As the summer heat of August 1962 began to abate in most areas of the United States, news was received that a U. S. Navy aircraft on a training mission in the Caribbean had been fired upon by two foreign naval ships believed to have been Cuban. If this was not sufficient to alert sober Americans to the realization that a different kind of heat was going to worsen in the months ahead, the events that followed surely did.
On the second day of September, coupled with a White House announcement that U. S. aircraft would fire back if attacked, came a public report that close surveillance of Cuban shores had revealed significant increases in the arrivals of Soviet military material as a part of an apparently large scale Communist program to assist Castro. Moscow the following day announced a new agreement that had been made with Cuba concerning military support of Castro.
The impact of this report was both immediate and far reaching. This was the most overt act of Soviet involvement in the Caribbean which the world had experienced. Apparently the Communist stake in Cuba was now worth the risk of open rather than covert military aid. This aid portended an obviously increased threat in the Caribbean, though the scope of the threat was not then apparent.
It was at this point of the developing Cuban crisis that the President issued his warning to the Soviets concerning the introduction of offensive weapons. After assuring the nation that at present there was no evidence of offensive capability in Cuba, he pledged that should such a threat later develop, the United States would do whatever must be done to protect its security and that of its allies. Against this background of heightened concern, there were many in responsible positions throughout the country who urged that the United States initiate an immediate economic and military blockade of Cuba.
Following the traditional and historically recognized Monroe Doctrine, such a course of action had its appeal. With a naval power that could quickly muster surface and antisubmarine forces to effect a tight blockade, the land power Leviathans of the East would perhaps for the first time in the East-West struggle be unable to respond militarily with any significant tactical forces to challenge U. S. initiative. Further, U. S. naval forces could be applied just in the correct proportion according to the needs of the situation—discriminately, creditably, and accurately to keep military conflict within an unusually low order in this atomic-missile age when most other types of military operations would run a high risk of escalation into nuclear warfare.
The President in early September characterized these suggestions as “loose talk.” A month later, September was history. So was its setting. In a race with the incredibly swift build-up of Soviet offensive nuclear capability in Cuba, the President ordered the U. S. Navy to interdict all shipping of every nation bound for Cuba carrying cargoes of offensive weapons. Was this a vindication of the earlier judgments of September which had urged a unilateral blockade? Most of the classical features of a traditional blockade were clearly manifest in the subsequent naval action. The manner in which the interdiction was proclaimed, the methodology of the application of naval force and the announced objectives were all reminiscent of a textbook description of blockade. Yet, carefully and with repeated emphasis, the President and official Washington characterized the action as a “quarantine” and skillfully pointed out the nature of the October clandestine and provocative changes in contrast to the September conditions. It was, moreover, this very change that was cited as the justification for the use of armed force in the solution of this security problem.
The success of the naval action, whatever its justification or label, is naturally the criterion for the ultimate judgment of history, and the enormity of that success is already clear. Yet, as a precedent for the future, another question must be asked. Was the naval action legal? Though to have had the law on our side may not have been sufficient national protection, it is not irrelevant to ask on which side the law was. Obviously it was the manifest ability and will of the United States to use all of her armed force as necessary in accomplishing her declared purpose of obviating the nuclear threat that was one of the prime reasons for success. But equally important with the military readiness was the national diplomatic sophistication which guided this explosive situation. The support of friends and allies the world over and the unified position of the Western Hemisphere that was so rapidly accomplished best testify to the success of this effort. Though this world support cannot be attributed to the legal position of the United States, that legal position certainly had an influence. It would be well then to examine the legal case, and with such examination it may also be possible to ascertain the reason why the United States chose sea power as the initial response in the power confrontation with the Soviets.
In international law, a naval blockade interdicting and penalizing all sea traffic between the world at large and a specific state is a belligerent right and only a belligerent right. Once legally established, a blockade imposes upon all who use the sea the legal duty to avoid the parts or areas it effectively shuts off. Violation of this duty can result in condemnation, and concomitant with the right of blockade is the unique right of search and seizure which then arises. As an operation of war, this lawful restraint upon the freedom of the high seas is acquiesced in by all maritime nations so that shippers are not in a position to appeal to their flag state in avoiding search or the penalties that result from a conscious break into the locked-off sea areas. Interestingly, the pattern of the “quarantine” closely followed the international rules applicable to a wartime blockade.
