Adlai Stevenson Cuban Missile Crisis

A dlai S tevenson

Un Security Council Address on Soviet Missiles in Cuba

delivered 25 October 1962

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Mr. President, Members of the Council:

Today, we must address our attention to the realities of the state of affairs posed by the buildup of nuclear striking power in Cuba.

In this connectedness, I want to say at the outset that the course adopted by the Soviet Spousal relationship yesterday to avoid direct confrontations in the zone of quarantine are welcome to my authorities. We also welcome the balls by Chairman Khrushchev in his letter to Earl Russell that the Soviet Union will take no reckless decisions with regard to this crisis. And we welcome near of all the study that Mr. Khrushchev has agreed to the proposals advanced by the Secretary General. Perhaps that report will exist confirmed hither today.

My regime is near broken-hearted to effect a peaceful resolution of this thing. We keep to promise that the Soviet Union will work with usa to diminish the -- not only the new danger which has of a sudden adumbral the peace, but all of the conflicts that divide the globe.

I shall not detain you with whatever detailed discussion of the Soviet and the Cuban responses to our complaint. The speeches of the communist delegates were entirely predictable. I shall make cursory comment on some points suggested by these speeches and some other points which may have arisen in the minds of members of the Un. Both Chairman Khrushchev in his letter to Earl Russell and Ambassador Zorin in his remarks to this Quango argued that this threat to the peace had been caused not by the Soviet Marriage and Cuba but by the U.s.a..

We are here today and have been this calendar week for ane single reason -- because the Soviet Union secretly introduced this menacing offensive military buildup into the isle of Cuba while assuring the world that nothing was further from their thoughts. The argument in its essence of the Soviet Union is that it was not the Soviet Union which created this threat to peace by secretly installing these weapons in Republic of cuba, but that it was the Usa which created this crisis by discovering and reporting these installations.

This is the first fourth dimension, I confess, that I have ever heard it said that the crime is not the burglar simply the discovery of the burglar -- and that the threat is not the cloak-and-dagger missiles in Cuba simply their discovery and the limited measures taken to quarantine further infection. The peril arises not because the nations of the Western hemisphere have joined together to take necessary action in their self-defense force, just considering the Soviet Matrimony has extended its nuclear threat into the Western hemisphere.

I noted that there is nevertheless at least some delegates in the Quango, possibly -- I doubtable very few -- who say that they don't know whether the Soviet Wedlock has in fact built in Cuba installations capable of firing nuclear missiles over ranges from k to 2000 miles. As I say, Chairman Khrushchev did not deny these facts in his letter of the alphabet to Earl Russell, nor did Administrator Zorin on Tuesday evening. And if further doubt remains on this score, we shall gladly exhibit photographic evidence to the hundred-to-one.

1 other indicate I'd like to make, Mr. President and gentlemen, is invite attention to the casual remark of the Soviet representative claiming that nosotros have 35 bases in strange countries. The facts are that at that place are missiles comparable to these being placed in Republic of cuba with the forces of simply three of our allies. They were simply established in that location by a decision of the heads of government meeting in December 1957, which was compelled to authorize such arrangements past virtue of a prior Soviet decision to introduce its own missiles capable of destroying the countries of Western Europe.

In the side by side place, there are some troublesome questions in the minds of members that are entitled to serious answers. There are those who say that conceding the fact that the Soviet Spousal relationship has installed these offensive missiles in Cuba, conceding the fact that this constitutes a grave threat to the peace of the world -- Why was it necessary for the nations of the Western hemisphere to act with such speed? Why could not the quarantine against the shipment of offensive weapons have been delayed until the Security Council and the General Assembly had a full opportunity to consider this -- the situation and make recommendations?

Let me remind the members that the United States was not looking for some pretext to enhance the outcome of the transformation of Cuba into a armed forces base of operations. On the contrary, the United States made no objection whatsoever to the shipment of defensive artillery by the Soviet Matrimony to Cuba, even though such shipments offended the traditions of this hemisphere. Even after the offset hard intelligence reached Washington apropos the change in the character of Soviet war machine assistance to Cuba, the President of the United states of america responded by directing an intensification of surveillance. And only later on the facts and the magnitude of the buildup had been established beyond all doubt did nosotros brainstorm to take this limited action of disallowment but those nuclear -- but these nuclear weapons, equipment, and aircraft.

