Comment by MarkMc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MarkMc | Hacker News Reader

Castro's poor judgement led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Afterwards John F Kennedy estimated there was between a one-third and one-half chance that it would have escalated to nuclear war [1]. That seems like an underestimate considering that we now know some of the missiles were fully operational [2]

Yet today it's difficult for most people to appreciate the extreme threat and terror of nuclear weapons in the 1960's. Half of US voters think life was better then than now [3]. Really? To me, there's no level of job security that could possibly compensate for such a high chance of nuclear catastrophe.

[1] Reported in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RKO6MS8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

[2] As described by Robert McNamara in 'The Fog of War'

[3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/20/6-charts-tha...

Wait, I thought it was Kennedy's poor judgement that "led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis" by placing nukes on the USSR border?

I wonder if your parent has an answer to this. It seems the US putting weapons in threatening positions to other countries would be justified somehow.

I don't mean to suggest that Castro was the only person who showed poor judgement. Placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey ratcheted up tensions and invited some kind of response from the USSR - it increased the chance of nuclear war to some degree and it's fair to criticize Kennedy for that. But it wasn't a step-change in the perceived balance of power. Given all the possible Soviet responses, I don't think it was reasonable for Kennedy to conclude that placing missiles in Turkey would lead to a 50-50 chance of nuclear war.

The US had had ballistic missiles (Redstone) in European airbases since 1958 -- Kennedy simply continued the existing policy of the US. Kennedy's poor judgment, arguably, consisted in aggressively defending the "rule" that it is acceptable for the US to have nuclear missiles near the Soviet border, but it is not acceptable for the USSR to have nuclear missiles near the US border. While JFK was driven by the need to appear tough, one has to give him credit for not following the advice of the "hawks" (Curtis LeMay) who advocated a preemptive invasion of Cuba, a move that would have almost certainly led to a nuclear exchange, given that the USSR had already placed (unbeknownst to the US intelligence) tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba.

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