The Cognitive Styles of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Humanity hung in a delicate balance, and one American wielded the unfathomable power and authority to tip the scales toward nuclear war or tiptoe to continued fragile peace. Imagine the noise President Kennedy must've heard and the pressure he must've felt while trying to make the most critical decision of his life — how to respond to the Soviet missile presence in Cuba.
On one side were unabashed warmongers, seeking any excuse to demonstrate U.S. military might and global dominance — a fiery hot ending to a cold war. On the other side were "peace at all costs" doves who were so afraid of the USSR's nuclear arsenal that they were practically paralyzed.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is a masterclass in complex decision-making. The stakes don't get any higher (eighty million Americans were within reach of the ballistic missiles), and the cast of characters is more fascinating than fiction.
Consider General Curtis Lemay, the infamous Air Force General known as the Father of Strategic Air Command (SAC). He's a relic of a time gone by — a champion of total war. The General was a fierce Cold Warrior, perhaps the fiercest. Lemay was unapologetic in his belief in strategic air campaign doctrine and helped shape Air Force ideology for decades.
In 1962, Lemay and Kennedy clashed. They couldn't have been more different. Lemay was a rough-and-tumble, war-tested General, and Kennedy, a prototypical politician, an upshot of a prominent family. LeMay argued for a military response in Cuba, going so far as to say of the blockade, "this is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich." Ouch.
Lemay was backhandedly comparing Kennedy to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who, by signing the Munich Agreement in 1938, ceded the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led Adolf Hitler. And Lemay said this to Kennedy's face on October 19, 1962. This bold comparison would've offended almost anyone, but it was an especially mighty charge given Joseph Kennedy's position as the ambassador to the United Kingdom in the late 1930s and early 40s.
Lemay wasn't the only hawk in Kennedy's ear. The entire Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed to endorse a swift military reaction—even General Maxwell Taylor, who Kennedy chose as Chairman, favored a military response.
Then, there's Robert (Bobby) Kennedy. JFK's brother served as Attorney General and was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm), responsible for advising the President during the crisis. Bobby advocated for a more measured response to Soviet missiles in Cuba, while LeMay and the brass favored immediate destruction of the missile sites. In his gruff way, Lemay allegedly called Bobby "little Kennedy" as the two jockeyed for the President's attention.
Viewing this event through multiple lenses is essential to understand the complexity of Kennedy's decision. The military was fresh off the stalemate in Korea, an embarrassing result that left its leaders more inclined to reach deep into the U.S. arsenal. And Kennedy was just 18 months away from and still reeling from the blowback of the failed Bay of Pigs fiasco, leaving him suspicious of military and intelligence advisors.
Renowned investor Warren Buffett famously warned against asking your barber if you need a haircut — a riff on Maslow's Hammer, the adage that everything looks like a nail when you have a hammer. The hammer in the 1960s was military muscle— and no flex was greater than atomic weapons. Some advisors only saw nails.
There has always been tension between versatility and specialization. The ancient Greek poet Archilochus is credited with the fox and hedgehog fable that has since come to represent two different cognitive styles.
In his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Isiah Berlin defined hedgehogs, saying they "know just one big thing." Foxes, on the other hand, "know many things" and are suspicious of seeing an issue from one perspective. They are more willing to recalibrate their views and seek numerous opinions. The world needs both hedgehogs and foxes.
A lot has changed since the 1960s. Today, we embrace specialization; hedgehogs are far more numerous than foxes. Specialization bodes well for economic prowess, but someone must synthesize — to identify actual nails and determine when to hammer and when to reach elsewhere in the toolkit.
Experts are necessary. General Curtis Lemay, affectionately called "Iron Ass LeMay" in his flying days, played a vital role in matching Soviet aggression during the Cold War. Kennedy's blockade and the subsequent political solution would've failed without the U.S.'s overwhelming nuclear deterrent. Cold Warriors, like Lemay, who served during the tense period, played a crucial role in maintaining global balance. But if unchecked by broader thinking foxes, these experts might’ve resorted to the only tool they knew.
