Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

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Probably the biggest takeaway of the book was that as in the words of McNamara the missile crisis was not actually a 'military crisis' but rather a 'political crisis'. The reason for that is because the geopolitical strategic balance had not really been modified by the placement of the missiles in Cuba. At the same time, the withdrawing of the US Jupiter missiles from Turkey would not have been any difference either because the missiles were obsolete and out of date. At the time nuclear missiles on submarines were just as dangerous and there were Soviet submarines with such missiles near the US and US submarines with such missiles near the Soviet Union yet nobody made a big fuss about it. However, publicly Kennedy could not be seen to accept the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba so close to the US. If he would have allowed that to go on his Presidency would be compromised and he would have had no chance for a second term.

Kennedy had many, by now, well known and copiously documented faults.His willingness however, to refrain from the lethal and precipitate action pressed so hard upon him by his military advisors while he pursued a diplomatic solution, I believe, represents his ‘finest hour’. It is a strange paradox that so many of the men who performed so well during this crisis exercising cool nerves and sound judgement such as McNamara, Rusk, Bundy etc would be abandon such qualities and have their reputations destroyed and swallowed up by the quagmire of the Vietnam war just a few short years later. Meanwhile, Hastings also presents a portrait of Castro that strongly belies his popular image as a romantic revolutionary. Specifically, Castro encouraged Khrushchev to launch a preemptive nuclear strike, believing – not unlike North Korea’s Kim Jong Un – that the fate of his regime overrode all other considerations. Castro’s willingness to start an atom-splitting war – which he personally admitted long after the Crisis ended – thus provided a pretty good reason for the U.S. to insist upon putting distance between Castro and the Soviet Union’s ballistic armaments. Hastings, though, never seems to realize he is wrongfooting himself. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Another is the cultural and national assumptions that all those involved brought to the table. Hastings points out that, "In the eyes of all save Americans, a piece is missing from both the fevered October 1962 discussions in Washington and most histories published since. US leaders took it for granted that their country could not be expected to endure the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. It was undoubtedly the case that domestic opinion regarded the deployment as representing as much a mortal insult as a deadly peril. But, echoing Harold Macmillan's courteous observation to JFK, there was no more logical or legal cause why the Cubans should not choose to host nuclear weapons on their soil than that the Turks, Italians or British should be denied such a right. European NATO members had lived for years with a proximate Soviet atomic threat. The American debate was conducted by men wearing historical blinkers - sharing the assumption that the United States had privileges in determining what was, and was not, acceptable in Cuba such as were a commonplace to President Theodore Roosevelt, but represented an anachronism in 1962." The US took its imperialism for granted, much as the Soviet Union assumed that America was weak and decadent. Hastings comments elsewhere that Kennedy's reality was not Khruschev's reality, that they did not see the world in the same way and could not assume that the other would react in the same way to events as they would themselves. That is good advice in personal interactions, never mind in international affairs, and it is remarkable that it was not applied more thoughtfully during the Crisis.But, of course, it wasn’t and Max Hastings enthralling book tells how the world almost ended sixty years ago. A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history' Daily Telegraph

From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph JS Tennant in his review of ABYSS in The Guardian, October 16, 2022 points out that “In January this year, Russia’s deputy foreign minister threatened to deploy “military assets” to Cuba if the US continued to support Ukrainian sovereignty. As has become all too apparent in the past weeks, tactical nuclear missiles are still a threat, along with chemical weapons and supersonic missiles. It’s as if Russia’s desperate scramble to maintain influence will stop at nothing and, as Hastings points out, ‘the scope for a catastrophic miscalculation is as great now as it was in 1914 Europe or in the 1962 Caribbean.’ Abyss provides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted.” Despite their certainty of success, the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed strangely unconcerned that their overwhelming conventional forces might require the Soviet Union to escalate to the use of nuclear missiles and bombs. They were also unaware that tactical nukes had been sent to Cuba and – in the high heat of an amphibious assault – could very well have been used on the beaches. What sets Hastings’ account apart from other historians is his integration of the views of everyday individuals in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. Cuban peasants, Russian workers, and American college students are all quoted as to their reactions and emotional state during the crisis. The result is a perspective that is missing from other accounts and educates the reader as to the mindset of ordinary citizens who would pay the ultimate price if the crisis had gone sideways. Max Hastings excellent book on the Cuban Missile Crisis is terrifying, not least because of its contemporary relevance as relations between Russia and the West enter a new, colder phase. The events that unfolded in late 1962 as the USA realised that the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba and sought to secure their removal are quite possibly the closest humanity has ever come to self-extinction. Hastings journalistic instinct for storytelling serves to capture the drama of those frantic days, and his understanding of the principal actors involved on all sides, and of their motivations, add a further depth of insight. All told, this is a first-rate piece of popular narrative history.

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A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet. This is a new history for a new generation, putting fresh, international context on an astonishing military and political showdown. In those throes of the Cold War, hundreds of millions of people around the world were, for some days, terrified that a nuclear holocaust was imminent. Bringing together the threads of American bellicosity and Soviet brinksmanship, it becomes clear that while both sides eventually stepped away from destruction, that does not mean disaster was not terrifyingly close. Hastings corrects a number of myths associated with the crisis. One of the most famous was the idea that on October 24, 1962, as Soviet ships approached the quarantine line the White House held its breath as to whether they could stay the course. In reality no merchant ship carrying weapons or troops approached anywhere near the invisible line. Soviet ships had reversed course the previous day, only one of which was closer than 500 miles. This was due in large part because of the weakness American naval communications. Another area that historians have overlooked was events in the Atlantic Ocean – particularly concerning were four Soviet submarines, one carrying a nuclear warhead. Hastings explores this aspect of the crisis, and the reader can only cringe as to what Washington did not know and the slow communication process that existed throughout the crisis. Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard. I wanted to read about the Cuban missile crisis for quite some time so the release of Max Hastings' The Abyss was perfect. Hastings does a fantastic job of telling the terrifying story of the crisis using both historical archives but also eye witness testimonies.