Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

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In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century—the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis—America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. Superb... reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana' Daily Mail The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is widely considered to be the closest the world has come to a full nuclear exchange. In a ploy apparently meant to taunt the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev sent medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles to the Caribbean nation, along with enough atomic warheads to devastate America’s eastern seaboard.

The heart-stopping story of the missile crisis has been told many times before, but never with the narrative verve and panache that is Hastings’s hallmark. He has uncovered many new American, Russian, British and particularly Cuban sources that enable him to set the crisis in the context of its “times, personalities and the wider world”. It is also timely because, as a consequence of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, we may be entering a new Cold War in which the threat of a nuclear war is once again very real. “The scope for a catastrophic miscalculation,” writes Hastings, “is as great now as it was in 1914 Europe or in the 1962 Caribbean.”

It wasn’t until 1992 that the US learned that the Soviets had had tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons at their disposal – each with a charge similar to that detonated over Hiroshima – and that plans had been drawn up to permit their use in the event of a land invasion. Should this have happened, had Kennedy chosen to follow the recommendations of his military chiefs, a nuclear response would have been probable. The ensuing public pressure would have made it extremely hard for the US president not to retaliate in kind. Kennedy was distrustful of his military and intelligence advisers, partly because of the previous year’s Bay of Pigs fiasco – Dwight Eisenhower’s planned invasion of Cuba that Kennedy had felt obliged to carry through – and we should only be thankful that some in his circle, under his calm leadership, were able to stem their hubris and sabre-rattling. It is hard for many of us to imagine, 60 years on from the Cuban missile crisis, the atmosphere of a time in which many assumed all-out war between the superpowers was coming and that such a clash would necessarily be nuclear. But as the journalist and historian Max Hastings reminds us in Abyss, relations between China, Russia and the US are as fractious now as ever. Levels of mutual understanding, and the will to accommodate new understandings, are hardly better than in 1962; the scope for an irreversible error – even a deliberate act – remains. Of course, much of the action takes place in the White House, where the so-called Executive Committee met to discuss options, all while being secretly recorded. Unlike the authoritarian regimes in Russia and Cuba, America’s decision-making has been made transparent by the voluminous transcripts that have been released. I appreciated that Hastings took this into account when forming his verdicts, noting that the imperfect logic employed in the U.S. was probably no worse – and likely far better – than that which took place in the Soviet Union.

A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet. Max Hastings brings his signature style—a mixture of the grand (sweeping insights into great events) and the granular (carefully sifted details from diaries and letters of ordinary people)—to the much-studied subject of the Cuban missile crisis. The result is a book to match the best things ever written on the subject in terms of immediacy and drama.”— Christian Science MonitorA Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph A good read! Max Hastings has an engaging way of writing, and his emphasis on the description of the crisis from the different perspectives of both countries and their citizens makes for a fuller understanding of the event. Our planet best hope to survive the 21st century relies upon an imperative that no one national leader shows themselves deficient in the fear which must lie at the heart of wisdom and which was indispensable to a peaceful resolution of cuban missile crisis" An excellent narrative of a crucial geopolitical event. What I liked most about this extremely well researched & written book is the fearlessness with which the author shares his personal perspectives and assessments of events and characters all through the book. Hastings doesnt shy away from making informed judgements which I found a useful guide in understanding the why behind the what.

I can’t deny this book and its brilliant historian of an author, Max Hastings, the five stars it so righteously deserves. It was an incredibly detailed, piece by piece account of the ideas and actions taken by the three sides of the Cuban Missile Crisis’s main actors. During the crisis, Robert McNamara contended that the fundamental issue at stake was political, not strategic or tactical. Hastings is in agreement with this, and provides some convincing analysis on this point: "three leaders and their nations marched towards a fateful rendezvous in the Caribbean, with hapless allies such as the British trailing behind. Fidel Castro was driven by a craving to secure for his small country a celebrity and importance to which it could lay claim only by promoting sensation and even outrage. Nikita Khrushchev cherished no desire for war, but was happy to use the threat of it as a means of asserting the Soviet Union's right to be viewed on the world stage as the equal of the United States. His conduct represented the negation of statesmanship but was, instead, the bitter fruit of the Russian experience since 1917, and arguably even before. Khrushchev probably recognized that he had little prospect of securing the love of his people, never mind that of his Presidium colleagues. However, he needed at least their respect, which he sought by presenting himself as standard-bearer for Russian greatness and socialist revolution. Unfortunately for the cause of peace, however, such a display mightily alarmed the peoples of the West, and especially Americans...John F. Kennedy was one of the most enlightened men ever to occupy the presidency of the United States. But his instinct towards moderation and compromise, fostered by sophistication and international experience, stood at odds with the conservative worldview of a substantial proportion of his fellow-countrymen, who demanded that America should be seen to be strong. Whereas Khrushchev, in making foreign policy decisions, was seldom obliged to consider a domestic public, as distinct from political, opinion, Kennedy could never neglect his own. His presidency, and above all his conduct of the approaching Crisis, would be characterized by a tension between personal rationality and a determination to be seen by his people to conduct himself in a fashion that did not injure his 1964 re-election prospects. The most frightening aspect of this was that more than a few Americans, especially those who wore uniforms with stars on their shoulders, were less fearful of war than was the rest of the planet." Hastings sets the scene for the crisis by starting with the story of Castro and the Cuban revolution and of course the Bay of Pigs disaster. He then moves to describe the political and social situation in both the US and the Soviet Union and also briefly goes over the biography of Khrushchev and Kennedy. It’s not the primary source research, for there are no new revelations that have not been published elsewhere. And it’s not the ultimate judgments, for Hastings’s conclusions – that Khrushchev acted precipitously, that the American military establishment verged on the insane, and that President Kennedy handled the situation quite well – are fairly standard.Obviously – as we do not yet inhabit a world of radioactive ash – the missiles of October never flew. Still, the margins were so thin, and the human element so pronounced, that it is unsurprising that this event has been the subject of numerous, sometimes excellent books. Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. Vladimir Putin’s ill-advised invasion of Ukraine last February has not produced the results that he expected. As the battlefield situation has degenerated for Russian army due to the commitment of the Ukrainian people and its armed forces, along with western assistance the Kremlin has resorted to bombastic statements from the Russian autocrat concerning the use of nuclear weapons. At this time there is no evidence by American intelligence that Moscow is preparing for that eventuality, however, we have learned the last few days that Russian commanders have discussed the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. The conflict seems to produce new enhanced rhetoric on a daily basis, and the world finds itself facing a situation not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 amidst the Cold War. In between the meetings of great leaders and the movement of ships and submarines he added the recollections of regular Cuban and Russian people that were stationed in Cuba during the time of the crisis. These eye witnesses were interviewed for the book and they are a fantastic addition because they add a much needed ground level view.