History records that on October 16, 1962, then-US President John F. Kennedy received information from the CIA about the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. This event was the formal beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis — the first, and for a long time, the only event in world history that brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war. Back then, cool heads – who had not yet forgotten the horrors of a real war – were able to prevent a catastrophe. Whether today's leaders will show the same restraint is far from certain. Rhymes and echoes Nineteenth century American humourist Mark Twain famously said, “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” Pakistani-British historian Tariq Ali is credited with a similar take: “History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.” Either could have been referring to today’s Russia-Ukraine conflict, which seems to be rhyming with, and echoing, a perilous episode from 60 years ago and 6,000 miles away – the Cuban Missile Crisis. Observers who recall the US-Soviet showdown of October 1962 can only hope that the latest confrontation between Washington and Moscow doesn’t require as much luck to avert a potentially planet-ending nuclear war. The similarities – rhymes and echoes – are evident. For starters, the Ukraine and Cuban crises were both rooted at least partly in the same principle: A superpower can’t stand idly by when a geopolitical rival upsets the security balance between them. In 1962, the trigger was the secret placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, right on America’s doorstep. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who ironically grew up in what was then Ukraine, saw the move as a way to protect the island against a US invasion after the failed Bay of Pigs assault in April 1961, as well as a tit-for-tat response to the Pentagon’s deployment of Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy, which positioned Washington’s nuclear warheads to hit the USSR's territory in as few as ten minutes. At the time, the long-range missiles in Soviet territory took hours to fuel up and fire, meaning a delayed response to a US first strike. “Since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their military installations, we should pay them back in their own coin and give them a taste of their own medicine so that they find out for themselves how it feels to live as a target of nuclear arms,” Khrushchev was quoted as saying by Aleksandr Alekseev, then Moscow’s ambassador to Cuba. US President John F. Kennedy didn’t see it that way when a U-2 spy plane spotted surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba on October 16. As Ukrainian-born author Sergey Plokhiy wrote in his 2021 book, ‘Nuclear Folly,’ Kennedy was initially inclined to order an attack on the missile sites, which easily could have escalated into a Soviet response and, eventually, mushroom clouds on both sides. The American president wasn’t yet aware that the Soviets had already shipped nuclear warheads to Cuba. Nor did he know that the USSR had 43,000 troops on the island, as well as tactical nukes that could be used to destroy a US attack force. But Kennedy knew that having Soviet ballistic missiles just across the Florida Straits – Havana is only about 1,100 miles from Washington and 230 miles from Miami – was intolerable and potentially gave the USSR the ability to win a nuclear war with the US. Russia has raised similar concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion. The Western military bloc was formed to ensure collective security against the USSR, but instead of reaping a peace dividend after the Soviet collapse in 1991, it has expanded to 30 states, nearly doubling in size. It also placed strategic weapons in Eastern Europe, which Moscow perceived as a threat. As if those moves weren’t provocative enough, NATO has also pledged to eventually push into Ukraine and Georgia, which would expand its reach into two former Soviet republics on Russia’s borders. Tensions escalated further when a US-backed coup overthrew Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, setting off a war between Kiev and separatists in the Donbass that left an estimated 14,000 people dead even before Moscow began its military offensive last February. Some observers have blamed the US and NATO for provoking the conflict. “As the one who started the Ukraine crisis and the biggest factor fueling it, the US needs to deeply reflect on its erroneous actions of exerting extreme pressure and fanning the flame on the Ukraine issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in July. Pope Francis claimed in June that World War III had already been declared and reiterated his claim that NATO may have triggered the crisis. He cited an unidentified world leader who told him that the bloc was “barking at the gates of Russia” and pushed back against criticism that he had failed to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin. NATO isn’t just a casual association of states. As UK cabinet minister Sajid Javid noted in February, shortly before the Russian offensive started, an encroachment on one member is an encroachment on all. He even referred to the 30 member states as “NATO territory,” as if the bloc were one giant nation. In terms of security, it may as well be one country. As Article 5 of the NATO treaty states, an armed assault on one member is considered an attack on all. That was a heavy responsibility when NATO started with 12 close allies. It has become a far more precarious pledge with expansion eastward. A dust-up in Skopje or Tallinn, even if justifiable, could have just as much potential to trigger a nuclear conflagration as an attack against Berlin or Paris. And what if one of the little brothers is a bad actor, essentially provoking a fight that the big brothers are bound to finish? From Russia’s perspective, Ukraine would pose just such a risk. Putin has accused Kiev of committing “genocide” against Russian speakers in Donbass, and Ukraine has failed to implement the Minsk agreements, the protocols brokered by Germany and France to bring peace to the region. Russia also has called for the “denazification” of Ukraine. Moscow’s envoy to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, tried to explain Russia’s security concerns to a CBS News interviewer just four days before tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders. Geopolitical rivals mustn’t trample on the principle of 'indivisible security', meaning neither NATO nor Russia should be allowed to strengthen its own security at the expense of the other party, he said. In that context, adding Ukraine to NATO would be “not possible for us to swallow,” Antonov explained. His next comment made clear why such tactics aren’t in the interest of NATO member states, either: You’ll see that there’s no space for us to retreat World War I was supposed to have taught politicians that hair-trigger alliances can bring unintended consequences, such as when the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo set off a global conflict that killed or maimed 40 million people. The resulting carnage was so devastating that it was supposed to be “the war to end all wars,” though tragically, rival blocs were going at it again – with even more deadly consequences – just 21 years later.
