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bananas

(27,509 posts)
Tue Oct 23, 2012, 09:51 AM Oct 2012

Nuclear weapons still have the power to instantly destroy the world

http://www.capebretonpost.com/Opinion/Columns/2012-10-23/article-3105130/Nuclear-weapons-still-have-the-power-to-instantly-destroy-the-world/1

Nuclear weapons still have the power to instantly destroy the world

Published on October 23, 2012
Gwynne Dyer

<snip>

What almost nobody knew until very recently is that the crisis did not really end on Oct. 28. A new book by Sergo Mikoyan — “The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of November” — reveals that it continued all the way through November.

U.S. intelligence was unaware that along with the SS-4s, the Soviet Union had also sent more than 100 shorter-range “tactical” nuclear missiles to Cuba. They weren’t mentioned in the Soviet-U.S. agreement on withdrawing the SS-4s from Cuba, so technically Khrushchev had not promised to remove them.

Castro was in a rage about having been abandoned by his Soviet allies, so, to mollify him, Khrushchev decided to let him keep the tactical missiles. It was crazy. Giving Castro 100 nuclear weapons was a recipe for a new and even bigger crisis in a year or two. Khrushchev’s deputy, Anastas Mikoyan, who was sent to Cuba to tell Castro the happy news, quickly realized that he must not have them.

The second half of the crisis, invisible to Americans, was Mikoyan’s month-long struggle to pry Castro’s fingers off the 100 tactical nuclear missiles. In the end, he only succeeded by telling Castro that an unpublished (and in fact non-existent) law forbade the transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons to a foreign country. In December, they were finally crated up and sent home.

<snip>
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Nuclear weapons still have the power to instantly destroy the world (Original Post) bananas Oct 2012 OP
I read about this when it came out years ago.. MicaelS Oct 2012 #1

MicaelS

(8,747 posts)
1. I read about this when it came out years ago..
Tue Oct 23, 2012, 12:01 PM
Oct 2012

And my reaction was "I always thought Castro was a fucking maniac and this just confirms it." Anybody who could rant on for hours at a time, like he did with his speeches, was, IMO, a maniac.

Never had a bit of sympathy for him.

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