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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8773 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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The Cuban Missile Crisis comparison falls apart because Ukraine wasn't pursuing offensive capabilities against Russia. NATO membership is defensive.

What was NATO defending when they attacked Serbia? I believe the answer that is usually given is "the Albanians of Kosovo", so it seems to be defensive only in a sense that includes non-state entities that are not part of NATO itself. This is a basically meaningless condition, which is moreover also met by Russia's "defensive" campaign in Ukraine.

Conversely, in what way was Cuba pursuing "offensive capabilities" against the US? I'll quote directly from the Wikipedia article:

In December 1959, under the Eisenhower administration and less than twelve months after the Cuban Revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed a plan for paramilitary action against Cuba. The CIA recruited operatives on the island to carry out terrorism and sabotage, kill civilians, and cause economic damage.

(...)

In February 1962, the US launched an embargo against Cuba,[26] and Lansdale presented a 26-page, top-secret timetable for implementation of the overthrow of the Cuban government, mandating guerrilla operations to begin in August and September. "Open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime" was hoped by the planners to occur in the first two weeks of October.[15]

The terrorism campaign and the threat of invasion were crucial factors in the Soviet decision to place nuclear missiles on Cuba, and in the Cuban government's decision to accept.[31] The US government was aware at the time, as reported to the president in a National Intelligence Estimate, that the invasion threat was a key reason for Cuban acceptance of the missiles.

It's also worth taking into account that Clinton actually made suggestive noises to draw parallels between Kosovo (which NATO "defended") and Chechnya, and that NATO is deploying nuclear bombs and missile defense systems in countries that are as close to Russia as Cuba is to the US, but unlike Cuba during the crisis are not regularly being attacked by the respective adversary.

Underappreciated in the narratives about the Cuban missile crisis is, as I recall, that the Soviets only withdrew their missiles after the US pulled comparable missiles from Turkey.

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