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Cuban Missile Crisis

Joint Crisis Committee

UMass MUN 2012

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Greetings delegates!

Welcome to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Cuban Missile Crisis Committee! My name is

Kevin Kirby, and I will be your chair during UMassMUNXI. I am currently a sophomore political

science major at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

The task before us is important and daunting. Having gotten word that the bastardly Americans

have discovered our intent to arm Cuba, a beloved ally in the struggle against the ruthless

Americans, with nuclear weapons, President Khrushchev has tasked us with confronting the

situation at hand.

The pace of the committee shall be relentless. As leaders of the USSR, you all will be confronted

with difficult choices. You will be faced with options that all seem bleak It is your task to

challenge the American hegemony and assert Soviet leadership at a critical time in global

affairs.

Helping me run this simulation will be Colin Gurney, who will be the crisis manager for this

committee as we confront the United States committee in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Together,

these two committees shall work together to confront the situation.

Delegates, the history I have given you below starts with the founding of the USSR and brings

you to the Bay of Pigs operation by the Americans. I’m keenly interested in your understanding

of the power dynamics of the USSR and how these dynamics shape policy making within the

Kremlin. I would like all of you to submit one to two page position papers, double-spaced, on

your personal opinion of the actual events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Please email them to:

k.kirby@ymail.com. The papers shall be due one day before you arrival on the UMass campus.

If, after reading this background guide, you have any questions about the topics to be covered

at the conference, the lay out of the committee, or the background guide itself, please feel free

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to email me. While I will not do your research for you, I will gladly help keep you pointed in the

right direction to ensure everyone arrives on the same page at the conference.

Everything you do shall receive a response from the Americans. Actions have consequences. As

you seek to prepare for your global confrontation, I urge you to think wisely, for one poor

decision could lead to the destruction of the USSR as we know it and give way to American

fascism.

Sincerely,

Kevin Kirby

Chair

UMassMUN USSR Cuban Missile Crisis Committee

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History of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

October 1917: The government of Alexander Krensky is overthrown by the Bolshevik’s

Revolutionaries lead by Vladimir Lenin.

March 3, 1918: Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which cedes large chunks of land to the

Germans. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan declare

their independence from Russia as a result of the treaty.

1918-1920: Civil War in Russia between the Bolshevik’s (the Reds) and the anti-Bolshevik’s (the

Whites). War communism takes hold, leaving millions to starve to death due to the army

needing the food for its soldiers.

December 29, 1922: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Transcaucasus sign the Treaty on the

Creation of the Soviet Union.

January 21, 1924: Lenin dies. After internal power struggle between Joseph Stalin and Alexi

Rykov, Stalin takes command of the USSR.

November 16th, 1933: The United States formally recognizes the USSR.

1936-1938: President Stalin makes public a plot to undermine his regime, lead by Leon Trotsky.

Stalin proceeds to purge thousands of dissidents by way or death or long-term imprisonment.

August-September, 1939: USSR signs a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. German

invasion of Poland starts World War II. Soviet troops proceed to enter Poland, leading Germany

and the USSR to split Poland.

1940: Soviet troops take Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which are then incorporated into the

USSR.

April 13th, 1941: USSR signs the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact.

1941-1945: German invasion of USSR leads to Soviet counterassault on the Nazi regime, ending

with Soviet forces taking East Berlin.

February 4-11, 1945: Yalta Conference. Cold War ‘begins’.

August 29th, 1949: USSR successfully explodes its first atomic device.

1949-1950: Soviet recognizes communist Chinese government, signs 20-year alliance treaty

with said government.

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1950-1953: Korean War represents first indirect military confrontation between the Soviet and

American governments.

March 5th, 1953: Joseph Stalin dies. Georgi Malenkov becomes Prime Minister and Nikita

Khrushchev becomes Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

May 14th, 1955: Warsaw Pact signed.

October 4th, 1957: Soviets launch Sputnik.

March 27th, 1955: Nikita Khrushchev becomes Prime Minister.

May 1st, 1960: Soviets shoot down American U2 spy plane over Soviet territory.

