• @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    110 months ago

    Seems like you have an idea that the missle crisis was two sided. It was not. Khrushchev, who had acted irrationally on the world stage, was found to be placing nuclear missles in Cuba. This would result in mere seconds between launch and detonation on US soil. Military age men in the US were packing up to go to war as their fathers did just 20 years earlier. Kennedy put a blockade on the island. Khrushchev moved his navy to the blockade. Kennedy reached a deal with Khrushchev whereby the Soviets would remove its missles and Kennedy wouldn’t place missles in eastern European countries. These 13 days brought us close to nuclear war for no better reason than the Soviet yearn for world wide conquest.

    • Flying Squid
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      010 months ago

      Well as you said, I clearly know nothing about it, but I was pretty sure Khrushchev put R-12 and R-14 missiles in Cuba in 1962 because the U.S. put Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy in 1961. But you are the expert here. I’m completely ignorant about it.