Security Council

-The Cuban missile

crisis, 18th

October, 1962(background

guide)

“Today we stand, not just as representatives of diversity,

but as the voice of international peace and justice,

thus let us discuss, deliberate and debate, to decide and declare how we shall continue

to enforce the discipline of world peace”

LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE BOARD

Respected delegates, It gives us immense pleasure to be serving onthe Executive Board of Security Council ShikMUN’18. We, as your EB, shall be striving to ensure that we do our best to propagate the same high standard of ShikMUN that has preceded us so far. The Security Council is responsible for maintaining peace and security throughout the world, performing this task by embargos, military action and so forth. You delegates are going to be placed at the forefront of this committee, responsible to spark change and create impact, whether it be through learning about new issues, meeting fellow delegates or engaging with your committee to create feasible yet innovative solutions.

We would like to emphasize on the fact in a Security Council, it is speech that matters the most. Thus, we urge you to not be nervous and to be confident in all situations. This Executive Board will be working towards ensuring that every delegate has a pleasant experience. We are confident that through spirited, comprehensive debate creative solutions will emerge and compromises will be wrought. This background guide will be a start to your research, but we hope that all of you will delve deeper into the issue at hand than this background guide allows for. We are looking forward to great debate and discussion at the conference. If you have any queries with respect to how the committee functions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We will be there to assist you in terms of procedure and other such matters every step of the way. Rest assured, we are here to make sure that you take back something fruitful from this conference.We are looking forward to great debate and discussion at the conference. All the best with your preparation!

Regards, The Executive Board ~ UNSCAvi Aggarwal (Chairperson) Romit Aggarwal (Vice-Chairperson)

Introduction

The cold war was a long period of geopolitical tension between the democracies of the Western world, led by United States of America, and the communist countries of Eastern Europe, led by Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. It was called a “cold” war because of its nature being one where neither side engaged in full scale military conflict, rather they used surrogates and puppet regimes, that is, indirect means of fighting, to accomplish various agendas. Both sides supported major regional wars known as proxy wars instead of having any large scale military confrontations themselves.

It started in 1946 when U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan sent out a Long telegram from Moscow that cemented U.S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, which broke down the war time trust that had built between the USSR and USA, and led to this 45 year period of proxy wars. The most intense period of this was in 1962, where the USSR and USA almost began a nuclear war that would have potentially ended the world. This came to be known as the Cuban missile crisis because of the involvement of Cuba as USSR’s satellite during this period, and because of their its involvement in the timeline of proceedings for this incident.

This Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique in a number of ways, featuring calculations and miscalculations as well as direct and secret communications and miscommunications between the two sides. The dramatic crisis was also characterized by the fact that it was primarily played out at the White House and the Kremlin level with relatively little input from the respective bureaucracies typically involved in the foreign policy process.

OVERVIEW

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval quarantine of Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force, if necessary, to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

A map of how the crisis was shaping up, showing the position of Soviet missiles, the range of these missiles and U.S. ships quarantining Cuba

HISTORICAL TIMELINE

1945: The Allies agree in Potsdam to the fundamental conditions of the occupation of Germany. American nuclear bombs destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

1947: The Truman Doctrine: The US offers assistance to countries threatened by communism -- especially Greece and Turkey. US Secretary of State George C. Marshall announces a massive aid program for the reconstruction of World War II-torn Europe that will become known as the Marshall Plan.

1948: The Communists take power in Czechoslovakia.

1948: The Soviet blockade of West Berlin begins on June 24. Cut off from the outside world, provisions are delivered to the isolated city by the Americans in the Berlin Air Bridge action. This is the first major Berlin crisis during the Cold War. On May 12, 1949, Stalin lifts the blockade.

1949: On April 4, the NATO Treaty is signed in Washington.

1949: On May 23, the Federal Republic of Germany is established. Not long later, on Oct. 7, the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) is founded.

1949: On August 29, the Soviets detonate their first atomic bomb.

1949: After winning the country's civil war, the Communist Party under Mao Zedong establish the People's Republic of China.

1950-1953: The Korean War: After North Korea attacks South Korea, UN troops led by the United States invade the country. China and the Soviet Union back North Korea. The cease-fire leaves the two countries with the pre-war status quo.

1952: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin offers to hold negotiations on the reunification of Germany on the condition that a united Germany

remain neutral. With the support of the West German parliament, the Western allied powers reject the offer.

1953: On June 17, 1953, a workers' uprising in East Germany is crushed by Russian tanks.

1955: The Federal Republic of Germany joins NATO and forms the Bundeswehr, the first Germany army to exist after Hitler's fall.

1956: The Hungarian uprising takes place, starting on Oct. 20, but it is ultimately crushed by the Russians.

1956: From Oct. 29 to Nov. 6, the Suez crisis takes place. After Egypt attempts to nationalize the Suez Canal, Israel, France and Great Britain occupy the canal zone and bomb Egyptian air fields. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev threatens London and Paris with nuclear war.