April 1961: American trained Cuban exiles launch unsuccessful invasion at the Bay of Pigs in

Cuba.

The work of our committee of Soviet Patriots begins with the fallout of the Bay of Pigs debacle.

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The Aftermath of World War II

Germany divided into four zones following Yalta Conference

(http://ldfb.tripod.com/index.htm)

The U.S. and USSR had worked together as the Allies, primarily with nations Great Britain and

France, against the Central Axis powers, mainly Germany. At the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt

was president of the U.S. and Joseph Stalin held authoritarian power in the USSR. Following the

fall of Germany, the Yalta Conference, held by the USSR, the US, and Great Britain, known as

the ‘Big Three’, in February 1945 divided Germany into four distinct zones, controlled by the

U.S., the USSR, Great Britain, and France. It was this division of Germany that eventually led to

the Berlin Wall during the Cold War.However, the Yalta Conference made clear the tension

existing between the USSR and the other Allies powers. This tension was fueled by a

fundamental power struggle as well as the ‘ideologies’ at battle here: capitalism and democracy

vs. communism. The Yalta Conference also founded the United Nations and determined that

the U.S., Great Britain, USSR, and China would be the four permanent members with veto

power. The control of Poland was contested and the USSR essentially forced its rule on the

region. Although Stalin promised to allow the people of Poland to determine its own fate via

elections soon after, this did not happen and the issue at the Conference proved to further

illustrate the growing mistrust between the USSR and the U.S. as well as Great Britain1.

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World War II also saw the defeat of Japan by the US. Years of research finally led to the

development of the atomic bomb in a secretly and primarily US-funded endeavor known as the

“Manhattan Project”. The US used the atomic bomb to force the Japanese to surrender and

agree to its terms of war victory. The atomic bomb unleashed an era of nuclear arms

development and the nuclear arms/technology advancement race between the US and the

USSR, which was a key component of the Cold War. This will also be discussed in detail further

on.

The Start of the Cold War

Great Britain was one of the ‘Big Three’ and France was also a considerable power in Europe,

but the destruction of the war and the weakening of the economy of mainland Europe left the

US, which had joined the war only in 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and

the USSR relatively unscathed. The US and USSR, the two nations that emerged as the two

world superpowers following World War II, were at war over their respective influences over

other nations, one fighting for democracy, the other for communism. The Cold War was

essentially a hostile stalemate that represented the power struggle between these two powers,

and it threatened the safety of the entire world for more than four decades as each tried to

gain favor with other nations that were forming new governments. As mentioned above, the

USSR forced its influence over Poland, scaring the US about the USSR’s growing ‘sphere of

influence’ and thus its growing power. The Truman Doctrine (1947) pledged support for "free

peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures";

the pledge was targeted at communism and basically gave America a blank check to intervene

in other nations’ affairs if it was ‘threatened’ by communism. The doctrine also devoted

financial aid to Greece in the attempt to prevent the spread of communism there2. The US did

not stop there. The Marshall Plan provided almost $13 billion (from 1948 to 1951) to help

European countries, including Germany, Great Britain, and France, recover from the war3. This

was another attempt by the US to prevent the spread of communism to these nations by

becoming their primarily ‘caretaker’ and making them dependent on the US, thus making it

necessary for these nations to parlay with the US’s ideology to continue receiving funding.

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Finally, and most notably, NSC-68 (1950) focused the US’s foreign policy towards the

containment of the USSR’s influence and the spread of communism. The policy of containment

was championed by George F. Kennan4, a war correspondent who was at some point stationed

in the USSR, who recommended that the US be wary of the USSR’s pursuit of power through

the spread of communism and that the US work to prevent this spread.

