NUCLEAR ROULETTE

The only way to win is to stop playing.

- JEFFREY GOLDBERG

On October 27, 1962, the 12th day of the Cuban missile crisis, a bellicose and rattled Fidel Castro asked Nikita Khrushchev, his patron, to destroy America.

“I believe that the imperialists’ aggressiveness makes them extremely dangerous,” Castro wrote in a cable to Moscow, “and that if they manage to carry out an invasion of Cuba—a brutal act in violation of universal and moral law—then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defense. However harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other.”

We exist today because Khrushchev rejected Castro's demand. It was Khrushchev, of course, who brought the planet to the threshold of extinction by placing missiles in Cuba, but he had underestimated the American response to the threat. Together with his adversary, John F. Kennedy, he lurched his way toward compromise. “In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to carry out a nuclear strike against the enemy's territory,” Khrushchev responded. “Naturally you understand where that would lead us. It would not be a simple strike, but the start of a thermonuclear world war. Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, I find your proposal to be wrong, even though I understand your reasons.”