2011/09/01 by David R. Gibson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Rhetoric and Communication Studies #Public Relations and Crisis Communication #Management and Organizational Studies
paper · doi:10.1086/661761
openalex publication_date 2011/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In October 1962, the fate of the world hung on the U.S. response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy’s decision to impose a blockade was based on hours of discussions with top advisers (the so-called ExComm), yet decades of scholarship on the crisis have missed the central puzzle: How did the group select one response, the blockade, when all options seemed bad? Recently released audio recordings are used to argue that the key conversational activity was storytelling about an uncertain future. Kennedy’s choice of a blockade hinged on the narrative “suppression” of its most dangerous possible consequence, namely the perils of a later attack against operational missiles, something accomplished through omission, self-censorship, ambiguation, uptake failure, and narrative interdiction. The article makes the very first connection between the localized dynamics of conversation and decision making in times of crisis, and offers a novel processual account of one of the most fateful decisions in human history.