[NYTr] The Cuban Missile Crisis Redux

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Cuban Missile Crisis Redux

by Francis A. Boyle
November 8, 2007

During the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President
Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III
if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran. Then Russian President
Vladimir Putin responded in kind by likewise terrorizing the entire
world with the prospect of yet another Cuban Missile Crisis if he did
not get his way on the provocative anti-ballistic missile (A.B.M.)
systems that the Bush Jr. administration plans to locate in Poland and
the Czech Republic.  These American A.B.M.s in Europe will constitute a
necessary adjunct to the longstanding U.S. plan of launching a
strategic nuclear first-strike against the former Soviet Union, now
reincarnated as the Russian Federation.  Seemingly effective U.S.
A.B.M. systems will be required to take out the miniscule Russian
strategic nuclear retaliatory forces that might survive a U.S.
first-strike.

What really matters here are the perceptions:  Namely, the Neo-Cons in
the Bush Jr. administration believe that with the deployment of a
facially successful strategic nuclear first-strike capability
necessarily including A.B.M.s, the U.S. government could ultimately
compel nuclear-armed Russia or China or both to do its bidding during a
geopolitical crisis (e.g., over Iran or Cuba again).  The classic case
in point here was the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the Soviet
government knew that the United States wielded both strategic nuclear
and conventional area military superiority, so it capitulated. American
international political scientists have almost unanimously applauded
this existential nuclear brinksmanship inflicted upon humanity by "The
Best and the Brightest" (1972) of the Kennedy administration as a most
salutary example of aggressive "compellence" as opposed to allegedly
defensive "deterrence." 

Under the auspices of the Bush Jr. Neo-Cons, the U.S. government is
breaking out of a publicly proclaimed strategic nuclear "deterrence"
posture and moving into adopting a strategic nuclear "compellence"
strategy with respect to nuclear-armed Russia and China, let alone the
rest of the world.  The Bush Jr. Neo-Cons calculate that henceforth the
United States government will be able to compel even
strategically-nuclear-armed adversaries like Russia or China or both to
back down in a crisis, or otherwise to do its will, or at least to do
nothing to stop it from attaining its geopolitical objectives.  But see
Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb" (1964).

By contrast, it was the terror of my own personal imminent nuclear
annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis that first sparked my
interest in studying international relations and U.S. foreign policy as
a young boy of 12: "I can do a better job than this!"  Unfortunately,
my generation of Americans has not. But the next generation must pick
up the torch and fight for the very survival of humanity and our shared
planet earth.  

[Professor Francis A. Boyle, is the author of "The Criminality of
Nuclear Deterrence" (Clarity Press: 2002)]