Leading from behind: Berlin, the Jupiters and third- party mediation during the Cuban missile crisis

This chapter examines secret attempts by the American and British governments to seek mediation during the Cuban missile crisis. By privately arranging for third parties to take public initiatives for US-Soviet deals, they hoped to achieve a negotiated settlement of the crisis from behind the scenes. Such attempts have not received much scholarly attention, presumably because they did not directly contribute to the solution of the crisis.

Yet if these attempts are examined within the context of possible Berlin-Cuba linkage and Western alliance politics concerning Berlin and the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, they reveal the complex nature of the Cuban crisis. For this reason, they deserve closer scrutiny. In the first section, this chapter traces the increasing entanglement of the Berlin and Cuban problems during the summer and autumn of 1962.

Then, it closely explores how the Berlin and Turkish factors affected decision-making in Washington and London, especially in relation to Western alliance politics, in the wake of the missile crisis. Through this analysis, the chapter shows that Washington and London attempted to avoid nuclear war, decouple Berlin from Cuba and maintain American credibility with its NATO allies by arranging for mediations by third parties.