Negotiating the Impossible

13THE POWER OF EMPATHY

Negotiating the Cuban Missile Crisis

ON OCTOBER 16, 1962, American U-2 spy planes conducting reconnaissance over Cuba discovered what was later confirmed to be the construction, with help from the Soviet Union, of missile sites capable of launching nuclear weapons. The mere existence of missile sites in nearby Cuba was neither unexpected nor problematic, but two specific features of these sites were of particular concern to the United States. First, they would be capable of launching offensive missiles that could target the US mainland.¹ Second, the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads. As it happens, the Soviet Union had promised publicly and privately that offensive missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons ...