Jeffrey H. Smith, a senior adviser at Arnold & Porter, is a former general counsel to the CIA.
Is Russia still adhering to the terms of the “Understanding” that resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962? Recent reports that Russian warships are conducting exercises in the Caribbean have raised serious concerns about Moscow's intentions.
The Kennedy-Khrushchev Understanding, also known as the Kennedy-Khrushchev Understanding, is a verbal agreement rather than a formal treaty, but its essence – that Russia will not station nuclear weapons or systems capable of delivering them in Cuba – has held for 62 years. Russia has kept its promise at least twice, and the United States must insist that Russia continue to do so in the future.
In October 1962, under heavy military pressure from the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the nuclear missiles that Moscow had secretly placed in Cuba. Following Khrushchev's decision, the United States, with the backing of the United Nations, sought to document the agreement as a formal treaty. The negotiations broke down over minor details, but the Soviet Union committed not to station “offensive weapons” in Cuba, which the Soviets defined as nuclear weapons or delivery systems capable of carrying them.
This commitment was put to the test in the early 1970s, when a Soviet nuclear submarine visited a Cuban port. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged Russia to adhere to the 1962 understanding. Moscow responded by arguing that the understanding only covered nuclear weapons or weapons capable of carrying nuclear weapons, not nuclear-powered ships or submarines. Washington accepted that interpretation.
The issue lay dormant until 1978, when Soviet MiG-23 fighter jets were discovered in Cuba. One version of the MiG-23 was designed to carry nuclear weapons, which raised the question of whether that version had been deployed to Cuba. Since I was a State Department lawyer at the time and had the necessary clearance to view the information, I was asked to write a legal memo determining what the agreement was and whether it was a legally binding agreement. I assembled a small team of colleagues and we got to work.
These were not easy questions to answer. Since knowledge was only verbal, we had to rely on records from the time of the missile crisis. The Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs at the time, Alexis Johnson, kept the best records, which we found in a shopping cart in the basement of the State Department. We also conducted numerous interviews and retrieved records from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
Our research leads us to conclude that although the understanding was not a formal written agreement, the Soviets had to honor their commitments at the time, and so there was a reasonable confidence that they would continue to do so. Both the United States and the Soviet Union recognized that nuclear weapons were a kind of “red line” that should not be crossed.
We presented this conclusion to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who instructed us to send a diplomatic note to Russia requesting that they ensure that the MiG fighter jets stationed in Cuba were not equipped with nuclear weapons. Our note was based on language used in correspondence with the Soviet Union in 1962 and 1963. To our surprise, Moscow responded immediately, citing that correspondence to assure us that the MiG-23 was not an “offensive weapon” as had been agreed to in earlier talks.
It was later confirmed that the MiG-23s deployed were not the version capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
But these times are not here. Russia under Vladimir Putin is dangerously more aggressive than the Soviet Union under its ossified leadership. Russia's current non-nuclear weapons are far more advanced than the Soviet weapons of the 1960s and 1970s. It is clear that Putin is seeking to expand his influence in the Western Hemisphere, and to use Cuba as a base for it. His threats against Ukraine indicate that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons.
I don't know what the State Department has told the Kremlin about Russia's expanding military activities in the hemisphere, but we cannot accept this as the new normal. The starting point is to reaffirm Russia's adherence to the 1962 understandings. It should also be made clear that, as was the case with Cuba back then, we will not tolerate the stationing of Russian nuclear weapons or nuclear-capable delivery systems anywhere in the hemisphere.
Russia will resist any expansion of the agreement, but we must not allow them to think they have free reign in our neighborhood, or we risk a repeat of 1962.