It is apparent that a blockade (or quarantine) significantly diminishes the legal rights of maritime nations in their otherwise free use of the ocean highways. Visit and search, appropriation of high sea areas, and detentions are violently antithetical to peacetime maritime liberty and to the fundamental right of all states to utilize the high seas in pursuit of international commerce in time of peace. Only in the context of armed conflict has the interest of states to avoid hostilities generally overbalanced their otherwise primal interest of maintaining maritime freedom on the high seas. While the international rules in time of war attempt to adjust and bring back into balance these conflicting concerns of neutrality with continued sea commerce and belligerency with control of the sea, in peacetime no adjustment is usually tolerated.
Rules of war are not, moreover, limited to one aspect only of the war activity spectrum. If they impose duties upon the neutrals, they likewise impose duties upon the belligerents. The law of armed conflict is not a one-way street. In time of war, belligerents assume part of the onus in adjusting their interests with those of the neutrals, who have no vital concern as to the outcome of the struggle. As a non-belligerent, the United States assumed no such burdens in its use of the “quarantine” and in point of fact did not rely upon a wartime theory to justify the naval action.
The United States viewed Quarantine as selective. It was directed only at the shipment of specialized strategic weapons, while Blockade strikes at ordinary maritime commerce in wartime in an effort to secure maximum impact on the economy of the enemy.
Yet interference with the freedom of the seas has not always been limited to war situations. Another kind of blockade has been recognized in international practice, if not in law. When a blockading state has been disposed to remain at “peace” and does not purport to have a blockading action amount to a “state of war,” a “pacific blockade” is said to exist.
Traditionally, customary international law has not categorized every armed conflict between nations as “war.” Indeed, it has specifically recognized the use of force as a lawful method of “non-amicable peaceful settlement” of certain types of international disputes. For example, the forceful occupation of foreign territory as a means of “reprisal” has been classified as “peaceful” and a lawful mode of redress short of war. Armed intervention to protect the life, property, and liberty of nationals residing in foreign lands where the legally constituted local government cannot or will not act to assure protection has also been classified as lawful and a measure short of war.
Because of the anomalous nature of these actions, most writers have identified the pacific blockade with this unusual category. Identification, however, does not mean there is unanimity of opinion as to its legal nature. While the international laws of blockade are generally well understood, those for pacific blockade are not. They remain a mystery. Still, this classification is now more than a century old and has been used to describe some 20 naval actions since its introduction into legal literature by a prominent French writer in 1849.
Pacific blockade has remained an enigma for many reasons. The very term “pacific” is misleading, for one cannot suppose that a naval blockade which is in earnest will avoid the use of force. Further, condemnation proceedings in prize courts have been avoided by blockading powers. Commercial penalty preferences have been generally limited to detentions and property sequestrations, and legal judgments when rendered have been autogenous. A vacuum of legal judgments on the subject meets those who attempt to research the area.
Perhaps this void can be explained by the relatively infrequent use of the pacific blockade since World War I and the limited number of such blockades that have been declared to be binding upon flags of third states. In the last hundred years, the blockades of Crete in 1897, Venezuela in 1902, Montenegro in 1913, and Greece in 1916 were conducted on a non-war basis and announced as effective against third- state flags. Yet even from the history of these actions, it was clear that from the standpoint of third states, pacific blockade was a far more dangerous method of non-amicable settlement of disputes than were the other military pressure tactics of localized application and impact.
At their worst, these latter methods of settlement were of limited objective and were restrictive in application of force in both time, space, and battle characteristics. All legal relations of peace within the community of nations could remain undisturbed because of the localized nature of the conflict.
Naval action was different. Its force, applied locally, had a general impact even where restrictively applied. Pragmatically, if a blockade was to be a “peaceful” pressure method of settling disputes, it needed at least to avoid its potential to involve other than the disputing states by the military action. Almost all writers therefore agree that when pacific blockade is used as a compulsive means in the settlement of disputes, the blockading state has no legal right to interfere with the maritime freedom of third states. Total blockade must cost the legal disabilities of a belligerent. The law of peace can no longer continue. Blockade has to be a war action if it affects world maritime commerce. While other armed force used restrictively to settle disputes can be contained within a compartment labeled “peace,” naval force interfering with maritime freedom will overflow it.
