Slavoj Žižek
Kennedy's stroke of genius which was crucial for the
resolution of the Cuban missile crisis, was to pretend that a key letter did
NOT arrive at its destination, to act as if this letter didn't exist - a
stratagem which, of course, only worked because the sender (Khrushchev)
participated in it. On Friday, October 26 1962, a letter from Khrushchev to
Kennedy confirms the offer previously made through intermediaries: the missiles
will be removed if the US issues a pledge not to invade Cuba. On Saturday,
October 27, before a US answer, another, harsher and more demanding, letter
from Khrushchev arrives, adding the removal of missiles from Turkey as a
condition, and signalling a possible political coup in the Soviet Union. At
8:05 PM the same day, Kennedy sends a response to Khrushchev, informing him
that he is accepting his October 26 proposal, i.e., acting as if the October 27
letter doesn't exist. On Sunday, October 28, Kennedy receives a letter from
Khrushchev in which he agrees to the deal... The lesson of this is that in such
moments of crisis where the fate of everything hangs in the air, saving the
appearances, politeness, the awareness of "playing a game," matters
more than ever. One can also claim that what triggered the crisis was a
symmetrical fact, a letter which also did not arrive at its addressee, but,
this time, because it was not sent. Soviet missiles were stationed in Cuba as
the result of the secret mutual security pact between Cuba and USSR; many
observers (most notably Ted Sorensen) suggested that the US reaction would have
been much less offensive if the mutual security pact had been made public in
advance (as Castro had wanted, incidentally!). It was this secrecy on which
Soviets insisted that made the US think that the missile emplacement could have
no purpose other than to launch an attack upon the US: if the entire process of
signing the pact and installing the missiles were to be public and transparent,
it would have been perceived as something much less threatening: not as the
preparation of a real attack, but as demonstrative posturing which poses no
real military threat.
This lesson was not learned by the US military establishment, which interpreted
the peaceful resolution of the crisis in a different way.
[1] Its opinion is best rendered by
Raymond Garthoff, at the time an intelligence analyst in the State Department:
"If we have learned anything from this experience, it is that weakness,
even only apparent weakness, invites Soviet transgression. At the same time,
firmness in the last analysis will force the Soviets to back away from rash
initiatives." The crisis is thus perceived as the eyeball to eyeball
confrontation of two players, a macho game of "chicken," where the
one with more toughness, inflexibility and resolve wins. (This view, of course,
does not fit reality: a whole series of details demonstrate Kennedy's
flexibility and his to the Soviet need to save face by way of salvaging
something positive from the crisis. In order to buy some time and avoid a
direct confrontation, he permitted on October 25 a Soviet tanker to proceed
through the quarantine; on October 28, he ordered no interview should be given
and no statement made which would claim any kind of victory; furthermore, he
offered up removal of the US missiles in Turkey, as well as a guarantee that
the US will not invade Cuba, in exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet
missiles from Cuba.)
The Soviet perception of the crisis was different: for them, it was not the
threat of force that ended the crisis. The Soviet leadership believed the
crisis ended because both Soviet and US officials realized they were at the
brink and that the crisis was threatening to destroy humankind. They did not
fear only for their immediate safety and were not worried merely about losing a
battle in Cuba. Their fear was the fear of deciding the fate of millions of
others, even of civilization itself. It was THIS fear, experienced by both
sides at the peak of the crisis, which enabled them to reach a peaceful
solution; and it was this fear which was at the very core of the famous
exchange of letters between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro at the climax of the
crisis. In a letter to Khrushchev from October 26, Castro wrote that
if the imperialists invade Cuba with the goal of occupying
it, the danger that that aggressive policy poses for humanity is so great that
following that event the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in
which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike against it. / I
tell you this because I believe that the imperialists' aggressiveness is
extremely dangerous and if they actually carry out the brutal act of invading
Cuba in violation of international law and morality, that would be the moment
to eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear legitimate defense,
however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other.
