BE -- "death wish for the planet"

[Monte Davis]

Repeating past posts briefly: what is least often said about the Cuban
missile crisis is that it was pointless, because the same "incremental"
threat to the US was soon achieved by other means, and both sides knew that
it would be.

The USSR was several years behind the US in long-range ICBMs and missile
submarines, so Khrushchev placed the intermediate-range missiles in Cuba as
a quick and dirty stopgap -- as well as a  symbolic response ("don't mess
with our client Cuba again") to the Bay of Pigs landing in 1961. Kennedy
forced their removal, but within three years, equally (and more)
threatening alternatives that the US knew were coming -- and could do
nothing about -- were in place.

I accept the consensus among Western historians that Khrushchev's
initiative was rash adventurism; the Politburo deemed it that when they
deposed him a year after the crisis. But I've never understood why it
should be considered any less rash, or any more of an achievement in
strategy or statecraft, for Kennedy to go to the brink of war to restore a
US "edge" that was disappearing in any case. It was symbolic dick-waving on
both sides.

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> A bit of history I have read hard about is THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. I do
> suggest
> that all the details make fascinating, scary but with a happy ending
> reading about how
> the death wish for the planet was averted. Then
>
> Esp detail: The Kennedys deciding to ignore an aggressive, inflammatory
> wire from the
> Soviet Union, supposedly from Khrushchev but only responding to the
> previous one,
> more conciliatory and offering a way forward......
>
> They had decided to maintain, if challenged, that they never got the later
> one, presumably
> from the Politboro's Generals LeMay faction......
>
> Worked.
>
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 2:02 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>
>> Ernie on the internet in BE:
>>
>> "'As it kept growing, it never stopped carrying in his heart a
>> bitter-cold death wish for the planet, and don't think anything has
>> changed, kid.'"
>>
>> BE, 420
>>
>> John Kennedy on the search for peace:
>>
>> "We must, therefore, preserve in the search for peace in the hope that
>> constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach
>> solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a
>> way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine
>> peace. Above all, while defending our vital interest, nuclear powers must
>> avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a
>> humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the
>> nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy -- or of
>> a collective death-wish for the world."
>>
>> http://www1.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm
>>
>>
>> Kennedy also said:
>>
>> "In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union
>> and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace
>> and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests
>> of the Soviet Union as well as ours -- and even the most hostile nations
>> can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only
>> those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.
>>
>> So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct
>> attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences
>> can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can
>> help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our
>> most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe
>> the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
>>
>> Quite impressive.
>>
>>
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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