The world came 13 hours from a nuclear war. What does this actually mean? If J.F.K would not have communicated with the USSR we may have grown up in a completely decimated world. It basically means we came very very close to seeing a nuclear strike on US or USSR soil.
Yes, I do agree that our lives would be very different if either side fired a nuclear missile, but i believe the reason one was never fired has more to do than the fact that the US and USSR communicated, but rather that the USSR knew they had a disadvantage. There was a very large missile gap in favor of the US and the USSR knew this. If the US fired missiles at the USSR, there would not be a second strike capability, whereas if the USSR fired on the US, the US would be able to launch back at the USSR due to the amount of missiles they had. This ultimately puts the USSR in a lose-lose situation, which I believe is why they complied to the US requests and pulled their missiles out of Cuba.
ReplyDelete