The U. S. naval interdiction was, of course, directed against third country shipping suspected off carrying offensive weapons to Cuba. The disturbance was thus world-wide and so did not fit into the pacific blockade classification of the 19th century by definition or purpose. Yet what of this new label, “quarantine”? What pertinency has this terminology to international law? To find the answer one has first to consider the manyfold changes that have been wrought within the international community since World War I and the new age to which the 20th century gave birth.
Once the world began to shrink the time- space barriers, it became apparent to all nations that even limited self-help actions could no longer be of localized interest only. There could be no small isolated disturbances which did not in one way or another involve the entire world. Consequently, forceful methods of settlement lost much of their legal imprimaturs, and armed reprisals and armed redress became a legal practice of the past. Even the historic right of national choice concerning war and peace became subject to legal conditions. Today, “maintaining the peace,” not the regulation of armed conflict, has become the major world legal concern. History has demonstrated that war in one part of the globe could quickly engulf the whole. International law has therefore reoriented its objectives. No longer is it concerned only with “neutrality.” Rather it looks toward “keeping the peace,” and it was upon this new basis of international order that the United Nations was founded.
All members of the United Nations are now required to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The Charter renounces “war as an instrument of foreign policy”; it agrees that settlement of disputes and conflicts between nations shall be accomplished by “peaceful means”; and it provides for collective and military and economic sanctions against a state which looks to the threat or use of force.
Since where force is required to meet a threat to international security the charter provides for collective action, the natural query follows as to whether the United States could have found an answer to the Cuban threat through the United Nations.
The pitfall of the collective security rubric lies, of course, in the “veto” rule coupled with today’s power alignment within the Security Council itself. With the permanent members of the Council confronting each other in diametrically opposite camps, decision or action by the Council could be legally avoided by the Communist bloc notwithstanding the merits of the question.
To fill the vacuum of inaction by the Security Council resulting from the veto experience of the United Nations organization, the General Assembly in 1950 adopted the “Uniting for Peace Resolution.” Designed to bridge the gap of Security Council inaction on vital questions of international peace and security, this resolution calls for the General Assembly itself to consider such questions and in default of Security Council action to make recommendations to member nations as to what collective measures (including the use of force) ought to be used to enforce the peace. Actions of member states, however, are not legally bound by the recommendations.
Patently, the Resolution is hardly a collective peace enforcement substitute for the Charter’s organic machinery. While the Assembly may act as the world’s conscience, debate legal rules applicable to a crisis situation, and attempt to unify the world responses to preserve the peace, its activity does not equate to the hard sanctions recognized by the Charter as sometimes necessary to dissuade aggression or those who threaten breach of the international peace and security.
While the Soviet Union could undoubtedly, if confronted with a hostile Assembly judgment, have ignored it and suffered only minor loss to its world position of leadership influence, the same could not have been said for the United States. It can ignore Charter principles only at its peril. While it may be true that the United States cannot conduct her foreign policy exclusively through the United Nations, it is equally true that the United Nations is a vital part of her foreign policy. For the United States, therefore, to have submitted the Cuban issue to the United Nations for determination would have portended high risk with little probability of evoking actions of consequence vis-a-vis the Soviets. An adverse political decision or even a prolonged debate could have courted disaster to the U. S. position and that of the Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, a quick decision and favorable results could have given no reasonable assurance of Western Hemispheric security in face of Soviet determination.
The world has sadly learned that paper commitments do not stop aggression, Communist style. A United Nations action to quash the Soviet threat was therefore out of reach. The question remains, how could the United States ward off the obviously pregnant dangers in a Cuba fully armed with offensive nuclear weapons controlled by the Communist bloc? Did existing international law require U. S. capitulation to the danger or, in the alternative, her violation of the legal order of an already perilous world? Like the oyster, was she required to lie within the protective shell of collective security incrustations to await the savoring which comes after a wedge has penetrated the vulnerable edges?
