In the long historical arc of the Soviet Union, from creation in 1917 to death in 1991, what was the peak? The high point of that arc? I'd like to suggest: 1959. At this time, the Soviet Union was literally leading the human race into outer space, sending out its satellites and in time human beings and daring the other World Power to catch up. Also at that time, it acquired a new ally island-nation just 90 miles away from the United States -- indeed, 90 miles away from the metropolis of Miami. Further, to all appearances there was a great communistic concord between the Soviet Union of this moment and the Peoples' Republic of China. If, in 1959, you were one of the privileged elite in either Moscow or Peking/Beijing, you would have known that this concord was less than perfect, but you would surely have gone along with that facade. The break did not become an open one until years later. Soviet control over the eastern half of Europe was unquestioned -- indeed, it had confir...
Posts
I have little to add to all the commentary that is flooding the internet on this event. But I will add something, because to fail to do so might be thought idiosyncratic. Also, because I was born in 1958, the year that ended with Castro's victory. So I have some sort of fortuitous connection with the man, and it would be bad karma to ignore his death. I think of the movie Godfather 2. And by this route, thinking about Castro will bring us around to William James and pragmatism. The best scenes in that movie were the Cuba scenes, centering on the Corleone family's efforts to get in on the action in Cuba in 1958. The family was late in its timing, and had to make a hurried exit during the New Year's' Eve festivities that the revolution had so rudely interrupted. Before the plot gets to that final collapse of the gangsters' friendly regime, though, it shows us that Michael (Al Pacino) has a premonition that Castro will win. He has seen that the rebels are w...
JFK authorized the Attorney General, his brother, to cut the deal that the US for years thereafter would deny it had ever made, the deal agreeing that the US missiles in Turkey would be dismantled in return for a withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. Robert Kennedy wrote the following of the moment of the crucial contact, with Dobrynin. "We have to have a commitment by at least tomorrow that those bases [in Cuba] would be moved. This was not an ultimatum, I said, but just a statement of fact. He should understand that if they did not remove those basis, then we would remove them. His country might take retaliatory action, but he should understand that before this was over, while there might be dead Americans, there would also be dead Russians. He then asked me about Khrushchev's other proposal dealing with removal of the missiles from Turkey. I replied that there could be no quid pro quo --- not deal of this kind could be made ... If some time elapsed --- and ... I me...
When I was young, there was a lot of talk about "planned obsolescence," especially in the automotive industry. The idea was that the Detroit Big Three (who dominated the auto manufacturing world in those distant days) were deliberately creating cars that would wear out in four to five years and need to be replaced. This was understood to be both rational and predatory behavior, a sign of how buyers and sellers are necessarily at odds. Because how could makers not want repeat business? And how could motorists not want long lasting vehicles? Nobody uses that expression any more today. Perhaps the theory now seems somewhat silly. The duration of cars has significantly expanded since the days when that expression was a thing. And the Cubans have demonstrated throughout the Castro era that it is perfectly possible to keep even 1950s era Detroit vehicles on the road in working condition into the second decade of the 21st century. How? Did the "planning" go wrong, or...
Today is the 53d anniversary of the day that President John Kennedy's advisors first informed him of the photographic evidence of offensive missiles in Cuba. Thus, Oct. 16th might be considered the date of the start of the crisis that was resolved 12 days later, when Nikita Khrushchev publicly agreed to the dismantling or withdrawal of those missiles. The Cuban Missile Crisis is important not only as one intense incident within the long Cold War, a stand-off stretching from 1945 to 1987. It is important as an example of game theory playing itself out in great power politics. The key was that the President had solid domestic political reasons not to be seen making concessions to the Soviet in return for the withdrawal of these missiles. Nonetheless, he also understood that he had to make some sort of concessions to NK in return for the withdrawal of these missiles. The key concession was successfully kept secret not only at that time, but for more than a decade thereafter: ...
Over at Yahoo!Answers, I fielded the following question, "How did the Cuban Missile Crisis fit into the Cold War? How does it help one to understand the cold war?" My answer: "The Kennedy administration found it necessary to make a concession but impossible to be SEEN making a concession. They publicly claimed they wouldn't offer any tit-for-tat regarding withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba, but privately through a back channel they DID offer a tit-for-tat in connection with missiles in Turkey. And that was accepted." Added. They had to keep this back channel a secret so they could get headlines that said things like "Reds Back Down on Cuba." Returning to my yahoo answer.... "Robert Caro has a good account of this in his latest volume of his biography of LBJ, who was of course VP at the time. "How it helps one understand the cold war is that it offers an example of a dangerous combination of power politics and juveni...