by Anatoly Antonov at National Interest
As Henry Kissinger wrote in 2014, “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
I have commenced my work on this article for two reasons. Firstly, this October will mark sixty years since the Cuban Missile Crisis when the USSR and the United States were on the verge of a nuclear conflict. This is an occasion to look closer at the foreign policy lessons that the two great powers have learned from that dramatic time. I believe that any American will see eye-to-eye with me that we must not allow the explosive situation of the 1960s to repeat. It is important that not only Russia and the United States, but also other nuclear states, confirmed in a common statement that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Secondly, we are witnessing a surge of concern from the international community and U.S. experts about the possibility of a nuclear conflict between Moscow and Washington. This issue has become even more acute in recent days when senior officials of the U.S. administration began sending us direct signals warning against the use of nuclear weapons in the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Moreover, threats against us have started to be heard from the official establishment.
Princeton University has even made predictions that millions of Americans and Russians would perish in the exchange of nuclear strikes. Sometimes it feels like we are returning to the years of McCarthyism in this issue. One hardly can forget former U.S. secretary of defense James Forrestal who jumped out of the window yelling “the Russians are coming.”
The U.S. media is abounding in publications by pseudo-experts who are ignorant of history and misinterpret the current state of affairs. They erroneously compare today’s situation with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The statements by certain politicians and the media that U.S.-Russian relations are living through an unprecedented crisis may well be accepted. Let me remind you that just a couple of years ago we talked about a difficult stage in the bilateral dialogue. However, no one could have even imagined that it would come to such a perilous point. Everything created over many years of hard work, including political, economic, cultural, scientific, and educational ties, has been written off to the dustbin of history.
We see a deplorable, deserted picture in arms control. The ABM and INF treaties have sunk…
Continue Reading