Thirteen Days of Atomigeddon 2: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

[james_davis_nicoll]

“The deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because they are possible to find.” The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

As ever, corrections accepted but I won't be able to act on them until tonight.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Demonstrate the essential moral difference between IRBMs in Turkey, aimed at Russia, and IRBMs in Cuba, aimed at the USA.

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

There isn't, which is why the U.S. quietly removed them from Turkey after the crisis had passed. However what Khrushchev did was reckless and he knew what a dangerous game he was playing. Thankfully, he stopped playing it.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

No, Khrushchev didn't know how reckless he was being. He figured, based upon Kennedy's bungling of the Bay of Pigs and Vienna Summit, and weak response to the Berlin Crisis, that JFK would roll over once again, especially since any strong objection to the Cuban missiles would by hypocritical in light of the Turkish IRBMs. Unfortunately Kennedy was a hypocrite (or at least his military advisers were) and pushed the world to the brink of war because the Soviets had done to the US what the US had already done to the Soviets.

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

Oh sure, Khrushchev hoped that Kennedy would back down, but the fact that he sent the missiles secretly was actually a tell that the Soviets did not want a confrontation. Kennedy initially thought of appealing to the Soviets secretly when U.S. intelligence revealed the missile sites in Cuba, but rejected it because it would make the U.S. look weak, hence the crisis.