In a recent Cuban Missile Crisis thread, someone asked what would happen if war had broken out but didn't want the answer to be "global nuclear death."
I suggested the following scenario, but it got little attention, so I'm posting it here:
It was learned after the end of the Cold War that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba that would have been used in the event of a U.S. invasion.
So negotiations fail and American troops invade. The nuclear weapons in Cuba are deployed against the invaders--who aren't prepared for them--and the first wave of the invasion is gutted.
The U.S. immediately bombards Cuban and Soviet positions with tactical nuclear weapons themselves. Either the Cuban strategic nukes are destroyed before they can be fired or the Soviets decide to lose them rather than use them and provoke nuclear reprisal against the Soviet homeland.
Instead, they launch a land invasion of West Berlin and take it. There's fighting in Europe, possibly involving the use of tactical nukes.
However, before things can escalate out of control, both sides agree to a cease-fire. We end up with the Soviets taking all of Berlin (and maybe some bits of West Germany, depending on where the lines are when the cease-fire occurs) and the U.S. occupying Cuba--what's left of it.
Now what? Cuba is in ruins, even small-scale nuclear use in densely-populated Europe is going to cause massive death, Miami and the Caribbean have been generously dosed with fallout from Cuba, but full-scale war has been avoided.
I can imagine a strong anti-NATO movement emerging in Europe as a reaction to large but not world-ending numbers of deaths as a result of someone else's war.
I'm thinking France's attempt to be a "third force" in the world is going to get more European attention--the Soviet consumption of West Berlin (and perhaps part or all of West Germany) will make people fear Soviet aggression, but at the same time, they might think NATO wasn't enough to defend them and that America doesn't have their best interests at heart (willing to trade Cuba for parts of Germany).
Isolationism might be more popular in the United States, as people might think that the war would not have occurred if not for U.S. overseas involvements.
(Florida isn't going to be going Democratic for awhile, I don't think.)
You might see a lot of emigration into the United States and maybe other countries from fallout-affected parts of the Caribbean. More Puerto Ricans elsewhere in the United States and Puerto Rican statehood negotiations become a non-issue? An even bigger Cuban diaspora?
Even if the fallout is cleaned up relatively quickly, Miami is not going to be doing well. The Florida Keys likewise.