What happened when the super-powers teetered on nuclear war in 1962

As his country faces daily bombardment of its cities by Russian planes and tanks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is, understandably, very disappointed that the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have declined to impose “a no-fly-zone” in Ukraine's skies to halt Russia reducing Ukrainian cities to “ashes”.

Zelensky wants Russian-made Mig-29 jet fighter-bombers to be supplied to Ukraine by Poland and Hungary (former members of the Warsaw Pact who are now members of NATO.) Ukraine, as a former constituent member of the Soviet Union, has pilots who can fly the Migs, if supplied.

But Mr Zelensky has been told by NATO that a “no-fly-zone” cannot be established in the battle area because Russia would certainly react against Poland and Hungary to take out any Mig-29s they might pass to Ukraine. As the NATO Treaty provides that “an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members,” any retaliation by Russia against Poland and Hungary would almost certainly result in a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Such an apocalyptic possibility has indeed been admitted by the official spokesman of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Actually, in October 1962, the world nearly witnessed such a scenario – in which the Great Powers came very close to using nuclear weapons to annihilate each other. Now, it will be recalled that prior to the Mikhail Gorbachev era in the USSR, a bitter Cold War existed between the USSR and the West.

Each of the Great Powers had been careful, so far, not to “provoke” the other in such a manner that it would be tempted to respond with nuclear weapons. Then, out of the blue, the USA discovered through satellite photography carried out from the skies that the USSR was trying to create a base on the island of Cuba on which it would station nuclear missiles aimed at mainland USA – only 90 miles away from Cuba!

The Americans went ballistic! What happened after the discovery of the missiles, in the ensuing “Cuban missiles crisis”, has been recounted in a book by Robert Kennedy, brother of the then US President, John Kennedy. His account sends shivers down the spine of every sensitive reader.

But Robert Kennedy's account left out many details, and it wasn't until President Kennedy's Defence Secretary of the time, Mr Robert McNamara, appeared in a television programme in 2003 that the world got to know how horrendously dangerous things became in 1962. A thermonuclear war over the missiles in Cuba had been averted by sheer luck, McNamara revealed in a PBS documentary entitled The Fog of War.

Reflecting on the decisions and outcomes of the Cuban missile crisis, he said:

“Under a cloak of deceit, the Soviet Union introduced nuclear missiles into Cuba, targeting 90 million Americans. The CIA said the warheads had not been delivered yet. They thought 20 were coming on a ship named the Poltava. We mobilised 180,000 troops. The first day’s air attack was planned at 1080 sorties, a huge air attack.

“I said to Kennedy: Mr. President, we need to do two things, it seems to me. First, we need to develop a specific strike plan. The second thing we have to do is to consider the consequences. I don’t know quite what kind of a world we’ll live in, after we’ve struck Cuba. How do we stop at that point? I don’t know the answer to this.

“Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, [Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, 1961–1965] whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying ‘Let’s go in, let’s totally destroy Cuba’.

“On that critical Saturday, October 27th [1962] we had two messages from the [Soviet leader, [Mt Nikita] Khrushchev, in front of us. One had come in Friday night and it had been dictated by a man who was either drunk or under tremendous stress. Basically, he said, ‘If you’ll guarantee you won’t invade Cuba, we’ll take the missiles out’. Then, before we could respond, we had a second message that had been dictated by a bunch of hard-liners. And it said, in effect, ‘If you attack, we’re prepared to confront you with masses of military power’.

“So, what to do? We had, I’ll call it, the soft message and the hard message.

At the elbow of President Kennedy was Tommy Thompson, former US ambassador to Moscow. He and Jane, his wife, had literally lived with Khrushchev and his wife upon occasion. Tommy Thompson said ‘Mr. President, I urge you to respond to the soft message’…

“In the first message, Khrushchev said this: "We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied [into] the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you.

“I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence.”

“Mr McNamara went on “I want to say, and this is very important: in the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to the total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.”

Mr McNamara revealed further that “The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is this: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations. Is it right and proper that today [in 2003!] there are 7,500 strategic offensive nuclear warheads, of which 2,500 are on a 15-minute alert, to be launched by the decision of one human being?

“It wasn’t until January 1992, in a meeting chaired by [Cuban leader Fidel] Castro in Havana, that I learned that 162 nuclear warheads, including 90 tactical warheads, were on the island at the time of this critical moment of the crisis. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and Castro got very angry with me because I said, ‘Mr. President, let’s stop this meeting. This is totally new to me, I’m not sure I got the translation right’…In a
sense, we’d win. We got the missiles out without war. My deputy and I brought the five Chiefs over and we sat down with Kennedy. And he said, ‘Gentlemen, we won. I don’t want you ever to say it, but you know we won, I know we won’.

“And General LeMay said ‘Won? Hell, we lost! We should go in and wipe ’em out today’. LeMay believed that ultimately we’re going to confront these people in a conflict with nuclear weapons. And, by God, we better do it when we have greater superiority than we will have in the future…'

“It’s almost impossible for our people today to put themselves back into that period. In my seven years as Secretary [of Defence], we came within a hair’s breadth of war with the Soviet Union on three different occasions. Twenty four hours a day, 365 days a year for seven years as Secretary of Defence, I lived the Cold War!”

Mr McNamara did not say anything about what he meant when said: “We lucked out!” But information has now become available about a Soviet nuclear submarine commander who refused to agree to an order by two other officers, that nuclear missiles be fired at the Soviet warships with which the US had blockaded Cuba.