Comment by bnralt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bnralt | Hacker News Reader

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This whole thing has made me reevaluate the way the Cuban Missile Crisis is portrayed in the U.S. It's usually held up as an example of great presidential leadership, with almost no push back.

But if you look at the history it's fascinating. The U.S. launched an invasion to try to overthrow the Cuban government during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Then it moved nuclear missiles up to the USSR's border in Turkey (the U.S. was also considering nuclear first strikes against the USSR around this time[1]). Then Cuba asked for the USSR to station nuclear missiles to deter an invasion, the USSR complied, which triggered the crisis. The world was brought to the brink of nuclear war as the U.S. blockaded the country and prepared for an invasion if its demands weren't met.

This isn't to defend the current invasion, just to see how these kinds of actions can be celebrated in a country to the extent that most of the citizens don't even have the slightest idea that they could be anything but a heroic defense of homeland. Sometimes it's only when a mirror is held up to us that we're really able to look at things from another angle.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/10/jfks-fi...

> It's usually held up as an example of great presidential leadership, with almost no push back.

Where did you get this impression? In my US public school we learned all about the Bay of Pigs. If anything, my takeaway was that Kruschev saved us all by publicly backing down to his own political detriment, whereas Kennedy was only willing to make his concessions in secret.

Is that how the Cuban missile crisis is taught in the US? It certainly is different than what I learned in school ( ex-communist country). It was presented with much more nuance, starting with the backstory that the US had missiles in Turkey and Italy, so them blowing off due to missiles in Cuba was highly hypocritical.

It was covered in my school in depth in the US. The backstory was covered.

Same. The resolution of missile crisis itself is lauded as a policy victory only in contrast to and a result of presidential lessons learned in the disastrous bay of pigs invasion.

It's a pretty common view of what happened (personally, my history classes never reached the Cold War, so I can't say how it's taught). This video[1], which aims to debunk the common interpretation, gives a decent overview at the beginning of how people usually view the event (I'm not a big fan of the channel in general, just using it as an example of how the event often gets viewed).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy4THHeRJX8

Yeah what often is missed is that as part of agreement the missiles from Turkey were removed, effectively increasing US security and lowering European one. That's why to me it is being quite concerning the fact that in the current scenario the interests of US establishment are matched by the idea of European interests while it is not like that and can't never be, if anything because you can't really get around geography and if we get to the point where each ones has nuclear warheads pointed at each other, despite the way it could look, it would be very bad, so I hope that Zelensky, Johnson and Biden get isolated by Europeans, and countries like Italy (I hope) chose to get out of NATO

> effectively increasing US security and lowering European one

Not really, there were still missiles in Italy and maybe Germany? It made little real difference to European security.

> Zelensky, Johnson and Biden get isolated by Europeans, and countries like Italy (I hope) chose to get out of NATO

Russia invading Ukraine, showing that European peace and security aren't as guaranteed and certain as most people thought is only bringing NATO and more specifically European NATO members together. Italy isn't on the frontlines, but is also impacted by Putin's idiocy. Why would it abandon one of it's two security guarantees (EU being the other one) now? Before the invasion, EU countries moving to a NATO independent military cooperation and defense pact would have made great sense ( and certain EU leaders were pushing for it), but now? No way.

Those were also removed as part of the deal with soviets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_nuclear_weapons_progra...

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