"A false analogy keeps being made between the Cuban Missile Crisis and Russia’s supposed fear of having offensive missiles in NATO countries bordering Russia. Supposedly, Russia has just as much right to object to NATO missiles in its neighbouring countries as the USA had to object to them in Cuba.
"One of the main problems with this analogy is that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened before there was such a thing as [accurate] inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Thus, there were no Soviet missiles capable of hitting the continental USA, until they sent ICBMs to Cuba... Russia has already been living under the threat of nuclear intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) attack by the USA for decades, [who have] have never launched one, [who have] signed multiple nuclear arms-control treaties with Russia, [who have] kept the terms of those treaties (unlike Russia), etc."Another problem is that Russia already has nuclear-capable missiles stationed on NATO’s borders, in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders both Lithuania and Poland, and is within IRBM range of many other EU and NATO countries. Do those countries have the right to invade Russia because of the IRBMs in Kaliningrad?"Going back to the Cuba analogy, Castro was so unstable that he actually urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear first-strike on the US from Cuba. Fortunately, the Soviets never put Cuba in command of their nuclear forces there, didn’t grant his request, and soon thought better of leaving their nukes where he might be able to get his hands on them.
"Another dis-analogy is that NATO membership is voluntary. No country is forced to join NATO against its will, the agreement of all existing NATO members is required for any new members to join, and any member can leave at any time. Cuba [on the other hand] was taken over by Castro in a violent, Soviet-sponsored revolution, so Cuba had no choice about whether to become a Soviet ally."[Further, n]o Soviet ally was ever allowed to stop being a Soviet ally without Soviet permission, and none of the other Soviet allies ever had any say in the matter. Cuba was a Soviet puppet, completely dependent upon the Soviets. Cuba was ruled by its secret police, who were under the command of the Soviet secret police. It was subsidised by the Soviets with billions of dollars a year. Cuba remains a one-party state, more than 30 years after the demise of the Soviet Union, having only in desperation permitted a little bit of free enterprise and replacing its former Soviet subsidies with money from Venezuela’s oil exports, drug smuggling, etc. Cuba sponsored terrorism all over the Americas, and engaged in military adventurism in Africa. Nothing comparable to that has ever been the case with any NATO members."
Thursday, 24 March 2022
The false Cuban Missile Crisis analogy ...
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Another problem, and in my view the primary issue is that Ukraine and every other nation in NATO western Europe poses no risk the freedoms and lives of Russians. Missiles in Cuba clearly did to Americans.
The only respect in which Ukraine and the West are a threat to Russia is that they're a threat to Putin's authoritarian state that wants to maintain a tight grip on power, and not have an example of a freer and more prosperous society on his doorstep that could act as a refuge for dissidents, both of which could encourage a justified revolt. Equating that threat to an authoritarian regime, with a threat to the lives and security of relatively free people is moral equivalence of the worst kind. It's the sort of thing you regularly see from the left, but it's becoming increasingly clear many on the right are their bed-fellows.
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