John F. Kennedy and the Missiles of October

Resolute Leadership: When the Interests of the Nation – and the World - Took Precedence over Political Interests…

First, Some Background…

Many Americans will have difficulty recalling October, 1962 because they had yet to be born.  But I recall those days very well, and I am willing to bet most of my baby boom contemporaries – and their surviving parents – will recall them, too.

I was in the fourth grade.  At least once a week, air raid sirens would blare in my hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut, and students and faculty at the Darcey School would proceed to the school’s very own bomb shelter.  That’s right!  In addition to blackboards, chalk, erasers, wooden desks with inkwells, American flags, a cafeteria with real-live Moms cooking lunch for you and all the things one would expect of a 1960s-era seat of education, we had a bomb shelter.  So did all the other schools in our area.  We would sit inside this vault-like structure for a little while, and then the sirens would signal “all clear.”  We’d return to our little desks, and continue our studies.

Why did we have air raids and bomb shelters?  Because we were convinced the day would come when Nikita Khrushchev, Chairman of the Soviet government in Moscow, would launch nuclear-tipped missiles at the United States.  And in Moscow, members of the Soviet government worried about similar missiles, launched from America, landing on their cities.  This was the crux of what we knew as The Cold War: a bitter competition between Soviet communism and Western democracy.  There are thousands of books about the Cold War, and for anyone who cares to investigate how very close we came to blowing up the planet, I heartily recommend reading a few of them.  I guarantee you’ll find the experience an eye-opener.

In 1962, John F. Kennedy was in the second year of his presidency.  Now, one must understand: things were different then.  We didn’t live in the hyper-cynical, negative national mood with which we cope today.  24/7 news did not exist.  Cable TV did not exist. In fact, there were only 3 television networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. If Walter Cronkite told us something on the CBS Evening News (which lasted 15 minutes in those days; it went to a 30-minute format in 1963) chances were we believed him because we felt he had no separate agendas other than to report the news.  Around midnight, an Indian appeared on the TV screen and the network signed off, with The Star Spangled Banner, until perhaps 6 the next morning. So, if one were inclined to watch television at, say, 3 a.m., one watched a rather long, boring show about an Indian.

Even more entertaining, there was no Internet.  There were no PCs. No Blackberrys.  Men, and more women than Gloria Steinem and her Women’s Lib wrecking crew led baby boom women to believe, went to offices with typewriters in them around 9 a.m. on weekdays and came home by about 5:30.  The stores (no malls, thank you very much) were open on Saturdays, but only churches were open for business on Sundays.  In 1962, Sunday was still respected as a “day of rest.”  Today, we feel guilty for resting.  So, we work harder and faster than our parents did in 1962, so we have what we perceive as more. Yet, against 1962 standards for work and leisure, we come up sucking wind today.  Go figure.

Most importantly, while things were far from perfect, there was a modicum of genuine respect for our elected leaders in 1962.  As president, John F. Kennedy was generally respected, even by most of his political opponents.  To those of us who were kids at the time, Kennedy was a hero.  His picture hung proudly in the classrooms.  We cut out articles from newspapers about what he was doing, and we discussed the world events in which he and our nation were deeply involved. President Kennedy reminded us of our dads; he was about the same age.  He had two neat kids.  And his wife was, well, a knockout. 

We knew there was an adversarial regime in Cuba, led by Fidel Castro. While Kennedy and Khrushchev are long gone, Castro is still there.  In 1962, we considered Castro rather mad.  Perhaps we were right.  We sang funny songs about him and old Khrushchev on the playground.  In 1961, the United States supported a failed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles.  This event, the Bay of Pigs invasion, temporarily tarnished Kennedy’s prestige. A year later, the Soviet Union elected to send military assistance to Castro, thus creating a communist base only 90 miles off the coast of Florida.  This might sound like small potatoes today.  But in 1962, it was as threatening as the specter of Fanatic Islamic terrorists with nuclear devices aimed at us today.  Perhaps it was even scarier, because the Soviet warheads packed enough wallop to wipe out 80 million Americans in one shot.  Think about it.

Kennedy and Leadership

John F. Kennedy’s leadership background had as its foundation a large, competitive family, non-stop health challenges, a string of private preparatory schools, Harvard, and service as a U.S. Navy officer.  His father, appointed U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain as Hitler’s dark shadow spread across Europe, took him and his older brother, Joe, with him to London.  There, Kennedy befriended multiple British personalities who had significant impacts on him.  Through interaction with Britons like David Ormsby Gore (later Sir David Ormsby Gore, the 4th Lord Harlech), Kennedy adopted leadership characteristics similar to those incorporated by Sir Winston Churchill and, later, Harold MacMillan (who was to become First Earl of Stockton). These included a penchant for placing one’s self in his or her opponent’s shoes prior to taking action during times of distress.

The Churchill Approach generally consisted of two prongs, or, as Barbara Leaming describes it in her book, Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman (W.W. Norton, New York, 2006) it was a “double-barrel” scenario:

1. Never negotiate out of weakness.
2. Never fear to negotiate.

Studying Kennedy’s evolvement between the World War II years and his run for the presidency in 1960, it is evident his years in England influenced him mightily.  Having witnessed the failure of the Chamberlain Government in London to negotiate from strength with Hitler, combined with the stalemate of the Cold War that pervaded U.S. policy from, literally, the end of the Second World War through the time of Kennedy’s election and beyond, Kennedy arrived at the White House determined to demonstrate a new brand of leadership in dealing with the Soviet Union, Communist China and their respective communist-supported satellites in the emerging “Third World.”  For superb background on those years, take a look at Michael Beschloss’s Kennedy and Khrushchev: The Crisis Years 1960 - 1963 (Edward Burlingame/Harper Collins, New York, 1991). 

