As per the title. If we replay the Cuban Missile Crisis from the day it started through a hundred parallel universes, how many of them would end up in nuclear armageddon?
What were the chances of the Cuban Missile Crisis going hot?
- Thread starter Berkeley2017
- Start date
Probably a shocking number. I'm tired of "We were too smart to start a nuclear war"; if we were smart enough to work things out, we'd never get into any war. That's an idea of luxury, afforded because we luckily avoided nuclear confrontation throughout the Cold War. You can assume that's how things were going to go, but it's not true. "Nobody wanted nuclear war": well how many times have you gotten something you didn't want?
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the culmination of every bad thing in the Cold War arms race: we were right at each other's necks, the tension was high, decision making was being done with frayed nerves, growing fears, and limited data, and any second someone in the field could shoot something off that quickly spiraled into retaliation, and the other power could interpret anything as the beginning of an attack and launch off the nuclear arsenals, not to mention the Russians in the field could launch a nuke without word from Moscow. We didn't have a Russian submarine launch a nuke because one guy out of three decided that WW3 hadn't really started yet. The knot was tight, got tighter as the crisis continued, and could snap at any moment.
Everything about human nature should have turned that scenario into one that lead to confrontation; at any point something could have occurred, and from there things would have spiraled out of control into nuclear war. In the end, it was luck.
Russia would have been eradicated, the US and Western Europe would have been seriously injured, you'd have casualties unlike anything seen before, and we'd be living in a very different world.
EDIT:
And I'll cite this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zObCklM5LPw
http://cloudsovercuba.com
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the culmination of every bad thing in the Cold War arms race: we were right at each other's necks, the tension was high, decision making was being done with frayed nerves, growing fears, and limited data, and any second someone in the field could shoot something off that quickly spiraled into retaliation, and the other power could interpret anything as the beginning of an attack and launch off the nuclear arsenals, not to mention the Russians in the field could launch a nuke without word from Moscow. We didn't have a Russian submarine launch a nuke because one guy out of three decided that WW3 hadn't really started yet. The knot was tight, got tighter as the crisis continued, and could snap at any moment.
Everything about human nature should have turned that scenario into one that lead to confrontation; at any point something could have occurred, and from there things would have spiraled out of control into nuclear war. In the end, it was luck.
Russia would have been eradicated, the US and Western Europe would have been seriously injured, you'd have casualties unlike anything seen before, and we'd be living in a very different world.
EDIT:
And I'll cite this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zObCklM5LPw
http://cloudsovercuba.com
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Realpolitik
Banned
Pretty damn high. There is a reason that it was the "closest moment to midnight".
BlondieBC
Banned
I would go with 1983 was closer with both Able Archer and a separate issue with some clouds over the USA and Russian sensors. Once the Soviets went to "launch on warning status", it only takes a minor mistake to cause a war. We are here today debating these issues because a Colonel ignored his order to launch when the sensor detected the USA launching 3 missiles at the Soviets. Many officers would have followed their orders.
NothingNow
Banned
It largely depends on the amount of Amphetamines Kennedy is doing through the process.
If he's not doing that much, it'll be fine.
If we go past OTL levels without getting to a lethal overdose, we're talking WW3.
If Kennedy dies, or is sufficiently incapacitated enough that Johnson takes over, it'll be fine.
This soc.history.what-if post of mine from a few years ago explains why I believe it relatively unlikely:
***
In OTL, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by an agreement by
Khrushchev to pull the missiles out of Cuba in return for a public US
pledge not to invade Cuba and a private promise (conveyed by Robert
Kennedy to Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin) to withdraw Jupiter missiles from
Turkey. Suppose however that Khrushchev did not accept this and demanded
a *public* promise to withdraw the Jupiters as part of the deal?
