The Cuban Missile Crisis began on this day, October 14, sixty years ago today. I was eight years old and remember our class practicing hiding under our desks but hardly grasped then the severity of the threat at the time. In the decades sense, the thirteen days that followed have been chronicled in books and films enough to perhaps dull the sense of how close the world came to destruction in those days, certainly closer than we have known since.
During law school years later, I sat in on a lecture by Kennedy’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, on the events of the Crisis. His tone was, like his demeanor, calm and understated, but his message was clear: nuclear weapons must never be used again, and reason and diplomacy must prevail.
Putin’s failing invasion of Ukraine has again raised the specter of nuclear weapons with his threats to use tactical nuclear warheads there. One might wonder, of course, but I recall George Bush saying he’d looked into Putin’s eyes and seen he has no soul. The better hope might well be that the Russian military might balk at an order of such magnitude.
I sometimes wonder if there remains anything that might unite Americans again. Surely the memory of those thirteen days and today’s threat is great enough to bring us together at this moment. While I hope and pray so, my memory of those days long ago has prompted me to stock up on iodine pills, just in case.
