Robert Weisbrot. Maximum Danger: Kennedy, the Missiles, and the Crisis of American Confidence

International Social Science Review, Spring-Summer, 2002 by Michael L. Krenn

Robert Weisbrot. Maximum Danger: Kennedy, the Missiles, and the Crisis of American Confidence. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001.

"Not another study on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962," was my first thought upon being asked to review Robert Weisbrot's new book. I was pleasantly surprised, however. Maximum Danger presents much more than another rehashing of the familiar arguments and evidence surrounding the 1962 diplomatic crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union. Weisbrot instead offers an interesting synthesis of the previous work on the missile crisis that points the way to future research and investigation into the defining moment of John F. Kennedy's foreign policy.

According to Weisbrot, most studies of the Cuban Missile Crisis (which began appearing as early as the mid-1960s) have focused almost exclusively on the role played by President Kennedy. Kennedy admirers or former members of his administration, such as Ted Sorenson, Arthur Schlesinger, and Joseph Alsop, authored a number of such books. These works were characterized by their nearly breathless accounts of Kennedy's "coolness" as he skillfully navigated the nation through the crisis. His management skills were lauded, as was his ability to stem the calls for a more warlike response from some of his military advisers. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, historians and political scientists (perhaps a bit more jaded after the experiences of Vietnam an Watergate) took a more adversarial approach, condemning Kennedy's "recklessness" and dangerous bravado. Instead of a consummate crisis manger, Kennedy came off in these studies as the main force driving the United States and the Soviet Union to the edge of nuclear oblivion. Indeed, for some the hero of the episode was not the American president, but Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. In more recent years, newly declassified U.S. government records, as well as previously unavailable Soviet records, have helped dispel some of the "myths" about the missile crisis but have failed, as Weisbrot concludes, "to produce and interpretive framework to encompass them" (207). Once again, the debates hinge on the character of President Kennedy: was he too aggressive or too passive; masterful in his leadership or merely a hapless pawn of his advisers; was he trying to prove his manhood or prevent a war?

Weisbrot calls for a different approach. "The surest way to see Kennedy's role more clearly may therefore be, paradoxically, to pull back from the relentless close-ups that have formed our standard images of him" (11). In the author's view, "A way to make sense of these seemingly disparate and even conflicting pieces of evidence is to view President Kennedy as a moderate leader in a militant age" (208). In short, Weisbrot argues that we need to view Kennedy's role during the missile crisis in its historical context and distance ourselves from the intensely personalistic focus of most studies of the events of 1962. Kennedy, according to Weisbrot, came into the presidency with a "remarkably open view of the Russians" (41). Neither the completely objective and statesmanlike leader portrayed by his defenders, nor the jingoistic cold warrior depicted by his detractors, Kennedy tried to take a balanced view of the Cold War and seemed to truly believe that better relations with the Soviets were possible. Weisbrot claims that a number of forces conspired to push Kennedy into taking a harsher stance with the Soviet Union. First and foremost was the atmosphere in the United States, which the author describes as nearly "hysterical" in its animosity and fear toward communism and the Russians. Though Joseph McCarthy had been largely discredited before drinking himself to death in 1957, the Red Scare still exerted a powerful grip on the American people. Any sign of weakness by Kennedy (who had been accused of being too young and inexperienced by his Republican opponent Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential campaign) in meeting the communist threat was an invitation to unrelenting criticism both from within and without his own party. The debacle at the Bay of Pigs in April, a humiliating summit meeting with Khrushchev in June, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in August of 1961 all indicated that Kennedy was too "soft" on communism. When the missile crisis arose, then, his options were limited by his need to appease domestic critics and prove that he was more than a match for the Soviets.

In addition, the unpredictable and often irritating Soviet leader, Khrushchev, also contributed to Kennedy's inability to cope with the missile crisis in a purely personal manner. Khrushchev's increasingly volatile speeches against the West, his bullying of Kennedy during their June 1961 summit in Vienna, and his quickness in resorting to threats of nuclear destruction over issues such as the future of West Berlin, prompted Kennedy and his advisers to adopt a harsher attitude than they might otherwise have taken. As such, Kennedy's Cold War policies were never entirely his own. Instead, they were forged in the context and already long-established Cold War mentality that existed in both the United States and the Soviet Union.