Emphatically not! No legal system required so much. To establish an order that permits such jeopardy to the security of a major power would not only be folly but would build into the system a disease of its own destruction. The very purpose of the veto principle was to avoid this recognizable disease. Nor is the veto mechanism the only safeguard against this disease of power unreality. An additional one is recognized in the “regional collective defense measures” which are permitted under Charter principles to exist outside of the United Nations organization. Regional arrangements are fully recognized under Article 51 of the Charter and its Chapter VIII as being in harmony with collective security, as a supplement to the United Nations, though not a substitute.
Primary among the regional arrangements organized under the United Nations’ principles is the Inter-American one. The very provisions of the Charter dealing with such organizations were written into this instrument with the inter-American system specifically in mind. At San Francisco when it was finally agreed that the regional principle would be acceptable, it was the Latin American countries who had gained the diplomatic victory, for it was they who had been adamant in insisting upon acceptance of this principle.
The Inter-American Conference for Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security followed the San Francisco understanding and became the foundation of the post-World War II Pan-American regional security and harmony. The Rio Pact was the product of this conference and imposed the following salient obligations upon member states: first, an armed attack against one was to be considered an armed attack against all; second, in the event of aggression less than an armed attack which would endanger regional peace and security, an “Organ of Consultation” would meet to agree on means then to be taken for the common defense; and third, the decision of the Organ of Consultation could include the use of armed force to meet the aggression.
The 1947 date of the Rio Conference is significant as is its acknowledgment that the use of armed force might be required in the region under situations that did not amount to an armed attack. Cuba, it should be emphasized at this point, is still a party to this agreement and a member of this regional system, even though she has been suspended from participation in the organizational agencies. The next regional conference following Rio was at Bogota, Colombia. The informal union of the Americas was consolidated into a cohesive organization and from it the Organization of American States developed.
During the Bogota conference a significant aside occurred. Mob violence in Bogota badly wrecked the capitol including the building in which the conferees were gathered. The clandestine hand of Communism was for the first time clearly apparent in inciting the violence. The objective had been to discredit the inter- American conference. By resolution the conference at Bogota condemned international Communism and proclaimed its resolve to prevent Communist subversion of the inter- American way of life. But the conference did no more. No concerted action was planned or taken to combat the obvious menace. In retrospect, however, this inaction does not seem at all surprising.
Into the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), 58 years of Pan- Americanism had been incorporated. During these years international Communist forces had focused their major attention outside the American continents; during these years the major fears of the states to the south of the United States were fears of Yankee “intervention.” Limiting itself to general propositions relating to mutual defense, the Charter of the OAS stresses legal agreements to avoid the “intervention evil.” Intervention in the external or internal affairs of another American by the use of armed force is prohibited except for certain specific instances. Legally, no state is to use or even encourage the use of coercive measures to force the sovereign will of another in order to obtain advantages of any kind. While pledges do call for collective action in the event of a “threat to the peace,” it is made most clear that such pledges are not to be a vehicle for a return of the old and monotonous story of gunboat diplomacy under the guise of collective security.
Collective inter-American experience had been fitted to the problems of upholding nonintervention principles, and it was not until the Communist threat in Guatemala in 1954 that the Red threat bore directly upon the internal security of the Western Hemisphere. It was not until this experience that the dogma against “intervention” finally and unavoidably clashed with continental security considerations. This issue was clearly drawn at the Tenth International Conference of American States which met at Caracas, Venezuela. Soviet tie-ins with the Guatemalan government had raised a major challenge to the Monroe Doctrine. The delegates at Caracas thus had the delicate problem of taking collective action in support of that Doctrine without stirring up the pot of non-intervention. The Monroe Doctrine, it should be recalled, was initially a declaration justifying U. S. unilateral action to oppose extensions of European political systems to the American continent. Manifestly, it had qualities of “intervention.” To avoid these qualities, the United States emphasized the collective nature of the modern version of the Doctrine stating that it was a “sentiment that had long since ceased to be unilateral.” Yet to many at Caracas, the real and present danger of extracontinental intervention in Guatemala still did not equate to the classical extension of a European political system to the American continent. To eliminate the fear of using the Communist threat as an excuse for intervention, the Resolution of Caracas in reaffirming the multilateral nature of the Monroe Doctrine stated that acceptance of the Doctrine was in no way:
... to impair the inalienable right of each American State to choose freely its own form of Government and economic system and to live its own social and cultural life.
