Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[...] we can say authoritatively that the world came closest to blowing itself up during thirteen days in October 1962. Two superpowers overarmed with nuclear weapons challenged each other in what could have spiraled so easily into the ultimate catastrophe. "
(From Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Foreword)

I have a personal recollection of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962: I was 11, beginning the sixth grade of the elementary school in Warsaw. I exactly remember where I was sitting in the classroom when one of the teachers came in, very serious, and told us that there may be a war. She was so somber and so serious that even I, the class clown, stopped giggling. Only for a while, of course; after all, death does not exist when one is 11.

On October 16, 1962, the U.S. intelligence finds out that Soviet missiles and atomic weapons are being placed in Cuba. This poses the most direct and serious threat to the security of the country in the entire history of the United States. President J.F. Kennedy understands that he has to react and that how he reacts may affect not only the U.S. and the Soviet Union but also the entire world. The 13-day "game of chicken" begins between JFK and the large group of his closest advisors, members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, on one side, and General Secretary of the Soviet Communist party, N. Khrushchev, and his closest advisors, on the other.

Yet this is not an ordinary, simple "game of chicken", where the "winner", if any, is the player who does not blink first. During the Cuban crisis both players know that since they are not allowed to lose, they must not attempt to win either but instead try to exit the game without claiming victory or defeat. At least this is what rational players should do. Humankind can be thankful to both J.F.K. and N. Khrushchev that they were rational players and managed jointly to find an exit from the crisis without any side having a right to claim victory. On the other hand, imagine (completely hypothetically, of course) that the President of the United States is a complete idiot. Hundreds of millions of people would be likely to evaporate in nuclear blasts if such a hypothetical moron serving as the president were trying to win the game.

Thirteen Days. A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis is written by Robert F. Kennedy, JFK's brother, closest advisor, and the Attorney General at the time of the crisis. This is an extraordinary document of one of the most crucial episodes of the 20th century. The narrative is wonderfully concise, clear, compulsively readable, and even if the positive aspects of JFK's handling of the crisis may perhaps be a little overstated, RFK manages to keep editorial balance and also present Secretary Khrushchev in quite a positive light.

I very much admire various observations and recommendations by RFK. For instance, if what he writes about several highest-rank military commanders and their pressure to attack Soviet Union immediately is true, this is really scary and puts a huge dent in my rather positive opinion of the military. I would also like to emphasize one of the most crucial passages in the book:

"The final lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country's shoes."

The text is very well written and reads like a first-class thriller. The tension peaks at two moments: on Wednesday, October 24, 1962, when the naval quarantine goes into effect and when the world gets “the first glimpse of the brink of war”. The second peak occurs on Saturday, October 27, night; both JFK and RFK are now pessimistic about chances of avoiding war. Still, the rationality of both K's (Kennedy and Khrushchev) prevailed.

RFK's text is quite short, about 80 pages. It is accompanied by a lucid Foreword written in 1999 by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and an Afterword, written in the early 1970s by two eminent political scientists. The Afterword is a deeply specialized study of various aspects of the conflict, particularly the role of checks and balances in foreign policy and the respective roles of the President and the Congress - not for a casual reader like myself.

The slim volume ends with the full texts of President Kennedy's speeches and several letters exchanged during the crisis between JFK and Khrushchev. An extremely interesting and very highly recommended book.

Four-and-a-quarter stars.


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