DBWI - Was the Cuban Missile War Avaoidable?

[Mysterion]

Eleven months from now we will be observing the 50th anniversery of the Cuban Missile War.

So, this is probably a good time to begin reflecting on those events. And sicne we here are concerned with alternate history, I think we might turn our attention to the basic question: could the CMW have been avoided?

Obviously, we will never know for sure what hapened those last few hours before the nukes started flying. Especially at the Kremlin or the White House. But let's speculate.

Could things have been pulled back from the brink? Were there any "cooler heads" that might have perservered on either side?

And what would the last fifty years have looked like if the war had been averted somehow? Some peorple will tell you that the Cuban affair would have scared the super-powers enough that there would have been swift and certain nuclear disarmament on both sides. Others consider that nuclear war was inevitable and if not Cuba, it would have happened somewhere else sooner rather than later.

So, what do you think?

 

[wargamer6]

Maybe. If Kennedy had not listened to LeMay and unleashed a bombing campaign, maybe things would have been different.

 

[King Gorilla]

It was the modern era's Peloponnesian war, inevitable really after world war II. There was an inadaquete global balence of power. The soviet union had the advantage with traditional military metrics, but well...the first power to develop atomic weaponry had a technological advantage.

They cut off our arm we cut off their head.

 

[RCAF Brat]

To start, Western Europe would not be a third world shit hole. And the former USSR would not be a land of warlords and half-starved peasants. (Half a century on, most of the food produced there only contains trace amounts of radiation.) And the United States would not be a nation that celebrates the greatest mass murderers in history as "heroes". Kennedy was as eager for war as LeMay, as he wanted to prove to the world that he was great leader, not a drug-addled playboy.

And the Yanks wonder why every single one of their surviving allies (and not just the ones that eventually became rivals and/or enemies) insists on having (or attempting to acquire) a nuclear arsenal sufficient to lay waste to the US, let alone any (other) perceived or actual enemy... It's a bloody miracle that there hasn't been a repeat of The War.

 

[Mysterion]

It was the modern era's Peloponnesian war, inevitable really after world war II. There was an inadaquete global balence of power. The soviet union had the advantage with traditional military metrics, but well...the first power to develop atomic weaponry had a technological advantage.

They cut off our arm we cut off their head.

I suppose you're correct there.

What if the UN haad been as strong then as it is now? (I know that's almost ridiculous enough to be ASB, but we are playing "what if" here).

And the United States would not be a nation that celebrates the greatest mass murderers in history as "heroes". Kennedy was as eager for war as LeMay, as he wanted to prove to the world that he was great leader, not a drug-addled playboy.

I don't know. Surviving records while sketchy at best, seem to indicate that both of the Kennedy brothers were resitant to LeMay's insistence on a pre-emptive strike. Are you saying the LeMay has been made a scapegoat here?

 

[King Gorilla]

I suppose you're correct there.

What if the UN haad been as strong then as it is now? (I know that's almost ridiculous enough to be ASB, but we are playing "what if" here)

A stronger UN would have needed a more even balance of power. The old UN was tainted as its influence rested upon the machinations of two rival super power's and their 2nd tier allies. The missile war tragic as it was evened the scales.

 

[Tsochar]

I dunno, if you look at the testimonies of surviving Cubans, the Soviets were pretty dead-set on not escalating the conflict since they knew they wouldn't win. It seems weird at first glance, considering they were the ones who put the missiles there in the first place, but you have to remember that back then the threat of nuclear weapons was more useful than the weapons themselves.

It's almost comical in hindsight; the USSR started the ruckus to get American ICBMs out of Turkey because it was a big threat, and they relied on the US being just as afraid of nuclear war as they were; they didn't consider that we had constructed an illusion of invincibility around ourselves following World War 2 and were confident in our larger arsenal and their shoddy engineering. They never counted on dealing with idiots

If nationalistic propaganda hadn't been so widespread in the '50s, maybe we'd still be staring each other's arsenals down.

 

[Blue Max]

This is, frankly, entirely the Soviet Union's fault; despite being faced with a huge discrepancy of nuclear weapons, they opted to push the United States into a direct confrontation.

Things were already on a collision course: The Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union's refusal to join a nuclear weapons test ban, ongoing tensions in Eastern Europe.

People like to blame Kennedy or LeMay, but let's get serious here. Who put the weapons on Cuba? Who gave SSBNs their own authority to fire their own nuclear missiles? The United States made clear it was not going to allow Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba, and would fight for it.

The decison made to launch the weapons on Cuba instead of accept their destruction in the first wave of the attack is damning enough. The Soviets violated a one hundred and fifty year old US promise to secure the hemisphere, and earned a war. By launching those missiles from Cuba, they ensured that it would be a nuclear war.

The great lie, that the United States fired first, is patently untrue.
===

Now to prevent this disaster from happening, one needs only to stop Nikita Khrushchev from becoming Soviet General Secretary. Pretty simply, Germany does a bit better at Stalingrad, clears the city, and one insane nuketard dies there.