1961: The construction of the Berlin Wall begins on August 13.

1962: The Cuba crisis: After the Soviets position nuclear war heads in Cuba, the United States threatens war. The world is on the verge of nuclear war for days;

(Next is a continuation of the crisis as it happened, this crisis being the main focus of our emergency meeting.)

A) DISCOVERING THE MISSILES

After seizing power in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba in 1959, leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro  (1926-2016) aligned himself with the Soviet Union . Under Castro, Cuba grew dependent on the Soviets for military and economic aid. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviets (and their respective allies) were engaged in the Cold War  (1945-91), an ongoing series of largely political and economic clashes.

The two superpowers plunged into one of their biggest Cold War confrontations after the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane

making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation.

President Kennedy was briefed about the situation on October 16, and he immediately called together a group of advisors and officials known as the executive committee, or ExCom. For nearly the next two weeks, the president and his team wrestled with a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union.

B) A New Threat to the U.S.

For the American officials, the urgency of the situation stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed so close to the U.S. mainland–just 90 miles south of Florida . From that launch point, they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U.S. If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev  had gambled on sending the missiles to Cuba with the specific goal of increasing his nation’s nuclear strike capability. The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. The Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island–the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961–and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.S. aggression.

C) Weighing the Options

From the outset of the crisis, Kennedy and ExCom determined that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge facing them was to orchestrate their removal without initiating a wider conflict–and possibly a nuclear war. In deliberations that stretched on for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options, including a bombing attack on the missile sites and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. But Kennedy ultimately decided on a more measured approach. First, he would employ the U.S. Navy to establish a quarantine of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. Second, he would deliver an ultimatum that the existing missiles be removed.

In a television broadcast on October 22, 1962, the president notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact the quarantine of Cuba and made it clear that the U.S. was prepared to use military force, if necessary, to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this public declaration, people around the globe nervously waited for the Soviet response. Some Americans, fearing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded food and gas.

D) Showdown at Sea

A crucial moment in the unfolding crisis arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba neared the line of U.S. vessels enforcing the quarantine. An attempt by the Soviets to breach the quarantine would likely have sparked a military confrontation that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade.

Although the events at sea offered a positive sign that war could be averted, they did nothing to address the problem of the missiles already in Cuba. The tense standoff between the superpowers continued through the week, and on October 27, an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a U.S. invasion force was readied in Florida. (The 35-year-old pilot of

the downed plane, Major Rudolf Anderson, is considered the sole U.S. combat casualty of the Cuban missile crisis.) “I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see,” recalled U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009), as quoted by Martin Walker in “The Cold War.” A similar sense of doom was felt by other key players on both sides.

E) A Deal Ends the Standoff

Despite the enormous tension, Soviet and American leaders found a way out of the impasse. During the crisis, the Americans and Soviets had exchanged letters and other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy in which he offered to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The following day, the Soviet leader sent a letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey.

Officially, the Kennedy administration decided to accept the terms of the first message and ignore the second Khrushchev letter entirely. Privately, however, American officials also agreed to withdraw their nation’s missiles from Turkey. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy (1925-68) personally delivered the message to the Soviet ambassador in Washington , and on October 28, the crisis drew to a close.

Both the Americans and Soviets were sobered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following year, a direct “hot line” communication link was installed between Washington and Moscow to help defuse similar situations, and the superpowers signed two treaties related to nuclear weapons. The Cold War was far from over, though. In fact, another legacy of the crisis was that it convinced the Soviets to increase their investment in an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. from Soviet territory.

Questions to focus on

Lastly, now since you all have an understanding of what we are dealing with, we shall establish the FREEZE DATE to be 18 th October 1962. We are officially on the 18th of October in the year 1962, in an emergency meeting of the UNSC, and all information we have is of events up to this date and it is in our hands to determine the future of the world. These are a few questions, sub-topics if you want to call them, which we feel are key to the agenda and should be brought up in committee;

1. How justified was USA in invading Cuba through the Bay of Pigs?

2. Why did the Soviets put the missiles in Cuba? What could they gain by their deployment? Were they justified in fearing for Cuba’s future?

3. Did the missiles threaten the actual security of the United States? Did the missiles present a threat to the Kennedy administration?

4. What is a “sphere of influence’? Does a nation have the right to enforce its policy preferences regarding issues “it” considers to be in its sphere of influence?

5. What did the Soviet Union and United States gain and lose from the crisis? How was the international community influenced?

Resources

These are a few sites you can refer to which can help in the research process;

1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir2/ causesofthecubacrisisrev1.shtml

2) https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile- crisis

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War 4) https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis 5) https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/subject/missile-crisis/

ch03.htm

Here are a couple of treaties also that delegates should definitely be mindful of;

1) The Antarctic Treaty 19612) The Partial test ban treaty 1963

A map of the world and how it stood in terms of blocs post 1950;