As noted by John Lewis Gaddis, *We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War
History*, p. 271: "We now know that Kennedy left himself at least one
other non-military alternative. It would have come in the form of a
*public* appeal from United Nations Secretary General U Thant, arranged
ahead of time by Rusk through former UN official Andrew Cordier, for a
Cuba-Turkey missile trade. Kennedy would then *publicly* have accepted.
Only the President, his brother, and Rusk knew of this unexecuted plan,
which astonished Kennedy's other advisers when the former Secretary of
State revealed it in 1987. There is no way to know for sure that JFK
would have used it, but the fact that it was ready to go--together with
evidence from the ExComm tapes that the President was pushing hard for
such an exchange--suggests strongly that he would have."
See
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0DB153FF93BA1575BC0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
for Rusk's 1987 revelation of this plan.
Suppose it had indeed come down to this option. The Republicans would
denounce JFK's "sell-out" and presumably the Democrats would not have done
as well in the November 1962 elections as in OTL. There could also be
negative reactions in Europe (and especially Turkey), and doubts about the
reliability of the US as a NATO ally. OTOH, JFK could argue that
submarine-launched Polaris missiles had made the Jupiters obsolete;
indeed, in 1961 JFK had wanted to cancel the delivery of the Jupiters, and
might have done so if not for Khrushchev's renewal of his Berlin
ultimatum. My guess is that probably the majority of the American people
and the NATO allies would ultimately accept that the removal--even
publicly announced--of the Jupiters was better than war. (The fact that
the idea for such a deal would formally come from U Thant rather than
Kennedy or Khrushchev might also have helped. As noted by Philip Nash,
*The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters
1957-1963*, p. 144: "Mindful of the hazards involved in trading, or
appearing to trade, Kennedy wanted a third party to propose the deal,
hoping to turn concession into compromise."
http://books.google.com/books?id=0psBLyiWVuwC&pg=RA1-PA144&sig=IeN94SqgAPKabOQH53juJq0usQQ)
But JFK's historical reputation would be different from what it became in OTL.
I don't say better or worse, only different--it would have been "better" from
those of a dovish viewpoint, "worse" from the hawks...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/qvG722VC6X4/mL_Fwt1E6zEJ
***
In OTL, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by an agreement by
Khrushchev to pull the missiles out of Cuba in return for a public US
pledge not to invade Cuba and a private promise (conveyed by Robert
Kennedy to Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin) to withdraw Jupiter missiles from
Turkey. Suppose however that Khrushchev did not accept this and demanded
a *public* promise to withdraw the Jupiters as part of the deal?
As noted by John Lewis Gaddis, *We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War
History*, p. 271: "We now know that Kennedy left himself at least one
other non-military alternative. It would have come in the form of a
*public* appeal from United Nations Secretary General U Thant, arranged
ahead of time by Rusk through former UN official Andrew Cordier, for a
Cuba-Turkey missile trade. Kennedy would then *publicly* have accepted.
Only the President, his brother, and Rusk knew of this unexecuted plan,
which astonished Kennedy's other advisers when the former Secretary of
State revealed it in 1987. There is no way to know for sure that JFK
would have used it, but the fact that it was ready to go--together with
evidence from the ExComm tapes that the President was pushing hard for
such an exchange--suggests strongly that he would have."
See
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0DB153FF93BA1575BC0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
for Rusk's 1987 revelation of this plan.
Suppose it had indeed come down to this option. The Republicans would
denounce JFK's "sell-out" and presumably the Democrats would not have done
as well in the November 1962 elections as in OTL. There could also be
negative reactions in Europe (and especially Turkey), and doubts about the
reliability of the US as a NATO ally. OTOH, JFK could argue that
submarine-launched Polaris missiles had made the Jupiters obsolete;
indeed, in 1961 JFK had wanted to cancel the delivery of the Jupiters, and
might have done so if not for Khrushchev's renewal of his Berlin
ultimatum. My guess is that probably the majority of the American people
and the NATO allies would ultimately accept that the removal--even
publicly announced--of the Jupiters was better than war. (The fact that
the idea for such a deal would formally come from U Thant rather than
Kennedy or Khrushchev might also have helped. As noted by Philip Nash,
*The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters
1957-1963*, p. 144: "Mindful of the hazards involved in trading, or
appearing to trade, Kennedy wanted a third party to propose the deal,
hoping to turn concession into compromise."
http://books.google.com/books?id=0psBLyiWVuwC&pg=RA1-PA144&sig=IeN94SqgAPKabOQH53juJq0usQQ)
But JFK's historical reputation would be different from what it became in OTL.
