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 Why the Russians Are There
The New Republic (Oct 1, 1962)

 ............Castro and Cuba are finally and fully stuck with a label and an association hostile
to the environment.  The Russians can scarcely renounce the undertaking now without
acknowledging a failure of enormous magnitude.

    For the first time the Soviets have formed a common military front with a Communist
state overseas and sitting next to the United States. Khrushchev and Castro must have
approached the project with trepidation, studied it with caution, and then undertaken it finally with a sense of assurance of getting away with it - notwithstanding our President's pledge, in the immediate sequel to the boggle at the Bay of Pigs, that the United States would never abandoned Cuba to Communism.

    The events have negligible military significance and involve only our prestige, a Bishop
assured me. Why only? Prestige is the faculty enabling a great Power to avoid final, miserable choices between surrender and war. Prestige is the ingredient of authority in international affairs.  One may point up its meaning by an account of a geneticist who crossed tiger with a parrot.  When asked about the results of the experiment, he replied: "When it talks, I listen."  The quality which demands being listened to is prestige - and a nation suffers loss of it at greeat peril.

    These Cuban developments are a big thing. We should acknowledge them as such with
the public candor of General Joe Stilwell after a debacle in Burma: "I claim we got a hell of a
beating.....It's humiliating as hell......"  Only thus can we make a start on seeing our way clearly
to next steps.............

- Charles Burton Marshall