"October 26th was the day when “the nation was closest to nuclear war,” he writes in his “irreverent anecdotes of an Air Force pilot,” Is That Something the Crew Should Know? On that day, Clawson himself was in a good position to set off a likely terminal cataclysm. He concludes, “We were damned lucky we didn’t blow up the world — and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country."

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The Week the World Stood Still: The Cuban Missile Crisis and Ownership of the World

More juicy bits…

“Extricating the basic facts from the fashionable ridicule, Khrushchev’s agreement to capitulate had indeed “saved the world from the threat of nuclear destruction.””

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In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.  But we can hardly count on such sanity forever.  It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.  There is more reason than ever to attend to the warning of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, almost 60 years ago, that we must face a choice that is “stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

I guess it will be the former because the USA won’t even mention cutting back - have you heard a single peep about it during anything anywhere running up to the election?  At least global warming is coming up as being not talked about.

Tags: nuclear war