BE -- "death wish for the planet"

[Joseph Tracy]

Not that simple . The generals were far more aggressive than Kennedy who relied on private communications with Kruschev to wind it down. I don’t know what the Politburo or soviet Military  wanted but US military advisers, already pissed at Kennedy for not invading Cuba, wanted a first strike. And there was no way to let the missiles on Cuba stand, especially with arguments about future soviet technology. Physical distance is psychological as much as scientific and Russia is the other side of the world. 

 I t is easy to see that Kennedy did the only sensible thing in defiance of his advisers, but I remember the time and the prevailing media attitudes and in light of it all, Kennedy’s handling of the situation still strikes me as quite a bit better than dick waving.
  
> On Mar 3, 2016, at 10:53 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 

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