- “Every new administration should beware of its special vulnerability during at least the first year of its tenure, retain at the start a few apolitical experts from the preceding administration to tide over its inexperience and try to avoid all crises as long as possible.”
Lesson: Be knowledgeable of your inexperience; maintain institutional knowledge by maintaining some officials during transition.
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- “The president must inevitably be the manager of any crisis at the level of the National Security Council.”
Lesson: In national security, the buck stops with the president.
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- “Important factor contributing to success…was the secrecy maintained during the planning phase and the surprise effect on Khrushchev of the president’s Oct. 22 speech….The loss of surprise…might have forced [Kennedy] into ill-prepared or unwise actions adversely affecting the outcome.”
Lesson: Secrecy and surprise are necessary during crisis negotiations.
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- “Our great superiority in nuclear weapons contributed little to the outcome of the Cuba crisis. In this situation the stakes involved were far too small for either party to risk a resort to nuclear weapons….Nuclear superiority is of little use in coping with an adversary similarly armed, whereas conventional superiority at the right place and time is likely to carry the day.”
Lesson: Conventional, not nuclear, superiority guaranteed American success in Cuban Missile Crisis. Superpowers were not willing to go as far as nuclear war. [N.B. subsequent statements by Soviet and American officials indicate that each side was willing to use nuclear weapons during the crisis.]
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- “Having underestimated [Kennedy] in the course of their Vienna meeting in June 1961, Khrushchev felt such confidence in his risky plan as to make no provision for any escape hatch in case that things went badly. Things did go badly, and he paid the price for ignoring Murphy’s Law.”
Lesson: Plan ahead for the possibility of failure.
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- “Even more disastrous was Khrushchev’s error in picking a fight far from home in his adversary’s front yard. In doing so, he ignored a wise saying dating from Roman times: “A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.”
Lesson: Never pick fights far from home.
“Reflections on a Grim October,” Washington Post, October 5, 1982.
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