The Cuban Missile Crisis as Intelligence Failure
Essentially, this famous crisis known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, also commonly termed as the October Crisis, was a huge direct and dangerous confrontation that took an estimated thirteen days. The confrontation involved the United States and Soviet Union during the periods of cold war. In addition, the crisis happened at a time when both the United States and Soviet Union almost had a severe nuclear conflict (Anderson, 1983). Thus, many scholars, policy makers as well as researchers seek information by all possible means through the archived documentations, footages and even documentaries in order to have closure of the terrible events in 1962. Thus, in October 2012, the Cuban Crisis marked its fiftieth anniversary for topping the list of the widely researched on events of the nuclear era. The main goal targeted by all the researchers of the crisis is to find means and ways that enhance foreign policies in the United States. As such, this paper provides a detailed discussion on the Cuban Missile Crisis as an intelligence failure.
Generally, the crisis was comprised of several unique features such as discrete and upfront means of both communication and miscommunication between the two parties, portraying well calculated as well as some miscalculated forms of action and ultimately, the entire occurrences of the crisis took place mainly at the Whitehouse. However, Kennedy (2011) argues that researchers have it that over the years, people acquired the wrong lessons on intelligence from the Cuban Crisis. As a result, there is an important need to challenge some previous conclusions from the previous lessons learnt on the American intelligence from the Cuban crisis.
Thus, the first questionable perspective created during those extremely frightening days of the missile crisis is that the various missiles discovered in Cuba belonging to the Soviet Union led to an impressive success on the intelligence based in America. Moreover, the general change of the entire outlook from the perceived intelligence victory of the Americans to failure brings out a number of various shocking but important occupational shortcomings of the policy makers. This mainly stemmed from Graham’s signed the policy on the Essence of Decision in the fall of 1971. As a result, most researchers shifted a lot of their attention to the individual failures in perceiving and understanding the policymaking process. In addition, most research from different scholars also focuses on various weaknesses in organizations resulting from the process involved in making policies. However, less scholars bring out the organizational challenges faced during analysis of intelligence. As a result, the same problems and hurdles that face the intelligence agencies in the United States keep on repeating themselves without an appropriate and conclusive remedy.
In conclusion, according to Allison (1969), the four deductions made from the era before the occurrence of the Cuban crisis portrayed an astonishing revelation. The deductions showed that the United States’ intelligence mainly feared standing up against political revolutions from unfriendly communist regimes adjacent to the shores of America. This was opposed to the perceived belief that the intelligence unit feared the risk of Cuba’s and Soviet’s military threat.
Bibliography
Allison, G.T., 1969. Conceptual models and the Cuban missile crisis. American political science review, 63(03), pp.689-718.
Kennedy, R.F., 2011. Thirteen days: A memoir of the Cuban missile crisis. WW Norton & Company.
Anderson, P.A., 1983. Decision making by objection and the Cuban missile crisis. Administrative Science Quarterly, pp.201-222.
https://www.hoover.org/research/cuban–missile–crisis–intelligence–failure