I don't say better or worse, only different--it would have been "better" from
those of a dovish viewpoint, "worse" from the hawks...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/qvG722VC6X4/mL_Fwt1E6zEJ
Realpolitik
Banned
I think 1969 was closer due to the insanity of Mao's China and the Soviets reaction to Mao, but the Cuban Missile Crisis was closer than either of them. The Middle East troubles-Six Day and Yom Kippur-have been closer than I want to think about as well, not to mention all the stuff pre JFK...
We have been closer to destruction more than we want to think at any rate.
It's why it's important to have people good at foreign policy in office.
NothingNow
Banned
Nope. Everything I've ever read on the subject, including SAC's Official history, and what little there is about the Missile Crisis in the public domain, and not in the hands of the Kennedy family put the blame for the whole situation getting as heated as it was on a speedfreak cripple and his psychotic younger brother.
The whole of that statement indicates why I must reiterate, as kindly as I worded it, that you are rather incorrect.
How about instead of reiterating that he's incorrect, you bother to explain how and why he's incorrect?
Well for one, calling the president a speed-freak cripple and the attorney general a psychopath, and saying that the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis is controlled by the Kennedy family is such an extraordinary bias that I have difficulty responding to it. Let alone the interpretation I spent my opening post condemning that atomic war was unlikely, which to the contrary, atomic war was a major possibility for a variety of reasons. And I recommend looking at the links and the assorted videos of the Armageddon Letters in regards to that. I'll link to the whole of the youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/user/armageddonletters
If you care for my point by point:
Kennedy was not a character from Reefer Madness. And life is not a Motion Picture in any regard.
Atomic war was a very strong possibility because of the problems inherent to the situation. I outlined those previously. I will go on to further add that most of the people around Kennedy were pushing for some type of military action and Kennedy was responsible for the way it was resolved in terms of the United States.
Lyndon Johnson was not very strong in terms of foreign policy, and as his Vietnam policy showed later, he did listen to the hawks. And the "best and brightest" around Kennedy were largely pushing for a military action in terms of Cuba. I'll even let you argue that Kennedy may have reluctantly gone into Vietnam because someone will push us down that road in the topic. Regardless of that, Johnson's psychology was one that far more than Kennedy would have listened to the men around him pushing for action, and think that military action could resolve it. What would LBJ do if a U2 were shot down over Cuba when he were in office rather than Kennedy? And we know now that had such an aggressive action against Cuba occurred, whether a strategic strike or whatever it may have been, it would have been World War 3; despite being behind in terms of their nuclear arsenal, the USSR would have attacked and Castro would gladly have sacrificed Cuba.
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NothingNow
Banned
No. You're right. Kennedy wasn't a stoner, he was being injected with amphetamines, which are a vastly different sort of drug leading to different behaviors, all of which are completely unsuited to someone who is in a high risk situation.
The Problems inherent in the situation are not necessarily the factors leading to nuclear war being as likely as it was. They're pretty much limited to the Kennedy Administration's spectacularly abysmal policy in Latin America, and obsession with power and victory in a much larger context.
You are aware that Johnson basically left DC in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis and went back to Texas to wash his hands of the whole disastrous affair after he was sidelined for being the voice of caution, right?
Vietnam was a slowly heating pot, and consistently pretty low risk while Johnson focused his efforts on issues at home, so State and the DoD pretty much ran the war.
