Editor's Note: Many of us remember when the US media portrayed Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev as a dangerous lunatic, threatening the entire world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The same media hyped John F. Kennedy's heroism in forcing the Soviets to remove the missiles and stand down. They even made a highly emotional docu-drama about it to manipulate minds, cementing in place their own history. Dallas Darling explains who the real hero was and who took the world to the brink of thermo-nuclear war.

- Les Blough, Editor

When lawmakers in the United States Congress ridiculed and blasted Cuba for assuming the rotating presidency of the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament, it evoked the memory of another standoff in 1962, namely the Cuban Missile Crisis, and another political leader’s verbal tirade.

At Cuba’s request, the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles on the island to prevent Washington from launching another armed invasion, like the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack. Cuba also wanted to guard against continued U.S. commando raids, economic sabotage and terrorist attacks.

Upon learning of Soviet missile sites in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy quarantined the island and demanded their complete removal. He placed the U.S. armed forces on high alert and ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade and militarily stop and seize any Soviet ship trying to reach Cuba, even if it meant nuclear war.

As tens of thousands of nuclear missiles were readied to be launched and millions of U.S. troops waited to invade Cuba, including the Strategic Air Command’s nuclear-fitted bomber fleets and fighter jets that had already prepared to strike their targets, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev initiated and broadcasted a letter to Kennedy.

From the outset of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev was clearly and deeply moved by the wars he had already experienced. “I have participated in two world wars,” wrote Khrushchev, “and know that war ends only when it has carved its way across cities and villages, bringing death and destruction in its wake.”¹

Earlier, Khrushchev had bemoaned the loss of his son in World War II and millions of other deaths suffered by the Russians. He also challenged his critics who claimed he was afraid of war by saying: “I should like to see that kind of bloody fool who is genuinely not afraid of war.”²

Meanwhile, Kennedy was intent on escalating the nuclear standoff. Fortunately, Khrushchev remembered Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. He concluded to not make the same mistake as Europeans to “tumble into war…through stupidity, individual idiosyncrasies, misunderstandings, and personal complexes of inferiority and grandeur.”³

The letter to Kennedy from Khrushchev offers the removal of Soviet Missiles in Cuba and a non-aggression pledge to Turkey. In return, Khrushchev wants the U.S. to withdrawal its nuclear missiles from Turkey and a non-aggression pledge to Cuba. Kennedy ignores the offer, pressing for unconditional victory but at a great price of millions of lives.

At the last minute, Khrushchev’s humanity is esteemed and in a long, emotional letter declares that “only lunatics or suicides…wanted a thermonuclear war.”⁴ Unlike Kennedy and the U.S., he and the Soviets had no intention of becoming a central character in a in a comparable novel about this same time, The Missiles of October.⁵

President Kennedy is euphoric and exults in his adversary’s humiliation. Kennedy exclaims, “I cut his balls off!”⁶  Cuba, which has no nuclear weapons and has signed many test ban- and nonproliferation- and nuclear free zone treaties, deserves to be seated at the helm of the Conference on Disarmament. Perhaps Cuba can help revive a treaty banning the production of fissile materials and the abolition of nuclear weapons, something the U.S. has resisted.⁷

Can Cuba also use its new role to finally end a centuries-old nightmare, in which the U.S. has always envisaged the Caribbean island as an act of colonial continuity and possession? Military invasions, attempted annexations, and punitive blockades have never defeated Cuban sovereignty nor its self-determination and demand for control over its resources.

Kennedy’s demeaning and inhuman statement during the Cuban Missile Crisis is merely symbolic of an arrogant, militant and nuclear nation turned empire. It believes it is absolute and has been ordained to dominate the U.N. and the world, including Cuba. In hindsight, not only does the U.S. need its “nuclear” balls cut off, but its “imperial” balls too.

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)

1. Mueller, John. Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010., p. 39.
2. Ibid., p. 40.
3. Ibid., p. 40.
4. Smith, Michael K. Portraits Of Empire: Unmasking Imperial Illusions from the “American Century” to the “War on Terror”. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2003., p. 97.
5. Mueller, John. Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda., p. 40.
6. Smith, Michael K. Portraits Of Empire: Unmasking Imperial Illusions from the “American Century” to the “War on Terror”., p. 97.
7. Pubantz, Jerry and John Allphin Moore, Jr. Encyclopedia of The United Nations. New York, New York: Facts on File, 2008., p. 87.