At a fundraising meeting in New York on October 6, 2022, President Biden raised the ominous spectre of a nuclear Armageddon stating, “First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” For 8 months, we’ve watched, from the other side of the world, images of the war in Ukraine, yet nuclear weapons now threaten to bring the war itself into our living rooms, obliterating our families and our property, and leaving our civilization in a pile of radioactive ashes. As Biden observed, we were faced with a similar showdown during the Cuban Missile Crisis exactly 60 years ago.
The thirteen-day confrontation, known as The Cuban Missile Crisis, began on October 16, 1962 when President John F. Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union had secretly installed missiles in Cuba, posing a potential nuclear threat to the United States. For six tension-filled days, Kennedy and his executive committee, known as ExComm, debated the pros and cons of four possible responses to the Soviet-backed threat. In the end, it was decided to issue a naval blockade of Cuba, preventing any shipments of military equipment to that island. In the days following the announcement of that quarantine, the future of our species hung precariously on the decisions of the two most powerful men in the world and on the visceral reactions of a third man–a passionate patriot.
The Cuban Missile Crisis approached a climax on October 27–now known as Black Saturday. At 12:12 a.m., the US sent its NATO allies a message indicating, “The United States may find it necessary within a very short time in its interest and that of its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere to take whatever military action may be necessary.”7 At 6 a.m. the CIA reported that its reconnaissance had revealed that all the Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba were set for deployment. Then, just before noon, Major Rudolf Anderson flying an American U-2 spy plane was shot down and killed by a surface-to-air missile launched from Cuba. The US had suffered its first casualty in what appeared to be an imminent nuclear exchange. A critical escalation in the game of Chicken was unfolding.
Later that afternoon, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo approached the blockade line. The US Navy dropped a series of warning depth charges unaware that the three officers on board the submarine had orders to launch the torpedo if engaged in battle. One of the three Soviet officers, Vasili Arkhipov, prevailed over the other two officers who were urging the launch of the deadly torpedo in retaliation. Many decades later the world would learn the details of what happened on that fateful day and how close the human race had come to a nuclear holocaust. (That story and its relationship to Game Theory and decision making are accessible at https://www.intelligence-and-iq.com/intelligence/)
On Sunday, October 28, Khrushchev announced over Radio Moscow that he had sent a letter to President Kennedy, agreeing to remove the missiles from Cuba. In exchange for this, Kennedy had agreed that the United States would not invade or support any invasion of Cuba. The thirteen-day Cuban Missile Crisis was over. It appeared to the world that Khrushchev had capitulated and that Kennedy had stared down the Soviet Chairman in a battle of nerves. Fidel Castro, feeling betrayed by Khrushchev, expressed outrage and accused the Soviet leader of cowardice in the face of the American might. China’s leader of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, joined in the condemnation of what they perceived as Khushchev’s lack of courage.
In the decades that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis, new information began to emerge that told the real story in the negotiations and strategies that took place behind closed doors. In 1998, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali published One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which they revealed information from the secret archives in Moscow, including notes of Politburo meetings and Khrushchev memos. These documents provided insights into Khrushchev’s leadership style, his personality, and the inner workings of the Kremlin prior to and during those thirteen critical days. These new sources of information revealed a substantial gap between the public perception of the Crisis throughout the 1960’s and the reality of what happened.
At the Polanyi Conference on Science and Social Responsibility held at the University of Toronto on November 15, 2014, Nobel Laureate, John Polanyi highlighted the paradox inherent in nuclear proliferation:
Nuclear threats, it is true, contributed to a peaceful outcome of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. We owe our hair’s-breadth escape from catastrophe to the spectre of nuclear war. But no one in a position of responsibility at that time would for an instant have contemplated its repetition. Yet, we are in danger of doing just that today.
The danger stems from this: deterrence requires for its success making real the possibility that it might fail. But we cannot responsibly play nuclear roulette with our future.
Stephen Hawking, in his 2018 posthumous publication, Big Answers to the Big Questions, warned:
Aggression, …, has had definite survival advantage up to the present time. But now it could destroy the entire human race and much of the rest of life on Earth. A nuclear war is still the most immediate danger …
The use of nuclear weapons in the war on Ukraine, doesn’t seem very likely, until you look at Putin’s options as the war takes an increasing toll on his resources and internal support–providing a textbook example of Game Theory with unlimited stakes.
This time the danger is much more intense. Kruschchev was a rational actor who at the end of the day wanted to protect his people. To Putin, Russia is an abstraction, an extension of his ego, and he would be quite willing to sacrifice a population whom he feels has let him down — like Hitler in 1945. He is desperate and unhinged.