re: #392 Dark_Falcon

One thing I do sometimes wonder about is to ask this: What would have happened if instead of trying to maintain “plausible deniability” JFK had simply proclaimed in early 1961 that the US was not willing to accept communism right next to us and invaded Cuba openly? It would have been a violation of international law, but those don’t really matter for the US (since as a practical matter we cannot be held to account). A honest invasion might have avoided a great of the humiliation we later suffered from failed attempts to get rid of Castro.

The trouble is that humiliations can happen in either direction. A Soviet Union [or, more accurately, a Khrushchev team] bent on erasing the humiliation of having a friend rubbed out, would have been even more dangerous than the situation that did emerge.

Historians judge that there was a real probability of the Cuban missile crisis having taken a turn into outright nuclear war.

The overriding objective of statecraft in the nuclear age has to be to avoid nuclear war. The way the Cuban situation was handled achieved that. Both sides accepted a degree of humiliation, both sides backed down. No war.

Haven’t we seen, in the last ten years, how wars tend to run off the rails? After 9-11, we didn’t really have any option other than war, but the point remains: war, like fire, tends to get out of control.