great article.
Now we have an equally paranoid Putin in charge, so it’s not over.
ping
The Discovery Channel or maybe Documentary had a two hour show on this last week. Probably do a rerun again.
Nuclear weapons are evil because the US had 'em first.
If the Communists had 'em first and the West did not, well the only rational path would have been to surrender in the face of superior weaponry.
Since both sides has had them, the world has had to live in fear of the reckless West and their doomsday devices.
“But the Soviet leadership, with its eye on Reagan’s supposed recklessness, chose not to believe them.”
This is where our Leftist media enters the equation. They painted Reagan as “reckless” and could have caused a nuclear conflagration, as a result. The msm’s hatred of Republican presidents and their unflagging attempts to ruin their time in office does have consequences in this dangerous world.
Thanks for a fascinating read.
Whew !
Many don’t know how close we were to going to war with USSR in October, 1973, at the height of the Yom Kippur War. USSR was rattling sabers and acting as if it were about to jump into the fray to support Syria. Nixon, for all his domestic faults, was a great leader in foreign affairs. He warned USSR leader Brezhnev that if USSR got involved on the side of Syria, it would be fighting US forces, because US would go in to support Israel. US forces went on alert. Bombers were being prepped, and many took to the air in case the “Go” order were given.
USSR had miscalculated US resolve, thinking that since the Vietnam War had just months earlier wound down as far as US involvement (the cease-fire of January, 1973), and convinced the American people were so tired of war that they would never condone a new US military action, especially one in which the foe would be the ultimate enemy (USSR), it felt relatively safe from any US counter to its adventure in the Middle East. Nixon brought USSR back to reality, and neither side became overtly involved in the Yom Kippur War.
I remember that bit of excitement. I was in the USAF at the time.
There is good evidence that it sunk after the attempted unauthorized launch of a nuclear missile at Hawaii.
And, as we now know, the CIA went and raised it.
Or pieces of it.
The above idea is put forth without any background in modern logistics or strategy, so I am skeptical of it.
The nuclear forces do not launch in a vacuum.
There would be massive worldwide redeployment of logistical supports and active military assets, not to mention to complete mobilization of the reserves and co ordination with civil defense.
The war gaming in Europe is a small theater piece in the whole puzzle
Geez. Time for me to change shorts ...
I’ll have a hard time going back to bed (I was planning on sleeping in - thanks a lot) ;(
bttt good read
It was June 22, 1941, not 1940. Also, neither the USSR nor the USA had any capability to sit and watch for silo doors to open in real time via satellite recon imagery, as the article suggests. At best there were snapshots from birds moving 18,000 miles per hour which had to be downlinked and processed. That was all strategic information, not tactical.
Thanks for a good read this morning!
brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
My understanding is that the CIA knew how few functional missiles/nukes the Soviets really had, and that Kennedy knew the Sovets were bluffing, so the dramatic standoff was not as real as it is made out to be. Like threatening an all out fight to the death, knowing your opponent has two broken arms, and knowing that they know you know. To onlookers, it looks like something exciting might happen, but not really.
Then Reagan, successor at the White House to Jimmy Carter, upped the ante in a provocative speech in which he denounced the Soviet Union as 'the Evil Empire'.It's hard to estimate what a genius move this was on the part of Reagan, this labeling of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire.
First of all, it was absolutely true. They were an empire, and they were evil.
But more important than that, with the fantastic success of the Star Wars movies (two to-date by that time, or was it three?) the concept "Evil Empire" was out there in the American mind in a big way and it was only a matter of time before the leftists snatched it up and applied it to America.
Reagan beat them to the punch and used the phrase properly before the leftists could mis-apply it to us.
Reagan was a genius. On many levels.
Good read, even if it bent on blaming the US if we had gone to war.
Is that a Timex or Casio?
“successor at the White House to Jimmy Carter, upped the ante in a provocative speech in which he denounced the Soviet Union as ‘the Evil Empire’.”
The day his nads dropped.