A Near Tragedy Of Errors

A quarter-century ago, they played a game of nuclear chicken, bringing the planet terrifyingly close to destruction. Last week in Moscow, many of the same men who were involved in the Cuban missile crisis met to discuss the confrontation. In a form of diplomatic glasnost, senior Americans, Soviets and Cubans for the first time traded candid observations on the drama that had the world holding its breath for 13 perilous days in October 1962.

President John F. Kennedy's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy were among the Americans present. The Soviets were represented by the likes of former Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and onetime Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin. The Cubans were led by Politburo member Jorge Risquet. The atmosphere, said a participant, was one of "remarkable bonhomie." However, the meeting revealed that all three parties acted out of basic misperceptions during the crisis. Among them:

-- The U.S. believed that the Soviets were planting nuclear missiles in Cuba to counter American installation of warheads in Turkey. But the Soviet missiles were intended, at least in part, to neutralize the threat of a U.S. invasion of the island, which Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuba's Fidel Castro believed to be imminent. Despite the movement of U.S. air and land forces to the southeastern U.S. in the early fall of 1962 and the fact that an invasion was proposed to Kennedy as a serious option (he rejected it), McNamara insists that such an action was never in the works. But, he added, "if I were in ((the Cubans')) shoes, I have no doubt that I would have thought the same thing."

-- Kennedy and his advisers never knew for certain whether there were nuclear warheads already in Cuba in October 1962. The Soviets disclosed last week that 20 warheads were indeed on the island; they could have been fitted within hours on missiles targeted for Washington, New York and other major U.S. cities.

-- U.S. intelligence estimated that there were 10,000 Soviet and 40,000 Cuban troops on the island. Actually, the Soviets had 40,000 troops stationed there, and Cuban soldiers numbered 270,000. Had the U.S. invaded, said McNamara, "casualties would have been more than twice what we figured."

The Moscow conference made plain the huge pitfalls of a superpower crisis in the nuclear age. "The horrifying extent to which we all misunderstood what was going on," said McNamara, "is the absolutely fundamental lesson for the future. Given what's at stake, crises are too dangerous to manage. They must be avoided."