How did we survive the previous nuclear standoff?
The game of escalation between NATO and Russia seems to be reaching its final levels, crossing which would mean the end of the world. The war which should not have even started has escalated so much over the span of the past seven months that talking about the end of it through peace talks is seen as a radical idea that only haters of freedom possess.
The best illustration of it came when Elon Musk’s tweet about the possible terms to end this war was met with vitriolic responses.
Putin has made it clear that he will use all means available to protect the newly annexed four regions of eastern Ukraine as the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway to reclaim those territories. Whatever chances there were of a possible peace talk after Putin’s request have been made “impossible” by Zelensky’s signing of a decree.
Ending the possibility of a peace talk wasn’t enough that Zelensky requested NATO to launch preemptive nuclear strikes on Russia “so that they know what awaits them if they use nuclear weapons.” How idiotic and warmonger do you have to conclude that a possible way to deter Russia from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine is to preemptively nuke Russia? As if doing such a thing wouldn’t provoke Russia to nuke both Ukraine and NATO countries.
“The world is on the brink” would be an understatement to describe where we’re now, and “People are worried” would be an overstatement because almost everyone is proceeding as normal.
“A peace talk dismissed is an escalation admitted.”
Although this is not our first time visiting here. We’ve been here multiple times throughout history and the most infamous being the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It’s widely admitted that the CMC is the closest we’ve ever come to a nuclear war, and seeing the rocket-like escalation of the war in Ukraine, some nuclear analysts are even arguing that the point up to which we reached on the road to a nuclear war during the CMC has long been surpassed; meaning the possibility of a nuclear holocaust is higher today even than during the 1960s.
In 2013, The Atlantic published an article by the name “The Real Cuban Missile Crisis” which discussed in detail what happened at that point in history and what saved us from a possible nuclear apocalypse.
In 1961, the US had stationed Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey - both adjacent to the USSR - and Moscow perceived it as an attempt by the US to launch nuclear strikes at Russia, the concerns which were entirely valid as the Kennedy Administration had indeed planned for such a strike during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. In order to counter the threat posed by the placement of those missiles, the USSR placed nuclear missiles in Cuba pointed toward the US. The escalations by both countries had opened the door for a nuclear war which none of the countries, thankfully, crossed.
The writer, Benjamin Schwarz, challenged the mainstream way of remembering the crisis; which is that the US made no compromises with the USSR and Moscow was forced to dismantle the nuclear missiles it placed in Cuba by Kennedy’s toughness and brilliance. This is the narrative that the then-Washington officials have been propagating either in their memoirs or in the media, but nothing can be further from the truth.
Nuclear war was averted not because Kennedy was tough but because he was smart enough to strike a secret deal with Nikita Khrushchev which led to the US removing its Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey and the USSR removing its weaponry from Cuba. Of course, the deal was kept secret because that was the only way to make compromises without looking weak in the eyes of the public. Public knowledge of the deal back then would have drastically reduced the chances of it because the compromises would have been seen as “appeasing the enemy,” in the same way as many people in the West today see the idea of peaceful negotiations with Putin as an “appeasement.”
The compromise between both countries was not appeasement but a necessity for the future of humanity. It didn’t mean that either the US or the USSR was weak but that both of them were strong enough to destroy everything. This is an important distinction to remember as the world is witnessing another nuclear standoff.
I’m alive today writing these lines and you’re alive today reading these lines not because Kennedy chose to escalate but because he chose to de-escalate. To say that we can escalate our way out of the current nuclear threat is to deny the reason we survived the previous one. There is no other way to resolve this crisis peacefully except detente.
Detente and appeasement are not the same. Detente means when two strong warring powers recognize that the results would be catastrophic for everyone if they continue down the war path, so they decide to sit down and make compromises.
After decades of consuming media propaganda, people have come to believe that the only options on the table, in this case, are either A) give Putin everything he demands and encourage other dictators too, or B) keep ramping up the war tensions. They don’t even know that there is a third option of detente that has been successful throughout history and it’s what saved us every time during the last Cold War.
We don’t necessarily have to play the game of nuclear chicken with Russia when the crisis can be solved through detente. The war in Ukraine can be ended today if our leaders in the West who provoked this war in the first place want so. We don’t need to gamble with our lives.
We made it through the Cuban Missile Crisis and we can do the same today only if we pursue the strategies we pursued back then - the strategy of detente.
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