On the 70th anniversary of the missile crisis, which is celebrated in these days of October, Russia again threatens a possible nuclear attack on the West in what again appears to be a bluff by Putin
The Soviet military commander and Minister of Defense between 1957 and 1967 Rodion Malinovsky was born in Odessa in 1898. He fought in Stalingrad and was placed in command of the armies that expelled the Germans from the Ukraine. Stalin named him a marshal that same year. His political commissar at Stalingrad had been Nikita Khrushchev.
Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in May 1961. Wikimedia Commons / John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library
In 1962 Khrushchev was in charge of the Soviet Union and Malinovsky was his defense minister. One sunny morning in May of that year the Soviet leader confided in the minister the plan of his: Why don’t we put a hedgehog in Uncle Sam’s underpants?” asked Nikita Khrushchev.
Despite the opposition he encountered in the Politburo, Khrushchev carried out his plan: the USSR sent missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuba, installed ramps for their launch and transferred some 50,000 soldiers from its army to the island. The Cuban government, headed by Fidel Castro, who had initiated the approach to Moscow through Raúl Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara in 1960, was exultant. Any threat of invasion by the United States would now have to be met with a formidable response capability.
On October 14, 1962, a US Air Force plane obtained photographic evidence showing part of the “hedgehog” to the Kennedy administration. Two days later, the president called his executive committee together and discussed how to respond.
The blockade on the island of Cuba
The military response was chosen: a bombardment that doubted whether it should be surgical or massive. Part of the presidential cabinet was scared and pressured to lower the tone of the response. A blockade of the island was chosen, which was called “quarantine” with the intention that it not be seen as the act of war that it was.
On the 22nd, the Soviets received the news. The complicated elaboration of an answer began. Meanwhile, the US armed forces began maneuvers in Florida that could be the preparation of an invasion and were taken to the maximum immediate alert level, which would mean the unleashing of a nuclear war.
Khrushchev’s “bluff” against the US
It seems that Khrushchev was not aware of the risk of his sharp bet until he was faced with the risk that the American missiles began to fly towards Moscow. Until then he had skillfully handled the nuclear challenge as a “bluff” against the Americans. He realized late that he had gone too far and that he could actually provoke a nuclear war with all its disastrous consequences.
The two sides looked at the precipice of a war that would have a lot of self-inflicted damage, but neither the fear nor the vertigo of the moment could guarantee that it would not happen. Rather, it gave the impression that it was almost inevitably on its way to happening.
Then began a convoluted distance negotiation that culminated in an agreement on the 28th: the USSR would withdraw its missiles from Cuba in exchange for the US commitment not to invade the island and, without making it public, the dismantling of US missiles in Turkey.
Two years later, in October 1964, the Politburo removed Khrushchev from office. Among the harsh accusations made against him, most of them about internal politics, were some related to the Cuban crisis: his irresponsible and adventurous attitude had caused a very dangerous crisis with unforeseeable consequences and had managed to deteriorate Soviet influence in America.
A parallel with the current situation
The parallels with the current situation in Ukraine are numerous and interesting, with the reverse view predominating. The invader is now Russia, the external containment force, NATO.
Ukraine’s rapprochement with the West has been a growing trend set in facts since the country’s independence in 1991. Russian influence, on the other hand, has never been negligible, but it is decreasing. The Kremlin’s attitude, initially tolerant, became increasingly suspicious and turned into hostility towards the West at the end of the first decade of the century. The return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2012 meant an accentuation of that hostility. Official Russian nationalism became more strident and anti-Western, or, as Putin would put it, anti-Anglo-Saxon.
In 2014, Russia decided to cross the red line: in a sneaky way, through those “green men” without insignia that everyone identified as Russian troops, it violated the borders that it had committed to respect in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The West reacted with stronger sanctions. very shy. The action of force, camouflaged as “no war” began a deaf confrontation that has lasted eight years.
On February 22, 2022, a new “special military action”, a real invasion of Ukraine after threatening military exercises, put the world before the dilemma of how to respond to the challenge.
Russian military effectiveness in question
The response has been intense Western-backed Ukrainian military resistance that has shown that Russian military effectiveness is partly ‘bluff’. Russia could lose the war. Faced with such a scenario, their dilemma is once again resorting to nuclear force, this time to sustain the aggression.
It has gone much further than it did in Cuba. Nobody has installed nuclear missiles in Ukraine, on the contrary, they were withdrawn in exchange for a commitment to respect its borders, which Russia has violated. The country has been invaded, forcibly deprived of its sovereignty in part of its territory with the threat of razing it to the ground if it does not consent.
This has long ceased to be a threat. It is more reminiscent of Castro’s insane insistence in 1962 to use nuclear weapons as soon as possible against the US army. Khrushchev did not allow it, he focused on reaching an agreement, avoided the war and, deposed, died in his bed. Malinovsky died while Minister of Defense. Kennedy was assassinated a year after the missile crisis.
This article has been published in ‘The Conversation’.