The Cuban Missile Crisis And The Threat Of Nuclear War: Lessons From History

This text analyzes the risks that the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 could have led to nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. He examines the Soviet decision-making process that led to the deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba, Soviet and American thinking on the deployment and use of nuclear weapons as a matter of 'rational' policy, scenarios concerning how nuclear weapons could have been used by accident or at the command of unauthorized figures, and scenarios concerning what would have happened if nuclear weapons had been used. He then draws lessons on the political and military role of nuclear weapons and connects them to current debates.