Council. Three different responses-each geared to the ultimate removal of the missiles-came quickly to the fore and dominated the next five days of discussion: an air strike or invasion, negotiations, and a blockade. Finally, on 22 October, Kennedy went before television cameras to announce to the nation the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba and the implementation of a blockade. The U.S. navy would lay down a "quarantine" line to prevent threatening military hardware from reaching Cuba. He warned that an attack from Cuba would be regarded as coming from the USSR itself.

The crisis now entered the period of greatest peril. On the twenty-third and twenty-fourth Khrushchev responded with letters condemning the quarantine as a gross violation of international law and an attempt to strip the USSR Of its sovereign right to deal with another sovereign, Cuba, as the two saw fit. He contended that Soviet ships would not respect the blockade and warned that the United States "pushes mankind toward the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war " All attention turned to the showdown at the quarantine line five hundred miles from Havana. On the morning Of 24 October the Soviet ships halted short of the line. Some turned back, although tankers were allowed to continue to Cuba. As the tension building in Washington momentarily broke, Secretary of State Dean Rusk is supposed to have remarked, "We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked." The confrontation, however, remained serious. The construction on the missile sites continued, and already nine missiles had been assembled. American forces, including 140,000 troops, gathered in Florida in preparation for an invasion, while U.S. strategic nuclear forces Went on high alert. The Cuban military also mobilized for war. By contrast, Soviet and allied east European forces made no dramatic preparations for the looming conflict.

Pressures on policymakers reached their height on 26-27 October. The ExComm began its work on the twenty-sixth by discussing possible courses that would get Soviet missiles out of Cuba. Late on the twentysixth Khrushchev wrote privately to Kennedy, again condemning the blockade as a reckless act of aggression but this time offering to remove the missiles in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. That evening, without the knowledge of the ExComm, Kennedy had his brother Robert visit with the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. (This was but one of a string of private meetings between the two.) With the president's approval, they began exploring a deal that included removal of American Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Perhaps responding to this initiative, Khrushchev came back on the twenty-seventh with a public letter, broadcast over Radio Moscow, that suggested a trade of Cuban and Turkish missiles as well as a noinvasion pledge as the basis for an agreement. Meanwhile the ExComm continued to explore courses of action and then was electrified by the news of the downing over Cuba of a U-2 by a SAM thought to be under Soviet control.

By late on 27 October the ExComm was uncertain of Soviet intentions, unclear about the elements that might combine to produce a settlement, and fearful of losing control of the crisis. At the same time news came in that an Alaska-based U-2 had strayed into Soviet territory, thus adding to the edginess of both sides. An agitated Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara exclaimed, "This means war with the Soviet Union' "10 The participants continued to agree that removal of the missiles from Cuba was imperative, but they still divided on the best means and the degree of risk each course entailed.

After prolonged discussions, Kennedy deferred a decision on military action, while embracing the first Soviet offer of an American no- invasion pledge in exchange for withdrawal of the Soviet missiles. He chose to ignore, at least in his direct communications with Khrushchev, the issue of the Jupiter missiles raised in the Dobrynin contacts and in Khrushchev's second letter.

To push Khrushchev toward acceptance Kennedy used both carrot and stick. Between the afternoon and evening ExComm meetings on the twentyseventh the president met with a small group from the ExComm that included his brother and his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, as well as Rusk and McNamara. The group quickly reached a consensus on putting the Jupiters on the table. Meeting secretly with Ambassador Dobrynin later that same day, Robert Kennedy promised that the missiles in Turkey would be withdrawn after the crisis was resolved. (Robert Kennedy later claimed that he also warned of military action if Moscow did not accept the trade offered in Khrushchev's first letter, but the Soviet ambassador has denied that any threats were made.) Just in case Khrushchev rejected the private deal and a formal trade of the Jupiters became necessary to avoid war, the president prepared a fallback without telling the ExComm. He had Rusk draft a proposal along the lines of Robert Kennedy's promise for possible delivery to U Thant, secretary general of the United Nations (UN).

The next morning (28 October) Khrushchev accepted Kennedy's offer of a settlement on the basis of the premier's own first letter. However, the Soviet leader supplemented the formal radio announcement with a private letter indicating that he regarded the Jupiter withdrawal as part of the overall bargain. The worst of the crisis was over.

As the pieces of a settlement fell into place, a resentful, sullen Castro refused to cooperate. Ready to die fighting in defense of Cuba's independence, he had at the height of the crisis contemplated a Soviet first-strike against the United States. Khrushchev had instead agreed to withdraw the missiles without consulting his ally. Castro learned of the deal over the telephone from a newspaper editor who had been following the Associated Press ticker. A betrayed Castro exploded, "Son of a bitch! Bastard! Asshole!" Unwilling to compromise his country's sovereignty, Castro would not countenance UN or other international inspectors snooping about Cuban soil to verify the removal of the missiles, nor would he sanction overflights into Cuban airspace. Perhaps with the hope of disrupting the Soviet-American accord, he even advanced his own broader set of demands on 28 October, including surrender of the American base at Guantanamo (at the southeastern tip of the island) and an end to Washington's program of economic warfare and subversion. Immediately after the settlement Khrushchev sought to calm Castro's anger. He personally responded to his ally with justifications for his bargain with Kennedy and earnest homilies on the dangers of nuclear war (Documents 22 and 24). Anastas Mikoyan, Moscow's main high-level contact with Cuba, arrived in Havana on 1 November for a three-week pacification campaign. (On 8 November, in the midst of this visit, a Mongoose team that Washington was not able to recall blew up a Cuban factory, heightening Castro's doubts about U.S. intentions and Soviet judgment.) Kbrushchev capped his bridge-mending effort in late January 1963 with an ingratiating invitation to visit the Soviet Union, where generous trade agreements and credits awaited the Cuban leader. Throughout, Khrushchev insisted that the missile gambit had made Cuba more secure and that the Soviet Union would continue with its program of economic and military support. Khrushchev appears not to have revealed the concession on the jupiters missiles that he had extracted from Kennedy until Castro's visit in 1963-and even then the information seems to have come out inadvertently.

Castro's resistance and American demands complicated the final resolution of the crisis and set off a round of sparring between Khrushchev and Kennedy on one side and Khrushchev and Castro on the other. Unable to monitor the dismantling of weapons on the ground, Kennedy was forced to rely on aerial surveillance. In this Khrushchev cooperated by having the launchers on board outbound Soviet ships bared for reconnaissance cameras. When Kennedy insisted that the IL-28 bombers be included in the list of offensive weapons to be removed, Khrushchev resisted on the grounds that they had been turned over to the Cubans for coastal defense duties and in any case were not covered by the bargain worked out in late October. Khrushchev for his part pressed a resistant Kennedy to formalize the no-invasion pledge.

On 19-20 November the two reached an accord that brought the crisis to a definitive conclusion. Having finally gotten Castro's grudging acquiescence, Khrushchev promised to remove the bombers within thirty days, and Kennedy lifted the blockade. The no- invasion pledge remained as Kennedy wanted it, a highly qualified commitment contingent above all on Castro's good behavior. Khrushchev continued in early December to press for a more satisfactory American statement, but Kennedy would not budge. In April 1963 Kennedy finally delivered on the last, tacit element of the bargain by removing the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. On only two points did Castro get his way: no inspectors violated Cuban sovereignty, and one of the four Soviet combat regiments remained behind despite Washington's call for the withdrawal of all Soviet troops.