Ridgway Center to Mark 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis
10/09/2012
The Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies will mark the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis with a lecture presented by Dr. Peter Kornbluh at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16 at the University Club, Ballroom B.
Fifty years ago (October 16-28, 1962) during the Cold War, the world came the closest it ever has to an exchange of nuclear weapons between the Soviet Union and the United States. An American U-2 reconnaissance plane photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores on October 14th. President John F. Kennedy was briefed about the situation on October 16. For nearly the next two weeks, the President and his team wrestled with a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union. President Kennedy established a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize the threat to national security. Disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's offer to remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. Against this background this one-day conference, with an exciting range of speakers, seeks to do the following:
• To re-examine the crisis in light of the most recent research
• To consider the lessons learned in terms of crisis bargaining and crisis management
• To look ahead and consider what great power crises might look like in the coming decades
• To identify new challenges of escalation dynamics and decision-making in crises that are likely to be far more complex than the Cuban Missile Crisis
RSVP your attendance to this event – Beverly Brizzi (beb38@pitt.edu). Lunch provided.
Agenda
9:30 – 9:45 a.m. Welcome and Introduction – Dr. Phil Williams
9:45 – 10:45 a.m. Dr. Peter Kornbluh, Keynote Speaker
The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited
10:45 – 11:00 a.m. Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:40 a.m. The New Context for International Crises
Professor Dennis Gormley
11:40 – 12:20 p.m. Escalation Dynamics in 21st Century Crises
Dr. Forrest Morgan
12:20 – 1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00 – 1:40 p.m. Civil-Military Relations in Crises
Dr. Ryan Grauer
1:40 – 3:00 p.m. The Missile Crisis and Beyond - Panel Discussion
Panel Members: Peter Karsten, Peter Korbluh
Dennis Gormley, Ryan Grauer, Forrest Morgan
Chaired by Dr. Charles Gochman
3:00 p.m. Conference ends
Keynote Biography
Dr. Peter Kornbluh is the senior analyst at the National Security Archives at George Washington University where he is the director of Cuba and Chile Documentation projects. Formerly he was the co-director of the Archive’s Iran-Contra project. He is former adjunct professor at Columbia University and has published many books including “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability”, based upon 24,000 declassified documents which was selected as the year’s best book by the Los Angeles Times, and also “The Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion ReExamined.” He has also published important volumes on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Iran-Contra scandal.
Dr. Kornbluh’s articles have appeared in the journal Foreign Policy, the New York Times and Washington Post, The Nation, and he frequently appears on national television and radio broadcasts. He was the consultant for the Discovery-Times documentary “Kennedy and Castro: The Secret History.”
October 16, 2012
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Kornbluh
University Club, Ballroom B
10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