Cuba is the exact opposite. As it was, Johnson was entirely aware of the stakes involved in the Crisis and was if anything a shrewder operator than Kennedy ever could have been. Without the direct agitation on the part of the Kennedy Administration, the crisis itself would have been vastly lessened, and negotiations would have begun much sooner and progressed much more easily, although the blockade would likely remain, as would reconnaissance overflights, as both were essential bargaining tools.
PoeFacedKilla
Banned
Why is every post I see from you a quote from a usenet group?
I don't believe it is likely, but do you have any recent thoughts on the matter?
Yeah. Because we all remember how Kennedy eagerly approved Curtis LeMay's proposal to launch immediate air strikes against the missiles in Cuba because he was assured the Soviets would not respond...
Oh, no, wait... Kennedy told LeMay that it was inconcievable to him that the Soviets would not respond to air strikes and benched the proposal in favor of the quarantine method.
It's rather hard for me to take seriously the idea that Kennedy and his team was responsible for aggravating the crisis while SAC was the voice of reason when we have the audio recordings on the public record pretty clearly indicating it was the other way around.
Anyways, I voted 25-50%, with a definite lean towards the 50% marker.
Yes he would have accepted MIlitary advice, invade cuba and face tactical nukes. 6 year old Derek is dead (in Greater London)
(1) Because I have contributed for many years to soc.history.what-if, have written detailed posts on many of the issues debated here, and don't see why I shouldn't refer to them here. I might simply give the URL, of course, but just in case Google some day loses the old usenet posts I think it safer to include the entire post, or so much of it as is relevant here.
(2) I had previously thought that *even if the Cordier initiative had failed* there might be airstrkes limited to Cuba and Turkey. I was influenced in this by John Lewis Gaddis, *We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History* (1997), (pp. 271-2):
"And what if the Cordier initiative had failed, there had been an American landing in Cuba, and Khrushchev had responded as Kennedy expected him to do by attacking the Turkish Jupiters? The evidence here is less than conclusive, but the President did issue explicit orders that the Jupiters were not to be launched without his permission, 'even in the event of a selective nuclear or non-nuclear attack on these units by the Soviet Union in response to actions we may be taking elsewhere.' The ExComm tapes hint strongly that there was a plan to absorb such a strike — that is, a direct Soviet nuclear assault on a NATO ally — without retaliating. The idea, historian Philip Nash writes, would have been to 'liquidate one's least valuable military assets in order to eliminate one of the most glaring drawbacks of the air strike option— the possibility that it would trigger an escalatory spiral culminating in World War III.'
"What all of this suggests, then, is that with everything that has been published over the years about John F. Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, we are only now coming to understand the role he played in it. Far from neglecting the dangers of nuclear war, he had a keen sense of what they were. Far from opposing a compromise, he pushed for one more strongly than anyone else in his administration. Far from relying on the ExComm he bypassed it at the most critical moments, and may have seen it as more useful for consensus-building than for decision-making. Far from placing the nation and the world at risk to protect his own reputation for toughness, he probably would have backed down, in public if necessary, whatever the domestic political damage might have been. There may be, in short, room here for a new profile in courage — but it would be courage of a diferent kind from what many people presumed thagt term to mean throughout much of the Cold War."
I have since concluded, however, that such a limited exchange of airstrikes would be unlikely:
"Had the United States launched an airstrike and invaded Cuba, the Soviet commander on the scene would almost certainly have responded with about 100 tactical nuclear weapons under his control--tactical nuclear weapons JFK did not even know were on the island. The US would have felt compelled to respond in kind triggering an escalation to nuclear Armageddon. As RFK later recalled, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council advising JFK during the crisis was full of 'bright, able dedicated people, all of whom had the greatest affection for the US, [but] if six of them had been President...the world might have been blown up'."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary...isis-closer-than-you-thought-to-World-War-III
I still continue to think, though, that it would not have come to this because both Kennedy and Khrushchev would have agreed to the Cordier initiative if necessary.