Wed, Sep 1, 2021 12:08 a.m.
Alan J. Levine’s book, The Soviets’ Greatest Gambit: The Cuban Missile Crisis, was published in August after several delays. It is sort of a sequel to his 2018 book, After Sputnik.
The theme of the book is that Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev’s motive was not defense against an American invasion of Cuba, but far more sinister. The missiles were intended to be fired at the United States from Cuba, outflanking the American nuclear forces.
As we have noted, Alan Levine strongly dislikes John and Robert Kennedy and shows how JFK’s response was far more bungling and inept than popular legend.
In Chapter 2, Levine explains how the Kennedy legend came about, and why people believed in it:
“For John F. Kennedy was a fraud. He was something fortunately rare in a democratic society with a free press (David in TN: Not so rare today, press not totally free), a man whose whole life was a lie, the creation of clever manipulation and publicity. The man seen by most people and presented by the mass media and all too many historians and biographers for two generations, NEVER REALLY EXISTED.”
“Explaining the Kennedy legend is a major problem for historians. It should be said at once that John F. Kennedy was not without some abilities and other qualities that help to explain the legend. His intelligence may not have been nearly as great as his admirers thought, but he was not a fool; and at his worst he was not as totally incompetent as some of his successors, notably Carter and the second Bush. A remarkable speaker, he gave memorable speeches, which might not survive rational analysis, but nevertheless moved his audiences. Witty, he was a brilliant political campaigner and oozed charisma, and when he chose to exercise it, overpowering charm in private, as well as public. Handsome, he skillfully used his beautiful wife and children to evoke a picture of idealized family life that had no basis in reality.
“Earlier presidents, whatever their real relationship with their families, had done their utmost to protect their privacy.”
Levine doesn’t care much about the president’s womanizing, referring to it in passing. He considers it one of JFK’s more amiable traits.
Levine has a new theory of the Soviets placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Khrushchev’s purpose was to have the power to win the Cold War with one blow. The main “danger of war was aborted by the just-in-time discovery of the R-12 missiles, and the resulting American alert, not the resolution of the subsequent public confrontation.”
When President Kennedy learned that Soviet nuclear missiles had been found in Cuba, his first reaction was, “He (Khrushchev) can’t do this to me!”
A common misconception is that Robert Kennedy was a voice for peace and restraint. Actually, RFK was about the most belligerent civilian in the government. The posthumous book, Thirteen Days, and the 2000 film have been discredited by the tapes (only the Kennedy brothers knew the Excomm meetings were being recorded.) RFK deliberately misrepresented his position during the Crisis.
Sheldon Stern, historian for the JFK Library, heard and transcribed the tapes about 20 years ago. Stern has analyzed how the Narrative was spun by the Kennedys and their associates.
JFK and RFK waged vendettas against several Excomm members, such as CIA Director John McCone and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Their prime target was UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. A Saturday Evening Post story, edited by JFK himself, called Stevenson an “appeaser.” In fact, Stevenson performed strongly and well at the UN during the crisis.
Levine feels JFK resented Stevenson as being a better man than he.
“To be sure, the Kennedy Administration, in the end, resolved the crisis successfully. It found the missiles, in time, and got rid of them, without fighting, discouraging further offensive moves by Khrushchev.”
“There were good, even heroic men in the Administration. Unfortunately, the Kennedy brothers and those closest to them were not among them. Kennedy was a far weaker leader than has ever been appreciated. And he and his closest associates were not just good men with a few flaws. They were not even mediocrities, inflated into heroes. The Kennedys, in particular, were genuinely evil men—not, of course, in the same way, or to the same extent as the Soviet enemy, but they were bad enough by normal standards—dishonest, completely selfish, and coldly vicious. They were, also, in many respects, incompetent, and even a little ridiculous.”
Levine is quite clear, however, that Nikita Khrushchev was the real villain of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He concluded:
“On the American side, at least, success in the crisis was not due to any brilliant leadership at the very top. It was due to an at first sight paradoxical combination—the ‘system’ of immense military power and impressive technological intelligence capabilities built up during the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, and the ‘little men’ who made them run, and readiness of men well down the totem pole, like McCone, to buck their superiors’ and conventional ideas and get those capabilities properly used.”
“Few at the top on either side, and Nikita Khrushchev least of all, deserved anyone’s thanks.”
4 comments:
80 % of the Soviet most deadly weapons moved 6,000 miles to within 90 miles of your most dangerous opponent and done totally in secret. Something major afoot and never been properly explained.
"men well down the totem pole, like McCone, to buck their superiors’ and conventional ideas"
McCone as I recall was a Republican business man with no experience in the intelligence field.
This is still unclear. Is Levine actually claiming that Khrushchev had intended to start a nuclear war in 1962 or 1963 and that only the discovery of the missiles in Cuba stopped this? It has always been agreed that Soviet aims involved more than just stopping an invasion of Cuba. They were intended to undermine the advantage which missiles in Turkey gave to the US. But that is separate from saying that Khrushchev had a near-term intent of starting a nuclear war. I'm skeptical about the latter claim. But I can't tell from reviews whether or not the author actually makes it.
In the November issue of Chronicles magazine, our friend Alan J. Levine reviewed (https://chroniclesmagazine.org/featured/muddling-the-missile-crisis/) British historian Max Hastings' book on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
"Max Hastings has never been a great historian. But his earlier works were at least adequate. He rarely strays from the path of orthodoxy--whatever that happens to be at the moment--and rarely uncovers a major previously unknown fact. And if he ever had an original insight, it died of loneliness. His writing is often diffuse, his books ridden with small errors. Despite his carelessness, he is at least not an ideologue or a liar, which nowadays is something to be grateful for. And he usually gets the tune right, even if he sometimes plays the wrong notes."
Levine says this book is a shar drop from "his previously middling standards." Hastings plays to the myth of JFK as a great president. He also rates Defense secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy as "The Best and Brightest" despite their failure in Vietnam.
Hastings blames the United States for Latin America's failures.
"Unsurprisingly, Hastings revives the old leftist claim that Castro was 'driven' into the arms of the Soviets by American enmity." Castro was actually a late Stalinist who considered the Cuban communists ineffectual. Hastings is realistic about Khrushchev and Castro's behavior during the crisis.
Levine concludes: "Hastings simplifying assumptions and lack of curiosity lead to the comforting conclusion that the missiles posed merely a political threat, not a life-or-death strategic one. Hastings thinks most Americans, if not JFK himself, were hysterical during the crisis. Angry and determined--more determined than JFK himself--would be a more accurate description of the common attitude. Hastings condescendingly and ahistorically informs us that American overreaction, not an existential crisis, was the real menace. Believe that if you can."
Also in the November issue, Alan J. Levine gives his "frank assessment of Kennedy." We'll examine that around November 22.
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