 October 16th this year marks 60 years of what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. A tense two weeks in which it seemed like the United States and the USSR might engage in full-fledged nuclear war. Reports of that time talk about a lot of tension, a lot of concern, worries on a day-to-day basis whether this would be the end of humanity as we know it. Of course it wasn't and we learnt a lot of lessons from that. But this is not just a story of 60 years ago, it's also a story of today. We have these concerns still remaining in our mind at this point of time. We'll be discussing all this in this episode of Mapping Fort Lines. We are with us Prabir Prakash. Prabir, Cuban Missile Crisis of course now finding a place in history books. Now a lot of people talking about it because it's the 60th anniversary and when you read the reports you can really feel the palpable tension, people thinking about what would happen on a day-to-day basis. So 60 years down the line could you just maybe take us through what really happened because there are some convenient narratives about how the USSR and its expansion is smooth etc etc. So could you just maybe first take us through how we understand it today? Well I would really describe first three things regarding what I remember of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis because we were, I was at school at the time, quite a serious student of the school, class 11 or something. And I still remember this was co-term, this was India, China also having on the Himalayan borders a major war, a border war that was taking place. So we had two crises so to say to talk or think about at that time and frankly speaking for a lot of people in India the Himalayan crisis overtook the Cuban Missile Crisis though the second was a possibility of ending human civilization. The second point is of course that the current scenario with respect to Ukraine and the fact that the United States President himself is talking about that a nuclear threat has been made but if you look at what Putin has said whether it should be construed as a nuclear threat or not and if you look at all the other threats which have been coming from a number of other players should be really talk about this as a nuclear threat particularly when Zelensky has talked about a pre-emptive strike against Russia. So that's the second part of the story. The third part of the story which you also you have referred to is that while it's looked at the Cuban Missile Crisis but what is conveniently forgotten is the fact that there were also nuclear missiles position in Turkey quite close to Russia and so within another time and also in Italy and these were not public at that point people did not know the nuclear missiles had been positioned. Neither were they aware that post Cuban Missile Crisis one part of the settlement was withdrawing also these missiles from Turkey. So this is the background within which we'll have to see it. You are absolutely right. The world not only was as we know publicly close to war and something which could have ended in a nuclear exchange but also there were physical times physically where we were very close to an accidental war. The tragedy was it was not an order given by either the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of Russia, Soviet Union but it were really accidents that could have led to a nuclear exchange. Of course accidents have happened all along with nuclear weapons that we know but these were particularly important because they're taking place at a time where you really are rather thin margins of a war starting. So that was particularly dangerous and the fact that we were at least the three occasions where we can talk about a nuclear war being triggered accidentally all within those two weeks that you talked about I think that's very important to remember today because we seem to be stepping into similar kind of scenario without even the kind of concerns that people had in 1962. In that context of course an important thing like you mentioned is that despite tensions rising to a great high there was actually negotiation and dialogue that took place even in that very tense moment when these two powers were almost on the verge of war and there were talks, there were negotiations between people who seemed like enemies without where there was no space but we look at the situation today and we are again in a war like we have pointed out Russia is in a war with NATO, it's not Russia and Ukraine really but we see a complete absence of dialogue and rhetoric at an unprecedented high that's happening right now so how do you sort of analyze what has led to this situation like what we call the Cold War 60 years ago even then there was scope for dialogue, there was scope for some kind of exchange whereas now we see that the war has been going on for so many months and there is nothing happening at all. You know one of the things I think that the world has become completely blasé about the possibility of a nuclear war we have lived with nuclear weapons for so long we believe that nothing is going to happen so therefore a conventional war can take place NATO can pump in as much weapons as it wants into Ukraine different kinds of weapons quite possibly be involved in blowing up the North's stream one and two pipelines quite possibly being at least instigator if not the one super actually did this blowing up the Kerch bridge which Russia had said is a really red line for them so all of this does not seem to have penetrated the consciousness of either the people or the leadership that actually these are nuclear weapons states the NATO has nuclear weapons, the United States of course and Russia has nuclear weapons and therefore any exchange that starts between NATO and Russia could conceivably tip over into a nuclear exchange so this is one part of it and you are quite right why is it that we don't think of it in the same way we did it in 1962 and I think the two lessons which have not been learnt is one which you have talked about that the lines of communication were kept open by both sides and there was continuous negotiations could you bring this whole thing down ratchet this whole thing down and reach some kind of an agreement and it was two weeks within which this agreement was reached so therefore that is one part of it the second part of it we really have not internalized how close we were to war, nuclear war and I'll give you three instances one of it, each of it is tragic comedy but one of it is really more comedy than even considering the fact we are so close to nuclear war that a bear tried to enter one base and triggered of what is called an intruder alert normally it shouldn't have caused any problem except that it was wired to another base 200 miles away and the wiring was not done right this is always how human failures can lead to dangerous positions and therefore it did not trigger an intruder alert it said that you have to immediately be airborne and prepared for combat which meant that Russia, Soviet strike force was actually coming across Canada if you will, over the North Pole and therefore the aircrafts had to fly and somebody realized this was the wrong order checked it up and then there was no way to recall the captains of the aircraft so he took a jeep and actually positioned it on the runway and stopped the flight the second one we know about is regarding the nuclear submarines in which one of the commanders of the submarine was on the verge of firing a nuclear weapon and his political officer include but the Flotilla commander was Archipof and he said no, no way you go to fire a nuclear