To understand the reasons for this prompt action it is necessary to understand the nature and the purposes of this performance. It has been marked to a higher place all by 2 characteristics: speed and stealth. As the photographic evidence makes articulate, the installation of these missiles, the erection of these missile sites, has taken place with extraordinary speed. One entire circuitous was put up in 24 hours. This speed need not simply -- not merely demonstrates the methodical arrangement and the careful planning involved, just it as well demonstrates a premeditated attempt to face this hemisphere with a fait accompli. ⁱ Past quickly completing the whole procedure of nuclearization of Republic of cuba, the Soviet Union would be in a position to demand that the status quo exist maintained and left undisturbed. And if nosotros were to have delayed our counteraction, the nuclearization of Cuba would have been speedily completed.

This is non a chance which this hemisphere is prepared to take. When we first detected the hole-and-corner offensive installations, could we be reasonably expected to have notified the Soviet Spousal relationship in advance through the process of calling the Security Council that we had discovered its perfidy, so to have done cipher only wait while we debated and so accept waited further while the Soviet representative in the Security Council vetoed our resolution, as he has already announced that he volition practise? In different circumstances we would have; but today we are dealing with dread realities and non with wishes.

One of the sites, as I have said, was constructed in twenty-four hours. 1 of these missiles can be armed with its nuclear warhead in the centre of the night, pointed at New York, and landed above this room five minutes afterwards it was fired. No debate in this room could affect in the slightest the urgency of these terrible facts, or the immediacy of the threat to the peace.

There was just one way to deal with that urgency and with that immediacy; and that was to human action -- and to act at one time, merely with the utmost restraint consistent with the urgency of the threat to the peace. And we came to the Security Council, I remind you, immediately -- immediately, and concurrently with the OAS. ² We didn't even wait for the OAS to encounter and to act. We came here at the aforementioned time.

We immediately put into procedure the political machinery that we pray will accomplish a solution of this grave crisis. And we did not act until the American Republics had acted to brand the quarantine effective. We did not shirk our duties to ourselves, to the hemisphere, to the United Nations, or to the globe.

Nosotros are now in the Security Council on the initiative of the U.s.a. precisely because -- having taken the hemispheric action which has been taken -- we wish political machinery, the machinery of the Un, to have over, to reduce these tensions, and to interpose itself to eliminate this aggressive threat to the peace, and to assure the removal from this hemisphere of offensive nuclear weapons and the corresponding lifting of the quarantine.

In that location are those who say that the quarantine is an inappropriate and extreme remedy, that the penalization does not fit the criminal offense. But I ask those who accept this position to put themselves in the position of the Organization of American states, to consider what you would have done in the face of the nuclearization of -- of Cuba. Were we to practise nothing until the knife was sharpened? Were we to stand idly by until information technology was at our throats? What were the alternatives bachelor? On the one manus, the OAS might have sponsored an invasion or destroyed the bases by an air strike, or imposed a total blockade on all imports into Cuba, including medicine and nutrient.

On the other hand the OAS and the United states might accept washed nothing. Such a course would have confirmed the greatest threat to the peace of the Americas known to history and would take encouraged the Soviet Union in like adventures in other parts of the world. And it would accept discredited our volition, our decision to live in freedom, and to reduce -- non increase -- the perils of this nuclear age. The class we have chosen seems to me perfectly graduated to run into the character of the threat. To have washed less would take been to autumn -- to fail in our obligation to peace.

To those who say that a limited quarantine was too much, in spite of the provocation and the danger, let me tell you a story -- attributed similar so many of our American stories to Abraham Lincoln -- nearly the passerby out in my part of the country who was charged by a farmer's ferocious boar. He picked up a pitchfork and met the boar head-on. It died. And the irate farmer denounced him and asked him why he didn't use the blunt cease of the pitchfork. And the man replied, "Why didn't the boar attack me with his blunt finish?"

