It took 60 years but the US finally did something more dangerous to world survival than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Last year marked 60 years since the US provoked Russia to sneak nuclear weapons into Cuba to protect it from further US invasion or assassination of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Our humiliating loss at the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion did nothing to dampen America’s lust to oust the Castro government, returning Cuba to rapacious American capitalism and a Mafia playground, regardless of how many might die.
That triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, for 13 days, kept this high school senior on the cusp of nuclear annihilation. But knowing that the US red line against Russia putting nukes just a few minutes from the mainland could trigger nuclear war, both the US and Russia employed negotiations, defusing the nuclear crisis in under 2 weeks.
Contrast the nuclear crisis of 1962 over Cuba to the nuclear crisis of 2022-23 over Ukraine. In 49 weeks, the US has totally rejected negotiations to end the Russo Ukraine war. Instead, we’ve funneled over $100 billion in weapons and other aid to keep it going indefinitely. Worse, we torpedoed Russian, Ukraine negotiations in the first weeks of the war, brokered by Turkey, that could have ended the war early on.
That would be akin to Russia rejecting US negotiations to end the Cuban crisis by steaming full speed through the US blockade to complete its nuclear installations there. Had that occurred, a nuclear dust up between the US and Russia was virtually certain. The fact both Russia and the US sought negotiations instead of war prevented nuclear annihilation 60 years ago.
Nineteen-year-old President Biden must surely remember his close brush with his and all of our early demise. Yet, he inherited an 8 yearlong provocation with Russia that he helped start as Vice President, that led to the inevitable Ukraine invasion under his administration last February.
After the invasion his conduct only worsened. Besides blowing up that early March negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine, he’s been inexorably ratcheting up weaponry right to, even likely over, Russia’s red line toward catastrophic blowback.
Starting with ammunition and assault weapons he’s moved up to Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-armor systems, M777 towed Howitzers, 122mm GRAD rockets, M142 multiple rocket launchers, or HIMARS, Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles, Patriot air defense batteries, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, and 31 M1 Abrams tanks, the world’s most powerful.
Still under considerations from Biden’s weapons stockpile: armor-piercing depleted uranium (DU) ammunition and F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.
When Russia invaded, Biden promised America’s involvement would do nothing to provoke WWIII. Now it appears he’s doing and planning nearly everything to ensure that happens.
That is why US foreign policy today….is the worst in my lifetime.
Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.
I completely agree that this is the worst, most dangerous and most inept foreign policy of my lifetime, and I remember the Cuban missile crisis. Biden is the most dangerous president of my lifetime, and he doesn’t seem lucid enough to know the full extent of what he has instigated.
Absolutely agree. Joe Biden should’ve remembered the Cuban Mission Crisis as much as Walt, but he chose the path of war instead of diplomacy.
Differences should and can always be resolved through talks and negotiations. But in the mind of the crazed foreign policy blob today, there is only “win”, even against possible nuclear annihilation. Well, 1/4 million dead,$100 billion later and much of Ukraine destroyed later, who is “winning” this war? Start the talks for peace!
I concur that the present US foreign policy is the stupidest and most dangerous in my lifetime also (and I am past the ‘three score and ten” mark) and that is remarkable because at no time during that lifetime was it ever anything but stupid. But I refuse to believe that the figure head sock-puppet Biden has in any legitimate sense ‘instigated’ any of that policy, however willingly he plays the role. None of the ‘for show only’ presidents since the coup that eliminated JFK and instituted actual rulership by the national security deep state have been in control of this country’s foreign policy or military since then.
If you view Biden’s speech back in 1997, you would understand that neither Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan, Hillary, nor any other neocon had to do any convincing for Biden to provoke the war in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3tdF2S04wg
Because he knows the unwritten rules: anything goes,except crossing the Pentagon war hawks
The deep State hand up the Biden ‘sock puppet’ was in control even then; and the Ukraine payoffs to the Biden family just facilitated his complacent obedience.
AFAICT Biden remains unaware of everything going on around him that doesn’t provide him with a script to read. He’s stuck in the Cold War, and he’ll remain there until the end of his days. Meanwhile, we’re stuck with him and his mob of crackpot PNAC kiddies.
Mr. Zlotow,
It is people like you and and your words as,
“… That is why US foreign policy today….is the worst in my lifetime.”
which cause people of reason, logic and common sense to understand that you and Antiwar are, if not “controlled opposition,” then a spewer of false, hyperbolic nonsense.
My offer of evidence:
“We know where they are,” Rumsfeld said of the fictitious weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on March 30, 2003. “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
https://truthout.org/articles/rumsfeld-was-not-controversial-he-played-a-leading-role-in-mass-murder/?amp
https://youtu.be/RM0uvgHKZe8
It’s worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl–a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions.
dennis hanna
*
When Albright took office as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, she became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at the time of her appointment.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was appointed by President William Jefferson Clinton
and confirmed by the Senate of United State
**
Please note that neither Secretary of State Albright, President Clinton nor any official of the Clinton administration ever denied, retracted, amended or in any way did anything but to affirm Secretary of State Albright’s “… we think the price is worth it.”
Wesley Clark 7 counties in 5 years
Sad, so sad … fear not! Yap on …
dennis hanna
Poor example because neither of those risked nuclear war. A better example would be Trump saying he’d unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea, though he did try to be Nixon going to China. Too bad he lacked focus and sent neocon nutbar Bolton to “negotiate”. I don’t give Trump a lot of credit; occasionally, his instincts were good, but being a perfect storm of venality, greed, and narcissism, with the attention span of a moth in a garden full of Chinese lanterns, there was never much hope of lasting achievements. And then there was his election denialism and his attempt to overstay his visa in the WH by hook or by crook.