Nuclear war, the ghost that returns 60 years after Putin’s hand

Although the specter of war has not disappeared, nuclear did not attend. Sixty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of collapse, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats to war in Ukraine have once again sparked tensions.

It is the same US President Joe Biden last week who compared the current situation to the October 1962 conflict, when the US discovered that the USSR had planted 42 warhead missiles in Cuba. nuclear medium range aimed at your territory.

“For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a threat of the use of weapons. nuclearBiden spoke of his Russian counterpart fueling the nuclear specter as the invasion of Ukraine he ordered in February intensified.

The US leader warned: “I don’t think you can use tactical nuclear weapons without hitting Armageddon.”

scary moment

“History of weapons nuclear because the cold war is full of terrifying moments. It’s another one of them because we don’t know what can move a president Vladimir Putin cross the nuclear threshold,” Sharon Squassoni, a nuclear weapons researcher at George Washington University, explains to EFE.

According to this professor, the “great similarity” between the crisis in Cuba and the crisis in Ukraine is that the USSR then used the threat nuclear to keep the United States from invading the island, and Vladimir Putin now this is done in order to dissuade Washington from further assistance to the Ukrainians.

But there are also differences, such as the fact that Moscow has not yet mobilized nuclear weapons against Ukraine, he points out.

Squassoni worked for the defunct US Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and sits on the Council of Atomic Scientists, which each year sets the time for the so-called “Doomsday Clock,” a symbolic instrument that warns of the dangers facing the planet.

This expert believes that there are still threats Vladimir Putin they were rather “vague”, but this does not mean that they should be less credible. “I think it’s very disturbing how many times Vladimir Putin and other (Russian) officials raised the issue of the use of nuclear weapons. This, of course, is alarming, ”he emphasizes.

no negotiations

On October 14, 1962, the United States discovered the missiles that the USSR had planted in Cuba, which then US President John F. Kennedy publicly denounced on the 22nd of that month in an address to the nation.

On the brink of confrontation nuclearKennedy and then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev negotiated a temporary solution to the crisis by exchanging letters between October 25 and 28, 1962.

The agreement that averted the catastrophe provided for the dismantling and removal of missiles from Cuba, as well as the withdrawal of 56 American missiles located in Iran and Turkey, not far from the southern border of the USSR.

Juan Luis Manfredi, chair of the Prince of Asturias Chair at Georgetown University in Washington, says the type of “leadership” that existed at the time no longer exists.

The international relations expert tells EFE that at the time “neither of the two leaders wanted to go any further” and in the war in Ukraine they were “burning through stages at high speed.”

“If we know anything about Cuba, it is that the crisis was brought to a halt thanks to negotiations between the two top leaders. Today Vladimir Putin refused to negotiate, negotiations are impossible,” explains Manfredi.

Scuassoni also dates back to the Cold War, a conflict in which “too much money” was spent on “a war no one wanted to be involved in”.

“I think the lesson of the Cold War is that you have to keep negotiating even when your opponent is doing terrible things,” he says.

What if it’s an attack?

For Manfredi, “threats Vladimir Putin they are real and should be taken seriously,” and does not rule out a “theatrical shot” ordered by the Kremlin leader to demonstrate his power.

The consequences are even harder to predict. Biden said he had a response prepared, but did not elaborate on it. “Yes Russia decided to use ballistic missiles, this would cross a red line that would force the United States to enter the war more solidly. It is terribly dangerous,” warns this academic.

Meanwhile, Sharon Squassoni points out that using nuclear weapons would make “no sense” because there is no way to help Putin achieve his goals, but “we can’t know one hundred percent if he will use them,” he points out. . . .

He further explains that the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima during World War II had a yield of fifteen kilotons, which is today considered a small nuclear weapon.

“I think the message Russia It must be that even the use of a supposed small nuclear weapon will entail a serious response, ”he says.

(As reported by EFE)

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Fernando Carvallo selects information and shares his vision of national and international news. sign to our newsletter Things As They Are to read their daily columns.