Some here accept attempted to question the legal basis of the defensive measures taken past the American Republics to protect the Western hemisphere confronting Soviet long-range nuclear missiles. And I would gladly expand on our position on this, merely in view of the proposal now before us presented last night by the Secretary General, perhaps that is a thing and a discussion, in view of its complication and length, which could be more fruitfully delayed to a later time.

Finally, let me say that no twisting of logic, no distortion of words can disguise the evidently, the obvious, the compelling common sense conclusion that the installation of nuclear weapons by stealth weapons of mass destruction in Cuba poses a unsafe threat to the peace, a threat which contravenes Article 2, paragraph 4, ³ and a threat which the American Republics are entitled to meet every bit they accept done with advisable regional defensive measures.

Nothing has been said past the representatives of the Communist States, here, which alters the basic situation. There is i fundamental question to which I solicit your -- your attention. The question is this: What actions serve to strengthen the globe's promise of peace? Can anyone claim that the introduction of long-range nuclear missiles into Republic of cuba strengthens the peace? Tin anyone claim that the speed and stealth of this functioning strengthens the peace? Tin can anyone suppose that this whole undertaking is annihilation more than an adventurous effort to increase the nuclear striking ability of the Soviet Wedlock against the United States and thereby magnify its often reiterated threats against Berlin? When we are about to debate how to terminate the dissemination of nuclear weapons, does their introduction in a new hemisphere past a -- by an exterior land advance sanity and peace? Does anyone suppose that if this Soviet adventure should go unchecked the Soviet Union would refrain from similar adventures in other parts of the world?

The i action in the concluding few days which has strengthened the peace is the determination to stop this further spread of weapons in this hemisphere. In view of the state of affairs that now confronts us, and the proposals fabricated here yesterday by the Acting Secretary General, I am not going to farther extend my remarks this afternoon. I wish only to conclude by reading to the members of the Council a letter from the President of the United States which was delivered to the Acting Secretary Full general merely a few minutes ago in respond to his appeal of last nighttime. He said, to Mr. U Thant:

I securely capeesh the spirit which prompted your bulletin of yesterday. As nosotros made articulate in the Security Quango, the existing threat was created by the hugger-mugger introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba, and the answer lies in the removal of such weapons.

In your message and your statement to the Security Quango last night, yous have made certain suggestions and accept invited preliminary talks to make up one's mind whether satisfactory arrangements tin be assured.

Administrator Stevenson is ready to discuss promptly these arrangements with yous.

I tin clinch y'all of our desire to reach a satisfactory and a peaceful solution of this matter.

Signed, John F. Kennedy.

I have nothing farther to say at this time, Mr. President.

Administrator ZORIN : [remarks in Russian language to the Security Council not transcribed]

Administrator STEVENSON: Mr. Zorin and gentlemen, I want to say to y'all, Mr. Zorin, that I don't take your talent for obfuscation, for distortion, for disruptive language, and for doubletalk. And I must confess to you that I'm glad I don't. But if I understood what you said, you lot said that my position had changed, that today I was defensive because we didn't have the evidence to prove our assertions that your Authorities had installed long-range missiles in Cuba.

Well let me say something to you lot, Mr. Ambassador: We do take the evidence. We have it, and it'due south clear and incontrovertible.

And permit me say something else: Those weapons must be taken out of Cuba.

And adjacent, let me say to you with a -- that if I understood you -- with a trespass on credulity that excels your all-time, yous said that our position had inverse since I spoke hither the other day because of the pressures of world opinion and the majority of the United Nations. Well, permit me say to you, sir, you lot are wrong again. We have had no pressure from anyone whatsoever. Nosotros came in here today to signal our willingness to discuss Mr. U Thant�s proposals, and that is the only alter that has taken place.

