Michael Dobbs | New York Times
Two nuclear-armed states on a collision course with no apparent way out. An unpredictable Russian leader using apocalyptic language: “If you want us all to see each other in Hell, that’s up to you.” The confrontations in the United Nations, where each party accuses the other of taking the risk of causing Armageddon.
For six decades, the Cuban Missile Crisis was considered the defining confrontation of modernity, the moment when the world came closest to nuclear annihilation. The war in Ukraine poses at least as great a risk, especially now that Vladimir Putin has put himself in a difficult position by declaring that much of neighboring Ukraine will belong to Russia “forever”.
As both countries continue to climb the ladder, the likelihood of mistakes will increase, as the Cuban Missile Crisis made clear. In a conventional war, political leaders can make huge mistakes and the human race can survive wounded but unharmed. In a nuclear confrontation, even a small misunderstanding or miscommunication can have catastrophic consequences.
In October 1962, it was President John Kennedy who declared a naval blockade or quarantine of Cuba to prevent the reinforcement of Soviet military positions on the island. This left his Kremlin counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, with the responsibility of accepting the condition clearly laid down by the United States to end the crisis (complete withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba) or risk nuclear war.
This time the roles are reversed: Putin is attempting to impose a red line by insisting he will use “all means at his disposal,” including his nuclear arsenal, to defend Mother Russia’s newly and unilaterally expanded borders . President Biden has promised to help Ukraine in its defense efforts. It is not known how Putin will react when he sees his red line being ignored.
Even the assumption that Putin was a rational actor who wanted to avoid nuclear annihilation is not necessarily reassuring. Contrary to popular belief, the greatest danger of nuclear war in October 1962 came not from Khrushchev and Kennedy turning a blind eye to one another, but from their inability to control the events that they themselves had set in motion.
As I discovered when creating the minute-by-minute chronology of the most dangerous phase of the crisis, there were moments when neither leader perceived the course of events on the battlefield, which relied on their own logic and they gained their own momentum.
Khrushchev never authorized a Soviet missile to shoot down a US U-2 spy plane over Cuba on October 27, 1962, the most dangerous day of the crisis. Kennedy was unaware that another U-2 accidentally entered Russian airspace that same day, alerting Soviet air defenses. “There’s always some son of a bitch who doesn’t find out,” he said later.
Although the war in Ukraine is obviously different from the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is not difficult to imagine comparable mistakes and miscalculations. A stray projectile from either side could cause an accident at a nuclear power plant and cause radioactive fallout across much of Europe. The failed Russian attempt to intercept Western military supplies to Ukraine could spill over to NATO countries like Poland and trigger an automatic response from the United States. A Russian decision to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian units could lead to a full-scale nuclear exchange with the United States.
Although US intelligence had some impressive successes in Ukraine, most notably its accurate prediction of the Russian invasion, which took place on February 24, the 1962 crisis should serve as a reminder of the limitations of intelligence gathering. Kennedy was belatedly briefed on the Soviet deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Cuba, but other equally important matters were withheld from him. For example, he was unaware of the presence in Cuba of nearly 100 Soviet tactical nuclear missiles aimed at the Guantánamo naval base and a potential US invasion force. The CIA underestimated the strength of Soviet troops on the island and was unable to trace the movements of any of the nuclear warheads.
What both Kennedy and Khrushchev had was an intuitive conception of the danger of confrontation, not just between their respective countries but across the world, if the crisis were allowed to escalate. So they maintained an unofficial channel to communicate privately (via the President’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin), while continuing to publicly hurl accusations at each other. That’s why they rushed to a deal (kept secret for decades) to dismantle US intermediate-range missiles in Turkey and arrange for the Soviets to withdraw their nuclear weapons from Cuba.
Like Kennedy, Khrushchev had experienced the horrors of World War II. He knew that the destruction caused by nuclear war would be many times greater. The Kremlin archives show that Khrushchev, despite his lurid rhetoric, was determined to seek a peaceful solution once it became clear that his risky nuclear gambit had failed. Putin, on the other hand, has decided to up the ante at all critical moments. Climbing has become his preferred tactic.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of a communications revolution that has accelerated the pace of war and diplomacy, removing some of the technological hurdles Kennedy and Khrushchev struggled with but creating new ones in their place. It takes less than 12 hours to send an encrypted telegram from Washington to Moscow. Today, news spreads almost instantly from the battlefield, putting pressure on political leaders to make decisions quickly. A US President no longer has the luxury that Kennedy enjoyed in October 1962, when it took him 6 days to consider his response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.
We have not yet begun to approach the nuclear alert levels that marked the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although Putin has spoken of putting his nuclear forces on high alert, no move in that direction appears to have been confirmed. The most dangerous phase of the Cuban Missile Crisis lasted only 13 days; We are already in the eighth month of the war in Ukraine and there is no end in sight. The longer it takes, the greater the risk of a terrible misjudgment.
aranza