Crisis and Conciliation – the Way to Peace

By Neil Earle

October, 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of the somber Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Though this event sometimes draws a yawn from younger students as over-reported there is a good case to be made for taking a second look. The Cuban Missile Crisis – sometimes called “the Gettysburg of the Cold War” – was almost a case study in how principles of peace-making and reconciliation can and do play out in the very public arena of world politics. In fact, this event calls to mind other public moments of practical peacemaking that is worth our attention.

The Highest Stakes

By the 1960s the United States and the then USSR were well on their way to building more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in each of their arsenals. Even by 1962 they had the capability to obliterate each other fifty times over. As one journalist said at the time: “Once would be quite enough."

Why, then, did Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev take the foolhardy step of placing medium and intermediate range nuclear missile on the island of Cuba. Well, arms races have consequences. The Soviet leader hoped to cut down the enormous American superiority in ICBMs, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that could reach the Soviet Union in twenty-five minutes from silos in the northern United States.

The Soviet’s reckless act 90 miles off American shores forced President John F. Kennedy’s (1961-1963) hand. He learned of the missiles from U-2 spy plane flights over Communist Cuba by October 16, 1962. After intense closed-door deliberations over the best response, the President decided on caution. He took to the television on Monday, October 22 to announce to the world a naval quarantine, a blockade of all Soviet ships bound for Cuba. Thus began the week when the world held its breath. Soviet ships trying to storm the blockade could provoke American retaliation and that could lead to…well, no-one wanted to think that far.

President Kennedy and his chief advisor and brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had vociferously opposed either air strikes or invasion on Cuban soil where Russians could be killed. This would be a” Pearl Harbor in reverse,” warned Robert Kennedy. It would “blacken the name of the United States in the pages of history.”

“A Soft Answer”

Very well. Blockade it was. As Soviet ships neared the US Navy “red line” that perilous week, the President received a note from Chairman Khrushchev on Friday night October 26 which offered a deal – Soviet missiles dismantled for an American pledge not to invade Cuba. This Friday night message looked promising. But Saturday morning a much sterner note arrived from Moscow. This second letter threw the White House planners into renewed consternation. What to do? Sagely, the President decided to answer the “good note.” Yes, let’s make a deal – no invasion and you remove the missiles.

Thus by October 28 Russian shops were stopped or turning away from Cuba. The crisis had ended for many reasons but one of them being the U.S. President unwittingly applying a proverbial Biblical principle of peacemaking. This was found in Proverbs 15:1. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger( KJV).”

The impact of this one small verse speaks for itself, in world crises as well as individual Christ-like behavior.

“Re-examining Attitudes”

Question: Who would have thought the Bible would have had anything to say bearing on major world crises?

Answer: Anyone who had read it with attention.

Out of the successful resolution of the famous Cuban Missile Crisis came, eventually, the hotline installed between Moscow and Washington, a key safety system in the ongoing Cold War (Beschloss, The Crisis Years, page 602). Also, after much negotiation, came the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, a signed agreement with inspections whereby the United States and the Soviet Union promised to end nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Atmospheric radioactivity’s health effects were causing medical doctors major alarm by 1962.

At the American University on June 10, 1963 President Kennedy had urged these steps and added: “Some say that it useless to speak of world peace…until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes.”

President Kennedy’s avowed intention not to humiliate the Soviets over Cuba and to allow his Soviet opponent a way to “save face” was strangely predictive of another American President’s winning style. This time Republican George H. W. Bush sat in the White House – like John F. Kennedy, a decorated World War Two veteran of the Pacific war.

It was 1989 and the Soviet Union was showing signs of coming apart. The end of the Cold War suddenly loomed as an important possibility. “Bush Senior” or “Bush 41” as we know him today was watching events unfold in Eastern Europe. On November 9, 1989 came the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the ugly symbol in concrete of the split between East and West running through Germany’s old capital. When the wall came down, Bush was urged by more vociferous members of both parties to stand up and “declare victory in the Cold War,” or at least send more overt aid to those protestors in East Europe still agitating for freedom against their Communist overlords.

But President Bush was a man of caution and experience. As Vice President under Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) he had travelled the world, knew many heads of state personally. He knew the ways of international diplomacy and military balances of power. On October 23, 1989 he wrote the West German government that he approved of their careful approach so far. “We are trying to react very cautiously and carefully to change in East Germany,” he said to the German President. “We have great respect for the way West Germany has been handling this situation….We are getting criticism in the Congress that we ought to be doing more to foster change, but I am not going to go so far as to be reckless” (Newsweek, November 8, 1999, page 26).

President Bush remembered the way Czechoslovakia’s early reform movement had been crushed in August, 1968. And the 20,000 Hungarians killed after the failed revolution there in 1956. He knew the Soviet Union had hundreds of thousands of troops in Eastern Europe. He also knew how counterproductive it was to humiliate an adversary in decline. Maybe he even understood the wise principle Jesus had enunciated in Mathew 5:25, “Agree with your adversary quickly” (KJV). In his dairy he repeated his “go slow” strategy:

“I keep hearing the critics saying we’re not doing enough…I think it’s crazy. And if we mishandle this and get way out in front looking like the rebellions are an American project – you would invite crackdown that could result in bloodshed. The longer I’m in the job, the more I think prudence is a value and experience matters…” (All My Best, pages 441-442).

Prudence a Virtue

Prudence is indeed a virtue, as is “forbearance” or “moderation: as many Biblical texts allow (Philippians 4:5). President Bush’s caution and temperance while the Soviet Union itself unraveled in those years helped let the Germanys unify themselves without bloodshed. Plus one big benefit, often overlooked. It helped set the stage for the biggest ever single reduction in nuclear forces between the superpowers. In July, 1991 President Bush and Soviet leader Gorbachev signed the largest nuclear arms reduction as part of START I. START I (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) limited the US and USSR to 6,000 accountable strategic nuclear warheads and 1600 deliver vehicles on each side. This was down from 23,000 US and 22,000 USSR when the decade began. Even Richard Rhodes, an arms limitation specialist, wrote: “It was not nuclear abolition but it was a measurable stride down that road” (Arsenals of Folly, page 290).

“A soft answer turns away wrath, “Agree with your adversary quickly when you are in the way with him,” “If someone is overtaken in a fault restore him in a spirit of meekness” (Galatians 6:1). Three principles of reconciliation that two very different American Presidents applied in two very different crises, resulting in blessings for all mankind huddled under the nuclear Sword of Damocles. Christians know: These principles work in the board room and the living room and the cabinet room.