MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th October, 2022) Sixty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the possibility of a world without nuclear weapons has become more achievable, while the taboo against their use is much stronger, experts told Sputnik.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen-day standoff in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over the latter's nuclear missile sites that were being built in Cuba. Upon receiving intelligence reports about the Soviet construction works on the island, President John Kennedy ordered a naval blockade to prevent more Soviet military supplies from reaching Cuba, which Moscow declared an act of aggression.
As Soviet ships were approaching the island, the risk of a conflict between two nuclear powers was at an all-time high. Fortunately, through high-stakes diplomacy, the two sides managed to arrive at a mutually acceptable compromise, with the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba and the US committing to doing the same with its missiles in Turkey.
The crisis is widely considered to be one of the watershed points in the history of the Cold War and the closest the world has ever come to nuclear conflict. At the same time, it resulted in the establishment of a direct hotline between Moscow and Washington and paved the way for US-Soviet cooperation on issues such as the prohibition of nuclear testing in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater, as well as on nonproliferation efforts.
At the same time, the crisis also helped increase the number of nuclear weapons. John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, writes in his book the Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency that the Soviet authorities wrongly attributed the outcome of the crisis to them not having enough nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union later sought to rectify this perceived shortcoming through a massive military buildup that the country could not afford and which contributed to its collapse.
Since the development of nuclear weapons, experts have been debating the need for such tools of destruction, with some arguing that they play an important role in preserving the post-WWII system of international relations and security, and others suggesting that their usefulness was outweighed by potential risks.
Some even dismiss their importance, like Mueller who told Sputnik that nuclear weapons have been "a waste of time, money, and scientific talent."
"I don't think the world was close to using them in 1962. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev were determined from the beginning to avoid getting into a war with each other, whether nuclear or not," Mueller said, adding that things have not changed much since the crisis although "there have been technical changes and the two sides managed to figure out how to waste even more money on the weapons."
The expert went on to cast doubt on the idea of using nuclear weapons to deter a major war between the East and West, noting that "the fact than none has happened is not due to that intent � it would have happened anyway."
Frank von Hippel, a senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University, drew attention to "the movement by the non-nuclear-weapon states to push for a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons," which he described as "the one encouraging development I have seen during the past decade since the series of Russian-US nuclear reduction agreements came to an end."
"I think a world without both nuclear weapons and war has become more possible. I hope we have enough time left to realize that possibility," von Hippel said.
He admitted that a world without nukes would not eliminate "the danger of destructive wars" but does not believe that the world would revert to the conditions that produced the two world wars.
"We now understand that national power is not necessarily increased by territorial conquest. It comes from education, research, and productivity," the expert stated, noting, however, that "the fact that high-tech societies are vulnerable to hacking and other forms of disruption creates new types of deterrence to aggression."
Meanwhile, Marc Trachtenberg, a professor emeritus of political science at UCLA, pointed out that the stigma attached to any use of nuclear weapons is much greater today than at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis
"In other words, the 'moral firebreak' against nuclear use is much wider and deeper than it was then. It is as though the world was told that 'you can't put the genie back in the bottle' and replied, 'oh really? I think we can!' and developed a new set of norms that more or less achieved just that," Trachtenberg explained.
Despite some positive developments in the realm of nuclear weapons prohibition, the bombs are likely to remain in place, along with the threat of nuclear conflict.
In a review essay published earlier this year, Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of international political theory in the War Studies Department of King's College London, said there is a renewed interest in nuclear weapons as well as in a discussion of their potential use.
At the same time, according to von Hippel, proponents of nuclear weapon use blocked US President Joe Biden's suggestion to announce that the only purpose of the US nuclear arsenal would be to prevent the use of nuclear weapons by other countries in the administration's Nuclear Posture Review.
Nevertheless, if the past is any indicator, there is a possibility that leaders of nuclear powers would be able to think and act outside the box without following the deterrence strategies developed by their respective militaries.
"In both superpowers, it was developed by military organizations and produced options and statements of use with which political leaders were never comfortable. US and Soviet leaders ((Soviet President Mikhail) Gorbachev and advisors to (General Secretary Leonid) Brezhnev and (General Secretary Nikita) Khrushchev) told me that they were useless and they never would have implemented them," Lebow told Sputnik when asked about differences between the Soviet and US deterrence doctrines.
