What is the value of Putin’s nuclear threats?

This is not the first time the world has been around On the brink of a nuclear abyss, recalls Bernard Lemlin, a professor in the history department at Université Laval.

Only 60 years ago, from October 16 to 28, 1962, the Soviet Union’s deployment of launchers and ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads in Cuba, within walking distance of American soil, raised tensions at most.

” We were about to witness a nuclear disaster. »

When President Kennedy, thanks to photographs taken by a spy plane, discovers the presence of the missiles, some advisers recommend air strikes on Cuba, while others lean toward a diplomatic solution. Kennedy eventually chose to establish a naval blockade of Cuba to prevent the delivery of more Soviet missiles.

Tensions came to a head when, on October 27, a US U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba. However, the US president decided not to respond immediately.

The crisis was finally defused by negotiations, thanks in particular to discussions between Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, who was then the attorney general of the United States, and the USSR ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin.

Robert Kennedy reminds Dobrynin that, in addition to promising not to invade Cuba, the Americans would be willing to withdraw some of the ICBMs that were in Turkey, aimed at the southern border of the Soviet Union, as long as this was not possible. reveal to the world, explains Mr. Lemelin. Then the Soviet Union agrees to withdraw the missiles and dismantle the launchers.

The 1962 missile crisis was finally resolved thanks to a secret discussion between the Kremlin and the White House, which the public wasn’t told about until decades later, notes Alyssa Demos. This suggests that there may be a channel of communication between Russia and the United States that we are not aware of.

In the long term, the resolution of the crisis allowed to improve communication between the two blocs, which eventually led to the conclusion of treaties on nuclear weapons.

In the coming months and years, we will see an improvement in relations between Moscow and Washington., notes Mr. Lemelin. There is the establishment of a direct communication link between the Kremlin and the White House, the famous Red Telephone, and then the August 1963 Treaty on the Partial Ban on Nuclear Tests.

” The 1962 crisis generated an intense fear of a nuclear confrontation and an awareness of the fact that we must be careful when we are among nuclear powers and that we cannot let escalation rise to a level where we risk nuclear conflict. »

Sixty years later, it’s a lesson we’ll learn from if he keeps thinking.