The Berlin Blockade

In 1948 the US, Great Britain, and France began reforming their occupied zones of Germany,

which came to be known as West Germany (vs. East Germany, held by the USSR), to prepare it

to assume self-governance. Through this process they introduced a new currency that would

allow it to participate and compete economically internationally. However, the USSR did not

like the prospect of a currency in Germany that it would not be able to control, and the USSR

was concerned about a powerful Germany considering its experience during WWII, having been

invaded by Hitler’s forces. West Germany received supplies through routes controlled by the

USSR that went through East Germany. The USSR decided to levy its power over these supply

routes to implement a blockade against West Germany that would force the western powers,

the US, Great Britain, and France, to basically rethink its Germany-recovery strategy. However,

the US and other western powers responded to the Berlin Blockade by airlifting supplies to the

people in Western Germany for almost one year. Furthermore, the blockade encouraged the

western powers to equip Germany with the economic capabilities needed to ensure that it

would not be a victim to communism. They also formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) in 1949, which basically served as a public statement by the nations in NATO against the

USSR: an external threat against one nation in NATO was considered a threat against all the

nations in NATO. Naturally, the USSR was not in NATO and eventually responded by forming an

organization of its own by and for communist nations, the Warsaw Pact (1955).5

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The Nuclear Arms Race

The atomic bomb used by the US to take out Japan in World War II initiated the nuclear arms

race between the US and the USSR. The US had this awesome power that could take out

anyone it pleased; the USSR did not. And so the USSR began a nuclear weapons development

program of its own to match the US and to defend itself from what it saw as the threatening

spread of the US’s power. The USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, mere

years after the US had first used the atomic bomb. Americans were shocked that the Soviets

were able to decode the nuclear technology so quickly; but a significant amount of information

regarding nuclear development was provided via spying. This espionage and the fear of

communism prevalent in the US and bolstered by the hate talk of Congressman Joseph

McCarthy, contributed to the Red Scare in the 1950’s, in which Americans suspected of spying

for the Soviets or having communist sympathies were reported, arrested and/or punished,

oftentimes mistakenly. One such example was J. Robert Oppenheimer, a leading figure in the

Manhattan project, who spoke publicly about his concerns of continuing nuclear arms

development and the plausibility of a nuclear arms race, in addition to his fears of unleashing a

power that could threaten the very safety of the entire world should it be employed. His

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concerns were misconstrued as Soviet sympathies and he became a victim of the McCarthyism

that was taking over the public scene in the US.

The nuclear arms race was but one aspect of the general technology advancement race

between the two superpowers, as each nation struggled to surpass the other to claim

dominance. The launch of Sputnik by the USSR in 1957 was one such instance that accelerated

funding for the US’s own space program.

Foreign Involvement

China was one of the first countries to fall to communism under the rule of Mao Zedong in

1949. Following World War II, the Allies had determined that the region of Korea above the 38th

parallel would be controlled by the USSR and that the region below by the US, because Korea

had been under Japanese control until Japan’s defeat in 1945. In 1950, hostilities within Korea

escalated as Stalin supported the North’s attempted take-over of the South; the clash resulted

ultimately in the division of the two Koreas, the north being headed by Kim-Il Sung under a

communist regime6.

The Vietnam War is perhaps one of the most powerful symbols of the Cold War. Vietnam

fought for independence from France during the First Indochina War under the leadership of

Ho Chi Minh, who was a communist. Minh appealed to the US for aid against France’s

imperialism but the US did not want to support Minh because he was communist. It is

important to note that historical accounts often contend that Minh was more nationalist than

he was communist, but that he was communist was enough for the US to oppose him rather

than help him, which could have led to radically different historical events. Following the war

the Geneva Accords (1954) divided Vietnam into its northern and southern counterparts, with

Minh heading the communist north and the south led by Ngo Dinh Diem. Even though Diem

was a ruthless dictator who had no sympathies for his own people, the US still supported him,

demonstrating the extent to which Americans were “ABC” democrats; they supported Anything

But Communism. In the name of the Cold War and stopping communism, it seemed at times

that anything was worth it for the US. Nevertheless, the US was scared because the ‘domino

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theory’ suggested that if Vietnam fully fell to communism then surrounding nations would also

become communist, ultimately increasing the USSR’s stance as the world superpower7.

Throughout this period the US continued to send increasing numbers of troops to Vietnam to

help defend the south against the North’s aggression.

Cuba and the Bay of Pigs

Cuba became a communist nation under the rule of Fidel Castro (1959) and diplomatic relations

deteriorated with the US. US President Eisenhower approved a secret plan, “A Program of

Covert Action Against the Castro Regime”, codified as JMARC, to overthrow the Castro regime.

