Stopping Putin: lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis
When Nikita Khrushchev, the pudgy Soviet leader, sneaked nuclear weapons onto Cuba in October 1962, barely 90 miles from Florida, Jack Kennedy, his US counterpart, was faced with three basic choices.
His first was to open a back-channel to the Kremlin and try and talk the mercurial Khrushchev into pulling his missiles out. The second (favoured by some of his generals) was to bomb the missile sites, followed by an invasion that would sweep Fidel Castro, Cuba’s charismatic Marxist leader, from power.
The young, untried President chose a third, more nuanced response that combined muscle with caution: he imposed a naval blockade around Cuba. He demanded the removal of the missiles, threatening to board and, if necessary, sink any Soviet vessel that tried to land more missiles onto the Caribbean island.
Khrushchev backed down. We know from Abyss, Max Hastings’ brilliantly researched account of the crisis, that, despite his grandstanding, Khrushchev didn’t want a nuclear war. The deal was sweetened with the removal of US nuclear missiles from Turkey.
The Cuban Missile Crisis and Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine are not analogous. US national security was in play then in a way that it is not now.
But they do have some important things in common. The most obvious is that, 61 years later, Western democracies are faced, yet again, with a revanchist Russia testing the limits of the liberal world’s mettle.
The second is that the man in the Kremlin is still an autocrat, surrounded by cronies, with virtually unlimited powers over a population where dissent is punished or ruthlessly expunged. He can do, and so far is doing, pretty much what he wants.
The third and most potent similarity is that, as unarmed civilians die every day in Ukraine under a rain of missiles, the quiet menace of a nuclear escalation hangs, like the sword of Damocles, over the liberal world’s response to the outrage.
The potential for an irreversible error must be weighed up by Ukraine’s allies every time the embattled country considers ratcheting up the military stakes. President Joe Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz are taking Putin’s threats at face value, which is probably wise.
But the fact is that, despite his armed forces catastrophic performance since the invasion last February, Putin has so far prevailed in this monstrous game of chicken. We are observing his red lines. Putin escalates. The West responds.
Putin, like an old school Mafioso who threatens to wipe out your family if you resist his incursion into your territory, is in the driving seat. We are dancing to his tune.
Meanwhile what we have on the ground amounts to a stalemate. Ukraine is not losing but it is not really winning either. More heavy weapons will help. But Russia’s has deep reserves of men and materiel and a limitless capacity for suffering.
Sanctions are biting, but there’s no sign that they have inflicted serious damage on Putin’s standing. Russian energy exports to Europe have shrunk in volume but have soared by nearly 70% to China.
It seems crazy but, despite the explosion of world trade and free markets, global money flows and travel, relations between Russia, China, the US and Europe remain almost as fractious as they were in 1962. The world order, it seems, is frozen in aspic.
The Soviet Union has ceased to exist. But Russia’s instincts remain those of an imperialist power. It’s not just about the loss of its vassal states. It’s about a deeply ingrained view of the Rodina, the motherland, and its entitlement to a place at the top table of world powers.
Moscow has forged new and powerful alliances (Iran) and been careful to burnish existing ones (India). Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to South Africa last week was a spectacular example of Moscow’s realpolitik.
Despite the sanctions, despite the escalating weapons flow to Ukraine, despite the opprobrium, Russia is rubbing along nicely.
When Kennedy faced down Khrushchev he knew very little about what was going on inside the Politburo. Khrushchev’s real intentions emerged bit by bit as the US poked and probed its way forward.
Sixty years on, it is not obvious that we know very much more about how decisions are made in Putin’s Kremlin. Talk of a coup is mere conjecture.
Kennedy only had one constituency to worry about – the US voter. The landscape for the loose coalition that has formed to thwart Putin’s war is more complex. This makes things trickier.
Biden has a wafer thin majority in the Senate and none in the House of Representatives. Scholz meanwhile carries the weight of Germany’s Nazi past as he navigates calls for greater German military involvement.
It is now, however, crystal clear, even to the ultra-cautious Scholz, that Putin’s war poses a wider existential threat to Europe. Georgia, Crimea, Transnistria, Chechnya, Ukraine – it won’t stop there. Why should it? Putin’s foreign adventures are recidivism on a global scale. But they are also entirely in keeping with the Russian impulse to impose its will on its near abroad.
The decision by the UK, US, Germany and Poland to send top-of-the-range tanks to Ukraine marks an important turning point. It pits the West firmly against Russia. It signals an implicit understanding that the West’s war aims are not merely to save Ukraine but to stop Russia. But it’s not enough.
What might a next step look like?
The Russian army’s dismal performance should not obscure the fact that Russia has made important strategic gains — not least by effectively cutting off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. It has secured the coastline along the sea of Azov, establishing the long-sought land bridge between Russia and Crimea.
Moscow’s ultimate aim is to extend Russian territorial control along the entire northern coast of the Black Sea, turning a reduced Ukraine into a land-locked country. It has its sights set on Odessa. Such an outcome would escalate the conflict to a global level.
The port of Odessa is a vital part of the world’s food programme. If Russia shuts it down, millions face famine. The stranglehold Moscow exerts over Odessa is comparable to the 1980s tanker war, when Iran blocked Iraqi oil exports.
Wheat and oil are both critical strategic commodities. Then, the US and its partners escorted tankers through the Straits of Hormuz to restore the flow of oil. They could choose to do the same for grain out of Odessa.
Protecting grain-carrying bulk carriers out of Odessa would be a legitimate, humanitarian response to a potential food crisis. Russia’s argument that it will allow Ukrainian grain free passage only if the West lifts sanctions is hardly serious.
This would not be a simple exercise. It would carry risks.
The Black Sea is in international waters. But under the Montreux Convention of 1936 countries along the Black Sea get special naval privileges, while other countries are strictly limited in what ships may enter the sea.
Crucially Turkey would have to agree to naval vessels entering and leaving the Black Sea through the Bosphorus Strait. So far it has not.
If Russia is to be stopped, something fundamental needs to change. A way has to be found to place Putin on the back foot or this ghastly war of attrition could go on for a very long time.
Perhaps it’s time to dust off Kennedy’s Cuban Missile Crisis handbook.
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