May 17, 2007
Project Report Summary
Dobbs’ project had its genesis during his coverage for the Washington Post of the build-up to the Iraq war. He wanted to develop a feel for presidential decision-making, and the White House tapes during the Cuban Missile Crisis provided this opportunity. As a Russian speaker, Dobbs was also able to draw on Soviet sources that had previously been neglected in studies of this crisis. Dobbs argued that the parallels between the Kennedy administration and the Bush administration are more than superficial: both were fairly young, both brought an ideological perspective to the office, and both perceived themselves as facing an ideological threat (of Soviet expansionism for Kennedy, and Islamic extremism for Bush).
Dobbs outlined some of the erroneous lessons the Kennedy administration drew from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Believing that the danger arose from a clash of wills, senior administration officials thought they had discovered the key to crisis management, but instead, the danger developed from the process involved in going to war. Additionally, both the U.S. and the Soviet sides were mistaken in assuming presidential control over their militaries. In reality, the momentum of events often superseded civilian decision-making. For its part, the Bush administration took away the mistaken belief that presidential firmness would force the world to submit to the will of the United States.
Dobbs concluded by summarizing the short-term and long-term outcomes of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the short-term, the crisis represented a decisive victory for President Kennedy. In the long-term, however, the picture is more complicated. While the United States did win the battle of ideas, the crisis in October 1962 sped up the Soviet nuclear build-up, led to Brezhnev overthrowing Khrushchev, and contributed to American hubris going into Vietnam. Indeed, the real long-term winner seems to have been Fidel Castro.
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