Nuclear War is probably inevitable between the United States and Soviet Union, so it might as well come in 1948, with the Berlin Airlift. There would be many more Europeans if the nukes came then.

 

[EWHM]

Maybe it could have been avoided if the US had known that the Soviet commander in Cuba had unilateral launch authority. That was unthinkable to most US commanders but it turned out to be true. Better military intelligence might have put more caution into JFK.

 

[Shaby]

That was unthinkable to most US commanders but it turned out to be true. Better military intelligence might have put more caution into JFK.

Well if you send people so far away and so close to enemy territory, that their commo links can be easily jammed, only fool would not give his men means of self defense. Anyone responsible in Washington would have known this. And what military intelligence are you speaking of? The people who botched every operation imaginable and were proven war hawks and agent provocateurs.

 

[CaliBoy1990]

Kennedy was murdered near the end, don't you forget. This happened on LBJ's watch.

Well.......honestly..........

Maybe if Kennedy hadn't been shot in Ft. Worth in October of 1962(IOTL the first conflicts started late in September) by that paramilitary 'anti-Communist'(read: neo-Nazi) organization after his anti-nuclear speech there, then I believe it is quite probable that cooler heads would have prevailed. Unfortunately, LBJ ended up being a complete empty-headed yes man, and basically let LeMay & crew run all the logistics from there, pretty much starting on the 30th of October when he took office(JFK died from his wounds in Texas Methodist Hospital that evening). It all went downhill from there; Nov. 4th ended with nuclear fireballs going up over D.C., Dallas, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, San Diego, L.A. and about 100 other cities across the country(a few of the 26 ICBMs missed their targets, but there were about 150 SLBMs that the Russians were able to use.), not to mention quite a few towns & cities in Canada as well.

In fact, it looks like San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Minneapolis and Baltimore are the still the only fully functioning major cities that had that status in '62(Las Vegas only had about 70,000 then, but now has well over a million.).

 

[RamscoopRaider]

Yes, just have Truman actually listen to MacArthur's good advice on using nukes on China in 1950 and none of this would have happened, things would have escalated and the Soviet Union would be gone before it could develop the weaponry to do more than give Europe a love tap, heck in this case the USA would likely get off scot free

 

[King Gorilla]

Nuclear War is probably inevitable between the United States and Soviet Union, so it might as well come in 1948, with the Berlin Airlift. There would be many more Europeans if the nukes came then.

More Chinese too, for that matter.

The US was lucky all things considered. The bulk of the devastation was confined to the East and Gulf coasts, giving the American state some depth to fall back to. Apart from the minute man fields in North Dakota and Montana, the west was relatively untouched.

 

[Xgentis]

But the death tool surpasses many time WWI and WWII put together I would no call that heroic. Damn american cowboy

 

[CaliBoy1990]

More Chinese too, for that matter.

The US was lucky all things considered. The bulk of the devastation was confined to the East and Gulf coasts, giving the American state some depth to fall back to. Apart from the minute man fields in North Dakota and Montana, the west was relatively untouched.

Mostly true, but I'm afraid you are forgetting about Provo, Colorado Springs, San Diego, and a number of other cities over there that were blown up.

I have some of the old Civil Defense documents from not long after the war........I can post a summary if you'd like.

 

[Meadow]

Doubtful. Then again, without the radiation sickness and nuclear fire that decapitated dear old Albion and halved our life expectancies, would myself and Lord Roem be PM and Foreign Sec respectively of what passes for the United Kingdom today? I very much doubt it. We're barely into our twenties.

Sometimes, it's best not to wonder what might not have had to happen. Just be glad we live in a world where a 21 year old can be Prime Minister and have a respectable online presence in the world of counterfactual history.

 

[Alex1guy]

Haha us Kiwi's and the Australians wouldn't be sitting on the strongest federated economy in the World. We'd probably be bit players on the global stage at best, it's sad but the fire of one super-power lead to the blood soaked baptism of another, funny how history works out.

 

[Imperator Novae Zealandae]

That relly was the end of the British Empire. I know that Britain gave indenpendence to a lot of her colonies post-WWII but once the CMW was over, Britain was a shadow of her 1945 self. Republics in New Zealand and Australia, the African colonies and Pacific, Scottish independence and the Irish reclamation of Northern Ireland.

And the replacement of the British monarchy with a republic was inevitable I suppose, after the loss of the Queen and the first 4 people in line to the throne in 1963 and then two more monarchs before 1966.

 

[King Gorilla]

That relly was the end of the British Empire. I know that Britain gave indenpendence to a lot of her colonies post-WWII but once the CMW was over, Britain was a shadow of her 1945 self. Republics in New Zealand and Australia, the African colonies and Pacific, Scottish independence and the Irish reclamation of Northern Ireland.

And the replacement of the British monarchy with a republic was inevitable I suppose, after the loss of the Queen and the first 4 people in line to the throne in 1963 and then two more monarchs before 1966.

Things weren't helped either by the war refugees. Tens of thousands of survivors were evacuated to the dominions, mostly to south Africa (god help them) and Australia/New Zealand. Cannot blame them though, most of the Isles are still hot to this day.