But let me also say to you, sir, that there has been a change. Yous, the Soviet Union, has sent these weapons to Cuba. You, the Soviet Wedlock, has upset the residue of power in the world. You lot, the Soviet Marriage, has created this new danger, not the United states. And yous asked, with a fine show of indignation, why the President didn't tell Mr. Gromyko on last Thursday virtually our prove, at the very time that the -- that Mr. Gromyko was blandly denying to the President that the United -- that the U.Southward.Southward.R. was placing such weapons on sites in the new earth.

Well I'll tell you why: because we were assembling the show. And peradventure it would exist instructive to the world to meet how a Soviet official -- how far he would go in perfidy. Perhaps we wanted to know if this state faced another example of nuclear deceit like that ane a twelvemonth agone, when in stealth, the Soviet Marriage broke the nuclear examination moratorium. ⁴

And while yous were request -- while we're asking questions, let me ask you why your Government, your Foreign Minister, deliberately, cynically deceived united states almost the nuclear build-upward in Cuba.

And, finally, the other day, Mr. Zorin, I remind you that you didn't deny the existence of these weapons. Instead, we heard that they had all of a sudden become defensive weapons. But today -- over again, if I heard you correctly -- you now say they don't exist, or that we oasis�t proved they exist, with another fine alluvion of rhetorical contemptuousness.

All right sir, let me ask y'all ane simple question. Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.s.a.S.R has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don't look for the translation: yeah or no?

** AMBASSADOR ZORIN: [statement in Russian followed by English translation through a Un Interpreter]: I am non in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I practice non wish to respond a question that is put to me in the style in which a prosecutor does. In due course, sir, y'all will have your reply. Do non worry.

Ambassador STEVENSON: You are in the court of world opinion right now and you lot tin answer yes or no. You have denied that they exist. I want to know if you -- if this -- if I've understood you correctly.

AMBASSADOR ZORIN: [statement in Russian followed past English translation through a Un Interpreter]: Sir, will you lot please continue your argument. You will have your respond in due course.**

SECURITY Quango CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stevenson, would you continue your statement delight? You will receive the answer in due class.

Administrator STEVENSON: I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that's your decision....And I'yard besides prepared to present the evidence in this room.

** I take not finished my statement. I asked yous a question. I take had no answer to the question, and I volition now proceed, if I may, to cease my argument. I doubt if anyone in this room, except possibly the representative of the Soviet Union, has any doubt about the facts.**

But in view of his statements and the statements of the Soviet Authorities upward until last Thursday, when Mr. Gromyko denied the existence or any intention of installing such weapons in Cuba, I am going to make a portion of the testify bachelor right now. If yous volition indulge me for a moment, nosotros volition fix an easel hither in the back of the room where I hope it will be visible to anybody.

The first of these exhibits shows an expanse due north of the hamlet of Candelaria, almost San Crist�bal, on the isle of Cuba, southwest of Havana. A map, together with a small photograph, shows precisely where the area is in Cuba.

The first photograph shows the area in late August 1962. Information technology was and then, if you can see from where you lot're sitting, but a peaceful countryside.

The second photograph shows the same area i twenty-four hours final week. A few tents and vehicles had come into the area, new spur roads had appeared, the main road had been improved.

The third photograph, taken only xx-four hours later, shows facilities for a medium-range missile battalion installed. At that place are tents for iv or v hundred men. At the terminate of the new spur road in that location are seven one,000-mile missile trailers. There are four launcher-erector mechanisms for placing these trailers in erect firing position. This missile is a mobile weapon, which tin can be moved chop-chop from i place to some other. It is identical with the 1,000-mile missiles which have been displayed in Moscow parades. All of this, I remind you, took identify in twenty-4 hours.

The second exhibit, which you lot can all examine at your leisure, shows three successive photographic enlargements of another missile base of the same type in the area of San Crist�bal. These enlarged photographs clearly bear witness half-dozen of these missiles on trailers and three erectors.

And that is simply one example of the first type of ballistic missile installation in Cuba.

A second type of installation is designed for a missile of intermediate range -- a range of nearly 2200 miles. Each site of this type has iv launching pads.

The exhibit on this type of missile shows a launching area being constructed near Guanajay, southwest of -- of the city of Havana. As in the showtime showroom, a map and pocket-sized photograph prove this surface area equally it appeared in late August 1962, when no war machine activities were apparent.