With this new legal limitation grafted to the Monroe Doctrine, the OAS was in a position to take cognizance of the Guatemalan affair.
Action by the OAS in Guatemala failed to materialize. In the interim, the Communists were ousted from political power by Guatemalan internal pressures. What appeared to have been a successful collective response to the Communist threat in the Hemisphere was not wholly that. In the aftermath, it became increasingly clear that the principle of continental security had been as much injured as served. The ousted government of Guatemala blamed its downfall upon U. S. imperialism, which threatened subjugation of Latin America. Like an infectious disease, the fear of Yankee intervention began to spread. Many Latins normally sympathetic to the United States were swept into the camps of noninterventionists, and strong opposition developed against “collective action to avoid extensions of European political systems to the American Continent.” Inter-American unity could no longer be assumed, and in the absence of a blatant Communist threat to the security of all, even an opening of the question of continental security could have conceivably injured further development of collective action. It was on this stage that the Hemisphere approached the Soviet thrusts in Cuba. It is on this stage that one must judge the OAS resolution authorizing naval action to stop offensive arms shipments to Cuba.
Fidel Castro’s overthrow of Batista was received in Latin America with almost universal acclaim. A symbol of reform and economic progress, Castro quickly captured the intellectual and emotional support of the peoples of the New World. Even had the United States at this time perceived the threat that Castro was to bring to bear against her, there was little she could have done overtly to avoid it. This was especially so since there was at the outset of the new regime no evidence of Soviet domination of Castro himself, even though Communist influence in his government had been evident from the first.
Revolutionary excesses in human reprisals, expropriation of foreign commercial property, and the suppression of liberties within the island followed. Still, Castro political interests appeared to remain internal. The luster of Cuban nationalism disguised Soviet influence. Even increasing systematic slander and propaganda hostile to the United States had to be dealt with on an ad hoc basis. Paper protests became the U. S. counteraction. No appeal to the OAS was feasible, for such an appeal would have stirred up a hornets’ nest of disagreement, disrupting unity which, foreseeably, was going to be required.
Then followed the U. S. Cuban sugar quota ban of 1960 and the San Jose interregional conference which met to consider again the deteriorating Cuban question. The results of San Jose continued the non-intervention theme. No direct reference was made to Cuba in its resolutions, and what restraints were evident were restraints upon the United States. Intervention in any form was prohibited. Thus, there was little that could have been accomplished overtly by the United States, either unilaterally or through collective action, to check Castro’s growth. Then followed the attempted invasion by the Cuban anti-Castroites at the Bay of Pigs, its failure, the beginning of heavy Soviet arms shipments, and Cuba’s almost complete absorption into the Communist bloc. Fears of intracontinental intervention at last began to be overbalanced by fears for continental security.
Finally, at Punta del Este, the challenge to all was formally and specifically recognized. Cuban participation in the OAS agencies was suspended, and she was specifically condemned as having identified herself with the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology, as having established a system within that Communist principle, and as having accepted military assistance from Communist powers outside of the Hemisphere, thereby threatening military intervention in the Americas on the part of the Soviet Union.
Were words enough? Could legal action follow? Was it too late to recapture the initiative from Mr. Khrushchev? It almost was. Let Mr. Castro have atomic weapons and it surely would be. We have seen that within the American regional system the principles of the United Nations Charter had been preserved and that correspondingly the Charter had recognized the responsibility of the inter- American states to preserve peace and security within their region though such arrangements had to be consistent with the principles of the Charter.
True, under Article 51 of the U. N. Charter, regional organizations, like individual states, are authorized to use armed forces without Security Council authorization. But what of the use of armed force to repel extra- regional acts threatening regional peace and security which fall short of armed attack? Clearly, regional arrangements were viewed by the framers of the U. N. Charter at San Francisco as not only harmonious with U. N. precepts, but also as reliable sources of strength under Chapter VIII of the Charter in the employment of force by the Security Council to preserve the peace within their regional areas. Of course the Security Council under the present political state of affairs could never be expected to exercise its Article 53 powers of collective regional enforcement, any more than it would be expected to use any of its other sanction powers. Indeed, the “Uniting For Peace Resolution” sprang from the political realities of this fact and was born of the world-recognized urgency to find a “way out” of the Council impasse—a way at least consistent with Charter principles.
