Game Theory: The Science of Strategic Thinking

You wake before dawn to a phone call you have been dreading for months. By 8:45 a.m., you are sitting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, and someone slides a photograph across the table toward you.

The image is grainy, shot from a U-2 spy plane at 70,000 feet over western Cuba. But the CIA analysts have already done their work. The geometric shapes in the photograph are unmistakable: Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile installations, under active construction at San Cristóbal, capable of delivering nuclear warheads to Washington D.C. in under thirteen minutes.

You are one of President Kennedy's senior advisors. The missiles are real. The Soviets have lied about them. And now you have to tell the President of the United States what he should do.

Two options are on the table, and both terrify you.

Option A: Immediate Air Strike. The U.S. Air Force estimates it can destroy the missile sites before they become operational. Surgical, decisive, and fast. Every hour of delay increases the chance the Soviets complete the installations. Your military advisors are pushing hard for this. General Curtis LeMay calls a blockade "almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich." If the missiles are destroyed before they can be armed, the threat is eliminated. The logic is clean.

Option B: Naval Blockade. Surround Cuba with U.S. warships and intercept any Soviet vessels carrying additional military equipment. This does not destroy the missiles already there. It does not guarantee anything. The Soviets could call your bluff. Their ships could keep sailing. A confrontation at sea could escalate just as fast as an air strike. But a blockade gives Khrushchev a choice, a moment to stop, to reconsider, to avoid a war neither side actually wants.

The air strike feels decisive. The blockade feels incomplete. You have forty-eight hours before the President must address the nation.

What do you recommend?