It's well documented that JFK was reckless in his personal life. His misadventures at home and abroad were deplorable, but his fox-like thinking was critical in allowing cooler heads to prevail during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Consider a clip from October 22, 1962, just hours before Kennedy's speech to the nation. Kennedy called a meeting of his Berlin advisors, and the resulting conversation is like a scene out of Dr. Strangelove. President Kennedy wanted assurance that American commanders in Europe would only fire nuclear weapons with a direct order from the President himself. He was worried that communication breakdowns and information gaps could lead to an unintended launch:
"But you see, but they don't know in Greece and Turkey — ah, Turkey and Italy — what we know. And therefore, they don't realize there is a chance there will be a spot reprisal. And what we've got to do is make sure these fellows do know, so that they don't fire them off and think the United States is under attack. I don't think we ought to accept the Chiefs' word on that one, Paul."
Kennedy asked tough questions of the right people. Throughout the crisis, the President ensured his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, was kept abreast of the latest developments. Remember, Eisenhower was a Republican and Kennedy a Democrat — and yet Kennedy willingly sought the General and former President's counsel, and Eisenhower obliged.
On an October 22 call with Eisenhower, Kennedy asked questions like:
"What's your judgment as to the chances they'll fire these things off if we invade Cuba?"
"General, what about if the Soviet Union — Khrushchev — announces tomorrow, which I think he will, that if we attack Cuba that it's going to be nuclear war?"
And "…In other words, you would take that risk if the situation seemed desirable??"
A fox-like thinking Kennedy sought the opinion of a former political rival, one that once said Kennedy wanted to "turn the government into Santa Claus." But past political bickering and name-calling didn't matter to JFK. He wanted the best advice possible, and who better to turn to than a former President and General — even one from the opposition political party?
President Kennedy tried to avoid groupthink — the same condition that led to his support of the failed covert operation to remove Fidel Castro from power. In retrospect, the Bay of Pigs fiasco might’ve been Kennedy's most important failure, but only because he re-wired his decision-making mechanisms.
In a Harvard Business Review piece, Morten T. Hansen identified four fundamental changes President Kennedy made to how his advisors should interact in making major decisions:
Each participant should function as a “skeptical generalist,” focusing on the problem as a whole rather than approaching it from his or her department’s standpoint. They should think more like foxes.
To stimulate freewheeling discussions, the group should use informal settings with no formal agenda and protocol so as to avoid the status-laden meetings in the White House.
The team should be broken into sub-groups that would work on alternatives and then reconvene.
The team should sometimes meet without Kennedy present, so as to avoid people simply following his views.
Hansen says the idea was “to solicit diverse viewpoints, stimulate debate, explore options, probe assumptions, and let the best plan win on its merits.” That’s thinking like a fox.
Today, we have the benefit of hindsight. We don't know how history would've played out had Kennedy chosen another route. It's easy to declare that the blockade avoided nuclear war and see it as the obvious option. But it, too, was risky. The Soviets could've forcefully responded, drawing the U.S. (and the world) into war — one beginning on Soviet terms, a precarious position to start fighting from.
Further, we don't know what would've happened had we bombed the missile sites. Perhaps swift military action wouldn't have led to nuclear war but hastened the end of the Cold War — we don't know. Since we can't revise history, although it's a fun thought experiment, we should focus on the mental frameworks were led to pivotal decisions.
On October 22nd, 1962, President Kennedy addressed the nation (and world) to report the establishment of offensive nuclear weapons on the US’s island neighbor. Kennedy’s words and appearance were strong and blunt but not aggressive. He famously said:
“Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this Hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world.”
Fortunately, the blockade and following secret negotiations de-escalated the conflict before any missiles were launched. Today, financial rewards and an education system geared to produce productive employees incentivize hedgehog thinking — but we need more foxes. Hedgehogs can dig deep into complicated problems, but foxes can mix and match discoveries from diverse domains, synthesizing more imaginative, more successful solutions.
