President Biden’s remark that the war in Ukraine represents humanity’s closest brush with nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis may seem overwrought, but there’s nothing like an anniversary to focus our minds on such a dreadful possibility. This month marks the 60th anniversary of the standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union over Nikita Khrushchev’s move to deploy nuclear missiles and thousands of troops in Cuba, provoking a 13-day crisis that brought the planet to the brink of nuclear combat.
The war in Eastern Europe is escalating. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 troops in a desperate attempt to reverse his army’s battlefield losses. Although Ukrainian counter-offensives continue to deplete the enemy’s fighting power, there is no sign the war will come to a decisive conclusion with the onset of winter. And hanging over all of this is Mr. Putin’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons inside Ukraine.
In this episode of History As It Happens, preeminent military historian Max Hastings, author of “The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962”, discusses the critical parallels between the two conflicts, the first having ended with a deal averting war.
“When I started out, it looked as if I was writing about ancient history. But Putin’s assault and rape of Ukraine has given the whole thing an immediacy that I couldn’t have imagined. History never exactly repeats itself, so we don’t want to draw too many parallels, but I believe there are important lessons that we can learn,” said Mr. Hastings, the author of 30 books on war and peace.
“In 1962, the planet sincerely looked in the eyes of many people around the tables in the White House and the Kremlin as if it were threatened with extinction by general war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Today this is still a regional war. But it’s a regional war with nuclear weapons, and as long as those nuclear weapons are out there… and as long as we have in the Kremlin a very unstable figure who is less predictable, less stable and subject to fewer restraints than was Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet leader in 1962, then the risks are very great,” Mr. Hastings said.
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The Cuban Missile Crisis was a searing example of the unintended consequences resulting from miscalculation, miscommunication and the simple fact that no world leader can possibly have a full grasp of all events as they unfold. At a time when communication between Washington and Moscow is close to nonexistent, the crisis of 1962 has much to teach us today.
Listen to Max Hastings compare and contrast the Cuban Missile Crisis to the war in Ukraine by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
