When Tactics Consume Strategy

Abstract

AbstractChapter 7 offers a case study of the Cuban Missile Crisis to show how preexisting options inform policy discussion and debate. Whereas analysts often extoll the benefits of nuclear advantages, for coercive effect, the Cuban Missile Crisis offers powerful evidence that officials in the throes of confrontation might lack the foresight, deliberativeness, and control to produce desired results. They might defer, then, to salient (perhaps, prepackaged) options with little insight, or effort to gain insight, into the adversary’s goals or the conditions that could cause a conflict to spiral beyond control. During the crisis, officials latched onto conventional options—in particular, air strikes—with little thought to how they might spark a nuclear conflagration. For that matter, despite alleged US nuclear superiority in the period, US policymakers gave no attention to whether, or how, a nuclear advantage would permit a favorable resolution of the crisis.