If the Council could not function as the Charter framers had intended, the General Assembly believed it fell to itself to ensure collective security.
It should be clear that danger in Cuba was not only to the United States; it was to Latin America as well. Cuba became a threat as an overt logistic base to support subversive activities and Fifth Columns and as a polar attraction for Communists in the Americas. Supported materially, economically, and politically, and with an atomic threat to deter regional action against this aggression, Communist movements in the Hemisphere could gain such a source of armed strength as to challenge the stability and well-being of all the Americas. As lamentable as the Castro government may be to the Cuban people, it was not the unhappy excesses in Cuba that were the concern of the region. Rather it was her willingness to act as an agent of the U.S.S.R., to permit Soviet infiltration and control of Latin American countries through might and force.
The aggression, then, was not regionally internal. The challenge was from without. So sharply focused was this threat even before the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba that representatives of the OAS met informally in Washington in early October 1962 to exchange views upon the matter. Following their meeting, an extraordinary communique was issued which far exceeded any prior recognition of the extra-continental hazard. “Soviet intervention in Cuba” was described as the Hemisphere’s most urgent problem, requiring both individual and collective action in the economic field. The Soviet-Cuban alliance was uncompromisingly condemned, and it was suggested that further measures to solve the Cuban dangers were to be sought.
The U. N. Charter urges members to refrain from the “threat or use of force.” It therefore outlaws aggression accomplished by coercion, by foreign military pressures or by subterfuges of insurgent actions controlled from outside powers as well as by the overt classical military operation. Within the principles of the U. N. Charter, it is firmly established that the OAS may take peaceful measures to maintain international peace and security within its region.
Yet the Rio Treaty does not look only to the peaceful resources of its member states to isolate aggressions against the American continent. Within the principles of the U. N. Charter, the Organ of Consultation could direct the use of armed force to repel such dangers. How should the armed forces of this regional organization have been lawfully used to check offensive moves by the U.S.S.R. in subverting the Hemisphere through its Cuban instrumentality? Immediate invasion of Cuba was no solution. It ignored the fact that the aggression is essentially extra-continental. It ignored the legal prohibition of non-intervention in the internal affairs of a Latin state. It ignored the image Castro has created for the many Latin leaders who seek change in their present order of economic life, and it ignored, finally, the realities of inter-American political attitudes toward such an immediate violent course of action if another method could accomplish the purpose.
Yet, action short of an armed commitment could not ensure the safety of the smaller states within the region which are intent upon seeking their own destiny without foreign intervention or domination. Only an effective barrier against arms shipments would meet the challenge.
While the United Nations could not be expected to establish such a barrier, the regional system could. Through a naval quarantine of shipments of offensive arms to Cuba, danger to the Hemisphere could be avoided. This, of course, required maritime search and the redirection of all international shipping carrying such contraband. Can such a regional naval embargo during peace be justified under international law? It can; especially so since during its establishment the United Nations was apprised of the regional action to maintain continental peace and security, and that world organization was given under Article 40 of the Charter an opportunity to obviate the Soviet threat through its machinery.
That the naval quarantine as a collective measure did not amount to belligerency is clear. The U. N. Charter, for example, lists blockade as a collective means of action under Article 42 to obviate threats to international peace and security. Can one suppose that the Charter requires the United Nations to go to war in order to keep the peace? Obviously the laws of war and peace have no pertinency here. The raison d’être for the rules of law pertaining to war and peace are thus changed in an age of total war.
A naval action in support of collective values to seal off threats to the international peace and security can therefore be classified as pacific. But “pacific blockade” as a word of description for today should not obfuscate the issue by introducing considerations which have pertinency for only yesterday. New wine in old bottles has always caused difficulties. To avoid confusion a new terminology was evolved. The President coined the phrase, “naval quarantine.” It is what is in the bottle that counts and not what appears on the outside. A naval quarantine for collective regional purposes need not be legally founded upon belligerency.