Essentially, the CIA trained Cuban exiles who invaded Cuba in 1961 but were stopped by

Castro’s army. By which time John F. Kennedy had assumed the presidency in the US. The plan

failed miserably but succeeded in increasing tensions between Cuba and the US, and ultimately

between the USSR and the US8.

Map of Cuba: Bay of Pigs invasion (http://personal.ashland.edu/~jmoser1/eikenberryindex.htm)

The Cuban Missile Crisis (CMC)

It is October 1962. The US has found out that the USSR, led by Premier Nikita Khrushchev, is

planning on working with the communist Castro regime, with whom the US’s relations have

come essentially to a standstill, especially following the Bay of Pigs invasion, to place nuclear

missiles on the Cuban island that will bring the targeted US within range of USSR missiles. The

US also recently placed missiles in Turkey. The USSR’s presence in Cuba poses a significant

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threat to the integrity and safety of the US. JFK is seeking the advice of his executive committee

(Ex-Comm) to deal with the crisis at hand. If the USSR does not agree to stop importing its

missiles to the island, JFK will consider imposing quarantine on the island.9

Operation of the committee

The task before you will require you to devise creative solutions that take into account the

various factions within the Soviet government, as well as strategic partners around the world.

Representatives from all member territories of the USSR, as well as key players on the global

stage will be on hand at the conference should you require their testimony. While President

Khrushchev would prefer to not bother with this matter, he is available should you need his

advice. Given the nature of a joint crisis committee, rarely will you put together and pass

complete resolutions. A vast majority of your time will be spent passing directives, which order

your government to take specific action. The opposing government will receive notification of

directives you pass, just as you will receive notification of all directives they pass.

This committee shall follow parliamentary procedure as closely as possible. Please come

prepared.

Just a few critical questions to think about (so think of more):

1. Considering what really did happen during the Cuban Missile Crisis, what else could have

happened had either side taken different actions?

2. Who were the main decision-makers?

3. What was the underlying cause of the crisis? What could have prevented this?

4. The United Nations’ role was not explored in great detail in the guide. Look closely at how

the UN was involved throughout the Cold War. What could the UN mean to the crisis at hand?

5. What is the Berlin Wall? What is its significance?

6. What are the implications of the CMC?

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Committee Members

Andrei Gromyko: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Soviet Union

Raul Roa Garcia: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cuba

Marshal Rodion Malinonsky: Minister of Defense, Soviet Union

Vladamir Yefimovich Semichastny: Chairman, KGB

Aleksandr Sakharovsky: Director, First Chief Directorate

Anatoly Dobrynin: Soviet Ambassador to the United States

Pytor Demichev: Member, Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the

Soviet Union

Vasily Garbuzov: Minister of Finance, Soviet Union

Valerian Zorin: Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations

Nikolai Dem'yanovich Psurtsev: Minister of Communications, Soviet Union

Alexander F. Zasyadko: Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union

Leonid Brezhnev: Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

George Stepanov: Executive Officer of the Council of Ministers

Roman Rudenko: Pocurator General of the Soviet Union

Chen Yi: Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China

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Some Recommended Sources

“NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security.” National Security

Council. (1950.) <http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm>

“The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 18-29, 1962.” (1997.) <http://www.hpol.org/jfk/cuban/>

“Cuban Missile Crisis.” JFK Library. <http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-

Missile-Crisis.aspx >

“Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.” Navy History and Heritage Command.

<http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq90-1.htm>

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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtrumanD.htm 3 http://www.marshallfoundation.org/TheMarshallPlan.htm

4 http://www.wwnorton.com/college/polisci/american-foreign-policy4/ch/04/review.aspx

5 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX49

6 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/korea_hickey_01.shtml

7 http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/vietnamwar/summary.html

8 http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/days/bay_of_pigs.html

9 http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/days/index.html

10 http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/rusk-david-dean

11 http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/people/r_mcnamara.html

12 http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2007/0709/whit/white_rfk.html

13 http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79831&page=4#.TvrBJPKp10R