Now, Kennedy was a superb political entrepreneur; a pragmatist of extraordinary proportions.  His ability to weigh political progress and authentic action for the good of the whole was uncanny.  But, he struggled with this equation.  Heir to a fortune, schooled at the best institutions America had to offer and financed lavishly by his father’s wealth, Kennedy may have chosen to fight solely the political battles he needed to fight to gain – and maintain – office.  And several of his blunders early in his tragically brief tenure as president suggest a tendency toward the former.  But by 1962, Kennedy was emerging as an authentic leader the likes of which few modern Chief Executives have demonstrated.  Yes, his personal life has been thoroughly investigated and found to have many flaws.  But that is not the crux of our discussion as it relates to his handling of the most serious international crisis this nation and the world have ever faced. Significantly, Kennedy had incredible capacity to separate his private life, his shaky health and his performance as a leader.

John F. Kennedy was under tremendous pressure from constituents, the Joint Chiefs, leaders of his own party, the entire Republican leadership and even a press that was generally cordial to him to take a “hard line” on Khrushchev.  Indeed, his rhetoric on the stump in 1960 hardly sounded like Democratic candidates of today: it was war-like and steeped in the need, according to then-Candidate Kennedy, to “get the nation moving again.”  And this after 8 years of Republican leadership in the White House under the direction of one of the nation’s greatest war heroes, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Bay of Pigs debacle was a constant reminder to Kennedy of one of his greatest political vulnerabilities: that public opinion would perceive him as an “appeaser,” a term attached to his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, for his backing of Chamberlain’s failed mission to bargain for peace (“peace in our time”) with Hitler at Munich in 1938. Indeed, hawks within the American government restrained with great difficulty their opinion that Kennedy was “weak.”  This not only grated on Kennedy’s nerves, it undermined his strategy for peace with the Soviets based on Churchillian premises: strength at the negotiating table yields positive results. 

When an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft photographed the undeniable evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba on October 14, 1962, Kennedy’s worst fears were about to come true: Khrushchev had lied; the promised “purely defensive” nature of Soviet assistance to Cuba was a ruse for nuclear bargaining chips Khrushchev intended to use to gain leverage against the West on the question of Berlin and other Cold War hot spots.  President Kennedy knew pressure to respond militarily would be over-the-top.  He knew that, politically, anything less than a military showdown with Khrushchev would not only kill Democratic hopes for the mid-term elections of that year, it would also kill his hopes for re-election in 1964.

But there was one little problem.  This time, weapons the world feared in 1938 were primitive compared to the downside of a miscalculation in 1962, where thermonuclear weapons were poised on launching pads of both sides.  Kennedy and Khrushchev both understood that, after a nuclear exchange, not much would be left to argue over.  The world would be finished.  And so, a highly disciplined, pragmatic leadership approach was the sole solution to what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Across 13 days of intensive debate with the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (“ExComm”), the Kennedy Administration developed an approach to the crisis based on a position of strength while allowing Khrushchev and the Soviet government a way out of the crisis without pushing them into a corner from which there was no escape. Instead of military invasion, a “quarantine” of Cuba pressed Soviet leaders to reconsider their position. Placing concerns over political downsides on the back burner, Kennedy put in a leadership performance perhaps unmatched by any Chief Executive.

The Soviets dismantled the missiles in Cuba and shipped them back home. No missiles flew. And lines of communication established between Washington and Moscow led to the first tentative steps toward détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.  A year after the missile crisis, the first limited nuclear test ban treaty was signed by both sides.

Kennedy could have decided for a military intervention in Cuba.  He could have exposed Khrushchev in a way that left the burly Soviet leader no choice but to fire his Cuban-based rockets at targets in Atlanta, Washington D.C. or New York.  That approach would have played well in many circles.  But the path Kennedy selected was the right one.  And it worked.

The Missiles of October: What We Learned

As leaders, we don’t face decisions involving global thermonuclear war every day.  Nevertheless, we do face decisions that involve people’s lives.  What we do makes a difference to families, friends, communities, churches and synagogues.  What we do can cause unnecessary stress or it can cause inspiration.  Think about it.

The next time you find yourself faced with a difficult decision, consider the Churchill/Kennedy approach that helped solve the Cuban Missile Crisis: deal out of strength, not for the purpose of bullying but for the purpose of causing respect.  And, then, let your strength become the tapestry for negotiation.  You need not let the rockets fly.  You need not place your adversary in a position from which she has no escape.  In fact, by placing yourself in her shoes, you gain the very perspective necessary to solve the problem.  Kennedy knew Khrushchev had his own hawks and political demons right there in Moscow.  He knew the Chairman had miss-stepped by placing offensive weapons in Cuba in the first place.  And he knew that rubbing Khrushchev’s nose in it would only deteriorate a situation that was already potentially deadly. 

For more than 20 years, John P. Schreitmueller has helped top leaders achieve exponential results through discreet, competent guidance. A veteran military andcorporate officer, he holds a Bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut State University, graduate credentials in Marketing from Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business and is a graduate of Harvard University, The John F. Kennedy School of Government Program on Leadership for Senior Executives.

Through his firm, Resolute Consulting Group LLC, Mr. Schreitmueller conducts engagements with board members, CEOs, business owners, professionals and celebrities throughout the United States, the United Kingdom and Western Europe.

The award-winning author of Of Dreams and Astronauts, John P. Schreitmueller appears regularly on syndicated radio shows such as Inside Washington and Newsbeat with Blanquita Cullum. He has also been a featured guest on The NBC Evening News with Tom Brokaw and CNN International. Noted as an international speaker on leadership and work/life strategies, his articles and comments appear in publications such as Workforce, The Atlanta Journal/Constitution, and Aviation Week & Space Technology.

For more information contact:
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