The foundations of modern international law are differently structured, and the old rules have pertinency only when supported by the new foundation—the U. N. Charter principles of regional collective security. Acting within these principles, a naval action to prevent offensive weapons from threatening the inter-American region is as lawful as Article 8 of the Rio Pact is lawful—an article conceived and agreed to during the infancy of United Nations experience. The old rubrics and dogma of pre-World War experiences defining legal naval actions had no “collective security” ingredient to consider.
The drama of 1962 had a new script and a new stage. While the actors remained the individual states, their terms of reference had new content. There was no U. S. dispute with Cuba. No desire to pressure her into political change by the use of armed reprisal, coercion, or intervention. The theater of U. S. concern had been enlarged beyond national or alliance boundaries. These concerns, being regional, were world-wide, sui generis to this Hemisphere and were concerns of preserving peace. The quarantine was not undertaken to obtain unilateral advantages. When the dangers to the Hemisphere from offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba became clear and present, the naval action of the United States was premised upon a concern to avoid the future jeopardy of an atomic exchange growing from regional disputes. Manifestly, visit and search followed by necessary sequestration of offensive weapons avoided intervention into the internal affairs of Cuba. It avoided war.
When, in October, offensive nuclear missile sites were in rapid build-up, and jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, were being uncrated and assembled, the immediate threat to the Americas was as obvious as it was fantastic. The OAS Organ of Consultation was immediately requested by the United States to convene to consider what regional actions should be taken in face of this threat. This request was coincident with the Presidential announcement that he was “initiating” a naval quarantine. On the following day, that organization, in an unprecedented display of hemispheric unity, found upon the evidence of nuclear missiles in Cuba that the situation existing there endangered the peace of America. The Organization then recommended that member states:
. . . take all measures, individually and collectively, including the use of armed force which they deem necessary to ensure that the Government of Cuba cannot continue to receive from the Sino Soviet powers military material and related supplies. . . .
The President of the United States shortly thereafter formally issued the proclamation announcing the quarantine. Relentless pressures had projected the Americas into applying the provisions of the U. N. Charter’s first purpose:
To take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a break of the Peace.
In convening the Organ of Consultation, in referring the question of the U.S.S.R. threat to hemispheric peace to the United Nations, the United States has acted, when confronted with the reckless duplicity of the Soviets, with the good faith of a United Nations member. Rather than abandon collective security, the United States has put the principle to the test. Moreover, the quarantine was designed to maintain international peace and was consistent with Article II (4) of the Charter, which obligates members to refrain from threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The quarantine was legally a regional action to meet the challenge of bald aggressive acts. It was legally invoked following OAS action authorizing its establishment. It was the most tranquil of any effective response that was available to the Americas at that time. It had a clear and simple purpose of removing aggressive potentials from Cuban shores. It was not a blockade in the historic sense. It required the blocking of neither Cuban or Communist bloc shipping—only offensive weapons.
To this degree, the concept had a significant impact upon regional solidarity. The naval action was a peaceful measure. Those who carried on peaceful commerce could continue to do so unaffected. No war existed. No belligerency had sprung into being by the quarantine. Whether the situation could have spread into a larger more direct armed conflict in Cuba or between the East and West is not germane. What is germane is that whatever political decisions were taken, were not predicated upon illegality. The United States has not sacrificed the Charter or her other strengths in the Atlantic, in the Hemisphere, in the developing countries by the naval action. Rather it has affirmed these strengths and the traditions of world legal order.
It is just this type of self restraint which, when combined with a sacrificing resolute purpose to meet the challenging responsibilities of all toward the welfare of the little state, will encourage respect for the law of nations. When all nations finally respect the right of sovereign security under the law, when Communism no longer seeks to subvert and undermine the weaker states, then a new millennium of peace will have dawned. Until then, the world must continue to rely on the collective security principles of the Charter to avoid the jungles of brute force.
Through naval quarantine, the United States has supported the peace by means short of war. From it and other collective security measures to preserve the international peace and security for all, the world can now continue to work to find the path of peace through law. But unless and until this pathway has been found, however, a new dimension may very well have been added to the efficacy of sea power in the preservation of regional peace and security.