Khrushchev answered Castro on October 30:
In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the
first to launch a nuclear strike against the territory of the enemy. You, of
course, realize where that would have led. Rather than a simple strike, it
would have been the start of a thermonuclear world war. / Dear Comrade Fidel
Castro, I consider this proposal of yours incorrect, although I understand your
motivation. / We have lived through the most serious moment when a nuclear
world war could have broken out. Obviously, in that case, the United States
would have sustained huge losses, but the Soviet Union and the whole socialist
camp would have also suffered greatly. As far as Cuba is concerned, it would be
difficult to say even in general terms what this would have meant for them. In
the first place, Cuba would have been burned in the fire of war. There's no
doubt that the Cuban people would have fought courageously or that they would
have died heroically. But we are not struggling against imperialism in order to
die, but to take advantage of all our possibilities, to lose less in the
struggle and win more to overcome and achieve the victory of communism.
The essence of Khrushchev's argument can be best summoned by
Neil Kinnock's anti-war argument, when he was the Labour candidate in the UK
elections: "I am ready to die for my country, but I am not ready to let my
country die for me." It is significant to note that, in spite of the
"totalitarian" character of the Soviet regime, THIS fear was much
more predominant in the Soviet leadership than in the US leadership - so,
perhaps, the time has come to rehabilitate Khrushchev, not Kennedy, as the real
hero of the Cuban missile crisis. - Castro answered Khrushchev on October 31:
I realized when I wrote them that the words contained in my
letter could be misinterpreted by you and that was what happened, perhaps
because you didn't read them carefully, perhaps because of the translation,
perhaps because I meant to say so much in too few lines. However, I didn't
hesitate to do it. Do you believe, Comrade Khrushchev, that we were selfishly
thinking of ourselves, of our generous people willing to sacrifice themselves,
and not at all in an unconscious manner but fully assured of the risk they ran?
No, Comrade Khrushchev. Few times in history, and it could even be said that
never before, because no people had ever faced such a tremendous danger, was a
people so willing to fight and die with such a universal sense of duty. /.../
We knew, and do not presume that we ignored it, that we would have been
annihilated, as you insinuate in your letter, in the event of nuclear war.
However, that didn't prompt us to ask you to withdraw the missiles, that didn't
prompt us to ask you to yield. Do you believe that we wanted that war? But how
could we prevent it if the invasion finally took place? /.../ And if war had
broken out, what could we do with the insane people who unleashed the war? You
yourself have said that under current conditions such a war would inevitably
have escalated quickly into a nuclear war. / I understand that once aggression
is unleashed, one shouldn't concede to the aggressor the privilege of deciding,
moreover, when to use nuclear weapons. The destructive power of this weaponry
is so great and the speed of its delivery so great that the aggressor would
have a considerable initial advantage. / And I did not suggest to you, Comrade
Khrushchev, that the USSR should be the aggressor, because that would be more
than incorrect, it would be immoral and contemptible on my part. But from the
instant the imperialists attack Cuba and while there are Soviet armed forces
stationed in Cuba to help in our defense in case of an attack from abroad, the
imperialists would by this act become aggressors against Cuba and against the
USSR, and we would respond with a strike that would annihilate them. /.../ I
did not suggest, Comrade Khrushchev, that in the midst of this crisis the
Soviet Union should attack, which is what your letter seems to say; rather,
that following an imperialist attack, the USSR should act without vacillation
and should never make the mistake of allowing circumstances to develop in which
the enemy makes the first nuclear strike against the USSR. And in this sense,
Comrade Khrushchev, I maintain my point of view, because I understand it to be
a true and just evaluation of a specific situation. You may be able to convince
me that I am wrong, but you can't tell me that I am wrong without convincing
me.
