On the morning of 20 October, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent messages to American military commands worldwide, warning that tensions in Cubaâ??about which they were not specificâ??might call for military action soon. Trouble could break out anywhere: Turkey, Iran, Berlin. That very morning, trouble did break out in the Himalayas. China launched simultaneous attacks on the Himalayan extremes of India, at Ladakh in the west, and along the McMahon Line in the east. Still in the habit of forgetting about the Sino- Soviet split, the Kennedy administration did wonder whether China was acting in synchrony with the USSR, and if this was to be the great showdown: the all-out world war against communism that they had feared. Fortunately, it was just a coincidence.
At noon Washington time on 22 October, it was announced that President Kennedy would be appearing on television at 7:00 pm to address the nation.
In Moscow, it was early evening. â??Theyâ??ve probably discovered our missiles,â? said Khrushchev to his son, Sergei. But those missiles were defenseless, and could be taken out with an air strikeâ?? if the Americans could find them all. Discovery had come too soon. He called an emergency meeting of the Presidium.
â??The thing is we were not going to unleash war,â? he said, his face flushed, his manner agitated. â??We just wanted to intimidate them, to deter the anti- Cuban forces.â? At that moment, he realized what a mistake it had been not to listen to Fidelâ??s pleas, and make public his agreement to arm the Cubans. â??They can attack us,â? he said, â??and we shall respond. This may end up a big war.â?
Fidel, too, was preparing for a big war. Just as during the Bay of Pigs, he remained in Havana, and dispatched his three most important commanders to their usual regional posts: Che Guevara to Pinar del Rio, Juan Almeida to Santa Clara, Raúl Castro to Oriente. At 3:50 pm Havana timeâ?? 4:50 pm in Washingtonâ?? he placed the army on combat alert. At 5:35 pmâ??twenty- five minutes before Kennedy was due to speakâ?? he declared a general combat alarm. All 400,000 of Cubaâ??s armed combatants were mobilized: 100,000 troops, 170,000 reserves, and the rest militia and Peopleâ??s Defense units. He also had the support of 43,000 Soviet troops, which the CIA had underestimated as 10,000.
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