weapon we need to surface and check before we do it and that's how the nuclear weapon was not fired and we have another case where we also know that when we stake a command was given to fire nuclear weapons and it's only because it was checked and then found that this was wrong order and the person concerned apparently was retired but he might have retired the whole world before that this also shows how nuclear exchange by just sheer accident, stupidity human error, wrong wiring in this particular case any of these cases we can come to the brink of extinction and I think that is why the need to think of what's happening in Ukraine not simply as a war between NATO and Russia but also something which is dangerous in the future of our civilization But Praveen, specifically in the context you were talking about there have been reports of Putin's threats you mentioned a bit about it but could you just elaborate a bit more? You know this is the whole issue the Putin what he has said that if Russia's existence is threatened as a country they can use any weapons that is at their disposal now this is the formal position of the United States in any case in fact they go further they can use all weapons including weapons of mass destruction if they feel that there is an attack on them likely which is what's called a preventive war so it's not a response to nuclear weapons it's what is called as that they can use it as preventive war now there is no provision in international law of a preventive war nor is there any potential possibly any provision for a weapon of mass destruction being used in that form the only question which the International Court of Justice left open is if the existence of a country is threatened do they have the right to use nuclear weapons or not at which point International Court of Justice said we can't comment on that unfortunately that is the provision which is used in order to justify nuclear weapons being held by countries but the point is that this position is what in fact has been predestinated by Putin if you take it that if Russia's existence is threatened that they can use nuclear weapons is anybody threatening Russia's existence at the moment so this whole argument that Putin has talked about using nuclear weapons I think is really something which is I would call as red herring if you will or something by which you are really ratcheting up the nuclear tension and then you start talking about protein has threatened nuclear weapons protein has threatened the use of nuclear weapons nobody is actually going back and reading what is he has said in what context it's been said and unfortunately the media is at the moment completely one-sided the international media seems to be completely one-sided whether whatever happens to the military war on the ground certainly the United States and its allies are certainly winning the media war that is very much very much clear so we are really hearing if you read the news you only hear one side of the story most of the world cannot even access RT and other Russian agencies because most of them have been blocked and in any case if you read a number of these channels which give the Russian side they are all supposed to be fake news sites so we have this whole also the media onslaught which spins this thing in a very different way you have President Biden saying things you have NATO leaders saying things and then it appears that we are in the threshold of a nuclear war all because protein has apparently threatened it which is certainly not at least the case that we can see from reading the transcripts of what he has said moving on to our next question question we have often addressed on this show I mean the number of nuclear weapons has come down in the decades since 1962 we have still the Russia and the US together I think have about 13,000 nuclear weapons there are constant issues like the Iran issue for instance where the talk of nuclear weapons is Israel for instance is continuously raised temperatures on that we have tensions in the Korean Peninsula so have you also seen considering what we have been through over the past many decades a complete failure as a global community in addressing the issue of nuclear weapons I would add to your list also the India Pakistan issue because the nuclear powers and we have tensions on our borders as well as India China so yes we are very much a part of this nuclear tensions in that exist in the world I think the basic as I said there is no peace movement today and the real issue is that it came on the agenda of the world because there was a global peace movement that is what is one missing element today and that is one which forced a lot of the countries then to address it through negotiations and finally the realization that this is something that would not that is not a usable weapon therefore all other weapons are okay but this weapons there is really no need to see how many times we can blow up the world so this mutual assured destruction model which is that each side then has more weapons to counter if 80% 90% of its weapons are taken out in the first strike therefore the second strike then if there are anti-missiles therefore the second strike can also be about it so this is how this whole thing gets ratcheted up and we are entering the cycle again if you remember that the one of the consequences of all those movements demanding started actually with the neutron bomb no to neutron bomb no positioning of nuclear weapons in Europe at Western Europe which all of these movements which were there at that point of time the issue really was that nuclear weapons are not a weapon that can be used therefore it should not be a weapon that should be used as a tactical nuclear weapon and therefore having anti-ballistic missile shield essentially makes it possible for you to think you can win a nuclear war with the first strike and taking out the returned strike with your ABM weapons so anti-ballistic missile shields were considered not something which would help bringing peace and only one set of anti-ballistic missile shields were actually accepted in the treaty that was signed by the US as well as Soviet Union at that point and later on Russia but unfortunately what happened was that the George Bush really withdrew from that it started with Clinton but formally George Bush withdrew out of it George Bush too withdrew out of it and then we have the further things that happened when Trump withdrew out of the intermediate range ballistic missile treaty and the current one the only one that we have now is a peace treaty the start to salt one salt two the only one that exists at the moment it's also nearing its end in 2026 so what is going to happen is not clear it is known that the United States is going to spend nearly a trillion dollars upgrading its nuclear missile nuclear weaponry we don't know how much Russia is going to spend so we seem to be entering again the cycle of winnable nuclear wars and I think that's that mindset that we can strike and win is the one which is really the most dangerous at the moment and we hear nuclear proponents in the United States openly saying that if we do A, B, C, D then we can win the nuclear war all we need is better missile shields and then we are through I think those are the kind of things which are really really dangerous thank you so much for being so there we have it we have spent decades living under the shadow of nuclear weapons but we are no closer to eliminating it to removing the danger than we were in 1962 we will be discussing many such issues in future episodes of Mapping Fault Alliance until then keep watching NewsClick