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HAVANNA, January 6 -- When US embassy staff in Cuba became mysteriously ill after hearing loud piercing sounds, US officials blamed nefarious secret agents for launching “sonic attacks.” But a new Berkeley University study could have proven them wrong.The incidents, which occurred between 2016 and 2018, saw dozens of US staff at the embassy experience a range of health issues such as nausea, headaches, and vertigo and lead to the removal of the majority of the embassy staff from the island. It also put a freeze on warming relations between Cuba with then-US secretary for State Rex Tillerson “convinced” the attacks were targeted. But now the theories that the notorious “Havana Syndrome” was the work of some Cold War-era conspiracy have apparently been contradicted by scientist Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley, who this week published a study pinpointing the source of the mystery noise. Presenting his findings to the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Stubbs suggests that the noises heard by staff were instead from the echoing call of an insect, the Indies short-tailed cricket. Notably, the cricket noise theory had already been posited by Cuban scientists in late 2017. Reviewing US evidence and recording their own data, the Cuban team suggested that the noises may have stemmed from the chirp of the Jamaican field cricket, an insect common on the island. However, this was dismissed by Washington as the short chirp of the Jamaican field cricket did not match the abrasive continuous drone recorded by US personnel in Cuba and released to the public by AP. By comparing the US recording obtained by AP with the unique acoustic signature of hundreds of insects, Stubbs found several similar to the recording but no perfect match. That was until he realized that US staff probably made the recording indoors, altering the sound of the potential insect as it echoed off the walls. Rerunning the analysis again after playing the insect calls through indoor speakers, Stubbs found a near-perfect match with the continuous call of the Indies cricket. While the Indies cricket is not native to Cuba, further testing with bioacoustics experts at the University of Lincoln (UK) found that the frequency of the sound pulses heard at the embassy matched that of the Indies cricket’s sound production. It remains to be seen whether the discovery will see US staff return to Havana in the near future. MEXICO CITY, December 26 -- Russian Ambassador to Caracas Vladimir Zaemsky told Sputnik Wednesday that more Russian jets may be sent to Venezuela as part of bilateral defense cooperation. "Within Russian-Venezuelan cooperation in this area, such missions are not ruled out in the future, and, as before, in full compliance with international norms," Vladimir Zaemsky dismissed Wednesday reports on Moscow's alleged plans to create a Russian military base in Venezuela. "Information on the alleged negotiations on creating a military base in Venezuela, disseminated by some media, is pure speculation. To understand the situation, I would only note that the ban on any foreign military bases is enshrined in the current Venezuelan constitution," the diplomat said.
Earlier in the month, two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers, an An-124 military transport aircraft and an Il-62 plane flew to Venezuela for interoperability drills with the Venezuelan Air Force. Following a flight of several Russian strategic jets to Venezuela for joint drills earlier in December, several Latin American media alleged that Russia had plans to set up its base on the Venezuelan island of La Orchila in the Caribbean Sea. "We will gladly cooperate with American personnel in that task, and not in search of peace between the two states that have been adversaries for so many years, but ... for peace in the world, a goal that can and should be attempted," Castro wrote. "The medical personnel who heads anywhere to save lives, even at the risk of losing theirs, are the greatest example of solidarity that a human being can offer, especially when one is not driven by material interest." Cuba has already sent 165 doctors and nurses to help fight Ebola in Sierra Leone and it plans to send 296 others soon to Liberia and Guinea. Cuban officials said on Saturday that their health ministry would try to organise more aid for the affected countries in West Africa at a meeting with Cuban allies and international health organisations on Monday. The South American county's efforts have already brought unusual praise from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was quoted saying that countries like Cuba had taken impressive steps to tackle Ebola. |
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