A 2d, big photograph shows the same area about vi weeks later. Here you will see a very heavy construction effort to -- to push the launching area to rapid completion. The pictures bear witness two large concrete bunkers or -- or control centers in procedure of construction, i betwixt each pair of launching pads. They prove heavy physical retaining walls being erected to shelter vehicles and equipment from rocket blast-off. They bear witness cable scars leading from the launch pad to the bunkers. They testify [a] big reinforced concrete edifice under construction. A edifice with a heavy arch may well be intended as the storage area for the nuclear warheads. The installation is non even so complete, and no warheads are yet visible.

The next photograph shows a closer view of the aforementioned intermediate-range launch site. Here you can clearly see i of the pairs of big concrete launch pads, with a physical edifice from which launching operations for three pads are controlled. Other details are visible, such as fuel tanks.

And that is only one example, 1 illustration, of the piece of work going forrad in Cuba on intermediate-range missile bases. At the same field you can run across 1 of the surface-to-air anti�aircraft guided missile bases, with half-dozen missiles per base, which now ring the entire coastline of Cuba.

Another set of two photographs covers still another area of deployment of medium-range missiles in Cuba. These photographs are on a larger calibration than the others. You can run across clearly three of the four launching pads. The 2d photo displays details of two of these pads. Even an middle untrained in photographic interpretation tin can clearly run across the buildings in which the missiles are checked out and maintained ready to burn, a missile trailer, trucks to movement missiles out to the launching pad, erectors to raise the missiles to launching position, tank trucks to provide fuel, vans from which the missile firing is controlled, in short, all of the requirements to maintain, load, and burn down these terrible weapons.

** These weapons, gentlemen, these launching pads, these planes -- of which nosotros have illustrated but a fragment -- are a part of a much larger weapons complex, what is called a weapons system. To back up this build-upward, to operate these advanced weapons systems, the Soviet Union has sent a large number of armed services personnel to Cuba -- a force now amounting to several thousand men.**

These photographs, as I say, are available to members for detailed test in the Trusteeship Council room following this meeting. There I will take one of my aides who will gladly explain them to yous in such detail as you may require.

** I accept nothing further to say at this fourth dimension.

Administrator ZORIN: [remarks in Russian language to the Security Council not transcribed]

AMBASSADOR STEVENSON: Mr. President and gentlemen, I won�t detain you simply 1 minute.

I accept not had a direct answer to my question. The representative of the Soviet Union says that the official answer of the UsS.R. was the Tass statement that they don�t demand to locate missiles in Cuba. Well, I agree -- they don�t demand to. But the question is, have they missiles in Cuba -- and that question remains unanswered. I knew it would be.

As to the authenticity of the photographs, which Mr. Zorin has spoken about with such scorn, I wonder if the Soviet Union would ask its Cuban colleague to allow a U.Due north. squad to get to these sites. If so, I can clinch you that we can directly them to the proper places very quickly.

And at present I hope that nosotros can get down to business, that we can atop this sparring. We know the facts, and so do you, sir, and nosotros are ready to talk about them. Our task hither is not to score debating points. Our task, Mr. Zorin, is to save the peace. And if you are ready to try, we are.**

Book/CDs by Michael E. Eidenmuller, Published by McGraw-Hill (2008)

Inquiry Note: Sound in a higher place is an incomplete record of the entire exchange betwixt Ambassadors Stevenson and Zorin. Text in italicized light blue font [within double asterisks] appears in at least one official tape source but is absent-minded from this audio.

¹ an event already accomplished and not likely to be undone

² Organization of American States

³ Article two, Paragraph 4 of the United Nations Lease states: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any land, or in whatsoever other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the Un."

⁴ On September 1st, 1961, the Soviet Marriage broke the three-year moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. In a catamenia of sixty days, the Soviets conduct fifty atmospheric tests, with a total yield exceeding that of all previous exam series, past all nations, combined. [source: Energy.gov]

Also in this database: John F. Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis Address

Page Updated: 10/21/22

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