It is obviously Castro himself who (purposefully) misread
Khrushchev here: Khrushchev understood very well what Castro wanted the USSR to
do - not to attack the US "out of nowhere," but, in the case of the
US invasion on Cuba (still an act of conventional war, and a limited one, at
that - attacking a recent ally of the USSR, not the USSR itself), to retaliate
with total nuclear counter-attack. This is what the warning that the USSR
"should never make the mistake of allowing circumstances to develop in
which the enemy makes the first nuclear strike against the USSR" can only
mean: that the USSR should be the first to deal a decisive nuclear strike -
"once aggression is unleashed, one shouldn't concede to the aggressor the
privilege of deciding, moreover, when to use nuclear weapons." To put it
bluntly, Castro is demanding Khrushchev to choose the end of civilized life on
earth over the loss of Cuba... (Castro's premise, according to which "the
destructive power of this /nuclear/ weaponry is so great and the speed of its
delivery so great that the aggressor would have a considerable initial
advantage," is very problematic: it is a safe bet - and the presupposition
of the MAD logic - that the surprise nuclear attack of one of the nuclear superpowers
will fail to destroy all the opponent's nuclear arms, i.e., that the opponent
will have enough arms left to fully strike back.) There is, nonetheless, a way
to read Castro's demand as a case of "rational" strategic reasoning -
what if it was sustained by a ruthless and cynical calculation with the
following scenario in view: the US army will invade Cuba with conventional
forces; then, the US and the USSR will destroy each other (and, perhaps, Europe
with it) with nuclear arms, making the US occupation of Cuba meaningless, so
that Cuba (with most of the Third World) will survive victorious?
[...]
It is precisely the paternal references of (some) "totalitarian"
leaders (Stalin as the Father of his people...) which testify to the underlying
fact that the logic of this leader is thoroughly anti-patriarchal, i.e., that
it implies the radical disjunction between Father and Leader:
The liberation of the modern subject from the figure of the
Patriarch as Fatherleader (Perechef) /.../ evidently opens up a large space of
freedom with the multiplicity of the objects of identification where anything
is possible, including leaders who want to be fathers, which is in no way the
same as a father who is from the outset leader. It is because, in the modern
crowd societies, there is no longer the Fatherleader, that the crowds can put a
leader at the place of their Ego Ideal.
[2]
What did the trauma of 1935 (the public campaign against his
"Lady Macbeth" triggered by the Pravda article "Muddle instead
of music") do to Shostakovich? Perhaps the clearest indicator of the break
is the change in the function of scherzo in Shostakovich's work in 1940s and
early 1950s. Prior to 1935, his scherzi can still be perceived as the explosive
expression of new aggressive and grotesque vitality and joy of life - there is
something of the liberating force of the carnival in them, of the madness of
the creative power that merrily sweeps away all obstacles and ignores or
established rules and hierarchies. After 1935, however, his scherzi had clearly
"lost their innocence": their explosive energy acquires a
brutal-threatening quality, there is something mechanic in their energy, like the
forced movements of a marionette. They either render the raw energy of social
violence, of pogroms of helpless victims, or, if they are meant as the
explosion of the "joy of life," this is clearly intended in a
sarcastic way, or as an impotent maniac outburst of the aggressivity of the
helpless victim. The "carnival" is here no longer a liberating
experience, but the explosion of thwarted and repressed aggressivity - it is
the "carnival" of racist pogroms and drunken gang rapes... (The
outstanding cases are the Movements 2 and 3 of the 8th Symphony, the famous 2nd
Movement of the 10th Symphony ("Portrait of Stalin"), and, among the
String Quartets, the 3rd Movement of the Quartet no. 3 (which, today, almost
sounds like Herrmann's score for Psycho) and the "furioso" Movement
of the Quartet no. 10.)
[3]
Notes:
[1] James g. Blight
and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Secret Struggles with
the Superpowers after the Cuban Missile Crisis, New York: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2002.
[2] 1 Fethi
Benslama, La psychanalyse à l'épreuve de l'Islam, Paris: Aubier 2002, p.
102.
[3] 1 See Bernd
Feuchtner, Dimitri Schostakowitsch, 125-126. Kassel, Stuttgart and Weimar:
Barenreiter/ Metzler 2002.
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